President Donald Trump is continuing to back FBI Director Kash Patel after allegations that the 46-year-old former podcaster is frequently drunk in public to the point of intoxication and other allegedly troubling behavior reported in a blockbuster magazine article last week.
According to documents published by The Intercept Friday, Patel admitted to having been arrested on two occasions — once for public intoxication as a minor while an undergraduate in Virginia, and once for public urination while out drinking in New York City when he was a law student.
He detailed both incidents in a letter submitted for his personnel file when he was a Miami-Dade County, Florida public defender after being asked by his employer to explain the past arrests because he had disclosed them in his application for admission to the Florida Bar.
“Both of these incidents are not representative of my usual conduct of behavior, and it is my hope that the [Florida Bar] views them as an anomaly,” he said.
Asked about Patel’s standing with the president during a brief availability with reporters outside the West Wing Friday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump “does still have confidence in the FBI director.”
“The crime rates in this country have completely plummeted, we're at a 125 year low in murder rates across this country .... so the President is grateful for the efforts of the great men and women of the FBI who are help making this happen,” Leavitt added.
Patel — whose past jobs include stints as a federal prosecutor, a former public defender in Miami, and as a National Security Council staffer in addition to several weeks as chief of staff to the acting Secretary of Defense at the tail-end of Trump’s first term — has called The Atlantic’s report “categorically false.”
And he filed a $250 million lawsuit this week against The Atlantic after the magazine reported that he “is known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication” at a pair of private clubs he belongs to in Washington, D.C. and Las Vegas, Nevada.
Citing “several officials,” the article alleges that Patel’s drinking “has been a recurring source of concern across the government” including among members of his security detail who’ve reportedly had trouble rousing him in the morning because of his level of intoxication.
But despite the FBI director’s vehement denials of any issues with alcohol, his history does not lend itself to any effort to suggest he is a teetotaler of any kind.
Earlier this year, he was infamously captured on video screaming and chugging beer from a bottle in the U.S. Men’s Olympic Hockey Team locker room after the team won a gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Italy.
Patel, an obsessive hockey fan who has coached youth hockey at a suburban Maryland high school and still plays on a recreational league team in the D.C. area, was criticized at the time for using the FBI’s jet for the jaunt to Italy, though a spokesperson noted at the time that he is required by law to travel on government aircraft at all times.
Erica Knight, a frequent spokesperson for Patel, called the reporting on his past arrests an “attack” that was “nothing more than an attempt to undermine a process that has already deemed him suitable to serve and a distraction to the record-breaking success of the FBI under Director Patel.”
“Kash’s entire background was thoroughly examined and vetted prior to him assuming this role,” she said.
