Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are demanding that FBI Director Kash Patel turn over information to Congress related to accusations that he has regularly consumed alcohol in excess during his time leading the counterintelligence agency.
“These glimpses of your relationship to alcohol would be alarming to see in an FBI agent; for us to see them in the FBI Director himself is shocking and indicative of a public emergency,” the group of Democrats wrote in the joint letter shared with The Hill on Tuesday evening.
The lawmakers asked Patel to share his security clearance questionnaire responses, his results on the World Health Organization’s alcohol disorders test and a sworn written statement about the accuracy of the materials he submits to the committee.
The letter was sent to Patel and Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Tuesday evening. The Hill has reached out to the FBI and Jordan’s office for comment.
“Crime is down to record-low levels. Criminals are behind bars, and America is safer thanks to the leadership of President Trump and Director Patel. This is just another unserious effort from anonymous sources and partisan actors to attack the President and his Administration,” a House Judiciary spokesperson told The Hill on Tuesday.
The Democrats’ request cites The Atlantic’s article last week, which included accounts from current FBI and Justice Department officials that Patel was difficult to reach at times and that his alcohol consumption was a “recurring source of concern across the government.”
These officials told the outlet that the director’s security detail had “difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated” and that meetings had to be pushed later in the day after long nights of drinking.
“A damning and explosive report recently revealed that the men and women of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are privately — and at times publicly — alarmed by your ‘episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences,’” the Judiciary Democrats wrote, quoting the Atlantic report.
“There are numerous accounts that you consume alcohol to the point of illness, direct profanity-laced outbursts at support staff, and pass out drink behind locked doors in episodes making you so unreachable that agents have had to fetch SWAT-level breaching equipment to waken you,” the lawmakers continued.
Patel filed a defamation lawsuit against the Atlantic on Monday, seeking $250 million from the outlet in damages.
During a press conference on Tuesday evening about a separate legal matter involving the Justice Department’s investigation into the Southern Poverty Law Center, Patel forcefully pushed back against the accusations leveled against him.
“I’ve never been intoxicated on the job, and that is why we filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit. And any one of you that wants to participate, bring it on. I’ll see you in court,” Patel told the gathered reporters.
The FBI director specifically disputed the Atlantic’s reporting that he was locked out of his government computer and believed he had been fired from his role earlier this month.
“That is an absolute lie,” Patel said. “It was never said, it never happened and I will serve in this administration as long as the president and the attorney general want me to do so.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche defended Patel during the Tuesday press conference, blasting the “anonymous reports.”
“My concerns are completely around the anonymous reporting that comes forth constantly that, you know, reporters have an obligation to report. And they have due diligence that they’re supposed to do,” Blanche said.
“And when an entire article is based on anonymous sources and there’s things in the article suggesting, for example, apparently that senior DOJ personnel were informed of something, that’s me,” he continued. “I wasn’t informed. No one called me about that.”
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