FBI Director Kash Patel, last seen by much of the public partying with the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team after it won the gold in February, has struggled badly for much of his tenure. But The Atlantic cast Patel’s troubles in a new light with a brutal new report on Friday, alleging that FBI personnel have expressed concerns about the director’s unexplained absences and excessive drinking, which have alarmed colleagues and his security detail.
It reached the point that some within the bureau have worried that the former podcast personality’s personal behavior “has become a threat to public safety.”
The same report, which has not been independently verified by MS NOW, added that Patel’s erratic behavior at the FBI could cost him his job and that he’s “deeply concerned that his job is in jeopardy.”
Patel and his lawyer wasted little time in condemning the reporting as “false” and vowing to file a lawsuit against the publication and the award-winning reporter who wrote the story, Sarah Fitzpatrick.
On Monday morning, he did exactly that, filing a $250 million defamation lawsuit.
In response to the lawsuit, The Atlantic said in a statement, “We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel and will vigorously defend The Atlantic and our journalists against this meritless lawsuit.”
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Time will tell what becomes of Patel’s litigation strategy, but the day before filing his lawsuit, the beleaguered FBI director appeared on Fox News and did precisely what many in Donald Trump’s orbit have done before: scrambled to say a bunch of things to satisfy an audience of one.
When host Maria Bartiromo asked, for example, for his response to allegations that he has a drinking problem, Patel didn’t answer directly, though his response heralded “President Trump’s brilliant leadership.”
As part of the same interview, the FBI director went on to claim that the bureau has “information” that bolsters Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, adding, “We are going to be making arrests. And it’s coming, and I promise you, it’s coming soon.”
In reality, there is no evidence to support the president’s discredited conspiracy theories — he lost in 2020, fair and square — as Patel likely knows. But if The Atlantic’s reporting is correct, and the director is “deeply concerned that his job is in jeopardy,” he also likely knows that there’s no better way to bolster his job security than going on Fox News and vowing to arrest the president’s perceived political enemies while defending Trump’s weird claims about his 2020 defeat.
Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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