“Kash Patel has never been qualified to lead the FBI,” said Danielle Han in Jezebel, and The Atlantic just showed us “the gazillionth reason why.” In a damning report published two weeks ago, the magazine alleged that the bureau’s director suffers paranoid “freak-outs” about being fired, is often absent from work, and is “regularly too drunk to do his job.”
Justice Department and White House sources told The Atlantic that Patel’s security detail has repeatedly struggled to wake the seemingly hungover FBI boss, forcing meetings and briefings to be rescheduled for later in the day. Last year, his detail even reportedly considered using SWAT-style “breaching equipment” because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors. Some FBI and administration officials wonder if alcohol explains Patel’s repeated missteps—such as his sharing of inaccurate information about a suspect following the September murder of Charlie Kirk—and fear that he’s become a national security risk. Patel vehemently denies all the accusations and last week filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic, calling its report “hit-piece lies.”
“Patel’s goal, of course, isn’t actually to win in court,” said William Kristol in The Bulwark. To do that, he’d have to prove not only that the claims in The Atlantic were false but also that the outlet knew they were so when it published them, “or at least didn’t care if they were true or not.” His real aim is to punish a publication that dared embarrass him with a costly nuisance suit “and to demonstrate to an audience of one, President Trump, that he’s fighting the lying lib media.” For now, Patel “still has support from the White House,” said Mike Pesca in his Substack newsletter. Trump appreciates his willingness to target perceived enemies—Patel vowed last week that arrests related to the 2020 election are “coming soon”—and to purge anyone who is “anything less than loyal to the president,” including scores of FBI agents over the past year.
It’s possible The Atlantic exposé will doom Patel, said Jeet Heer in The Nation. Trump, a teetotaler who watched his older brother drink himself to death, cannot abide substance abuse in his underlings. But whatever happens with Patel, the damage he’s wreaked “will outlive his tenure.” He has gutted FBI teams focused on terrorism, political corruption, and organized crime, and turned the bureau into “a dangerously right-wing” agency with the power to hurt the president’s political foes. “The real problem is not Patel’s alleged inebriation but the deep corruption of the most important law enforcement agency in the country.”
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