FBI Director Kash Patel said on Friday that he will file a lawsuit after The Atlantic published a report questioning his fitness for the job and citing several officials who said his alcohol use has “been a recurring source of concern across the government.”
Reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick of The Atlantic included a comment from the FBI attributed to Patel in her article, titled “The FBI Director Is MIA,” which read, “Print it, all false, I’ll see you in court — bring your checkbook.”
Patel doubled down Friday on X, writing, “see you and your entire entourage of false reporting in court… But do keep at it with the fake news, actual malice standard is now what some would call a legal lay up.” The post included a screenshot of an email from the FBI assistant director for public affairs.
“Sarah, Top to bottom, this is one of the most absurd things I’ve ever read,” wrote Benjamin Williamson in the purported email. “Completely false at a nearly 100% clip. And with a two hour deadline. Copying my colleague Erica. We’ll get you some more thorough responses.”
The article itself, meanwhile, featured some troubling allegations.
Fitzpatrick reported, “On multiple occasions in the past year, members of his security detail had difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated, according to information supplied to Justice Department and White House officials.”
“A request for ‘breaching equipment’—normally used by SWAT and hostage-rescue teams to quickly gain entry into buildings—was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors, according to multiple people familiar with the request,” she continued.
Fitzpatrick also wrote that Patel struggled to log into “an internal computer system” last Friday and became convinced that he was purposefully locked out — and “panicked, frantically calling aides and allies to announce that he had been fired by the White House.”
She attributed this to nine people and said two of them called Patel’s behavior a “freak-out.”
“Early in his tenure, meetings and briefings had to be rescheduled for later in the day as a result of his alcohol-fueled nights, six current and former officials and others familiar with Patel’s schedule told me,” Fitzpatrick wrote.
Tom Brenner/Associated Press
FBI media adviser Erica Knight claimed on social media Friday that the “so-called ‘intoxication incidents’” happened “exactly ZERO times” and then exhaustively enumerated the arrests, kilos of seized fentanyl and recovered missing children under Patel’s controversial tenure.
Knight concluded her post by stating, “Lawsuit is being filed.”
Fitzpatrick was asked on MS NOW during a Friday appearance on “The Briefing with Jen Psaki” about Knight’s post, and replied, “I say that I am a very careful, very diligent award-winning investigative reporter with a history of award-winning work.”
Patel’s behavior in the spotlight has long been the subject of scrutiny, with one of the most recent examples occurring in February, when he attended the Winter Olympics gold-medal hockey game and celebrated Team USA’s win by chugging beer with the players in their locker room.
Patel had vowed ahead of his nomination as FBI director to get to the bottom of the Jeffrey Epstein case and bring justice for the victims, only to claim the late sex offender never trafficked victims to other people and took his own life, despite widespread doubts.
Need help with substance use disorder or mental health issues? In the U.S., call 800-662-HELP (4357) for the SAMHSA National Helpline.
