Patel’s Proving A Heavy Bourbon for Trump

His attack on a reporter for The Atlantic has resulted in a hilariously wild follow-up story.

Courtesy of Saturday Night Live

As I wrote about last month, The Atlantic’s Sarah Fitzpatrick published a blockbuster investigation of FBI Director Kash Patel based on over two dozen current and former FBI officials, detailing what the magazine described as his “conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences.” The report alleged that meetings were delayed because of late-night drinking, that senior Justice Department officials were alarmed by his conduct, and that Patel was often unreachable.

Patel’s allies said it was all fabricated. The FBI pushed back. And a reasonable person might have thought, “Okay, lay low. Let it blow over. Don’t make it worse.”

Kash Patel is not a reasonable person.

The proof is in the telling

Patel decided to up the stakes. He filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic and Fitzpatrick, accusing the magazine of being part of an elaborate journalistic conspiracy he compared to organized crime. The complaint, which in Trumpian fashion was riddled with typos, argued the report was a hit piece “replete with false and obviously fabricated allegations designed to destroy Director Patel’s reputation and drive him from office.”

Enter the Streisand Effect. We know by now that the regime’s multiple attempts to suppress damaging stories only draw more attention to them. In response to the suit, more sources reached out to Fitzpatrick. And she wrote another story.

Things go badly a-rye

Fitzpatrick’s follow-up, published this week, makes for great reading on this Friday. It also deepens concerns about Patel’s leadership. According to the report, Patel regularly travels with personally branded bottles of Woodford Reserve bourbon, including on DOJ aircraft.

Here’s the part that earns a single Patel eyeroll. He had the bottles engraved with the words “Kash Patel FBI Director,” and they bear a rendering of the FBI shield and feature his favored spelling of his own name: Ka$h. Some include his autograph and the number 9, a presumed reference to his place in the lineage of FBI directors.

The Atlantic didn’t just take the sources’ word for it. It obtained one of the bottles, purchased from an online auction site from someone who said it was a gift from Patel at an event in Las Vegas.

The director of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency apparently has been handing out souvenir liquor bottles, engraved with his own branded name, to FBI staff and civilians.

Previous FBI directors, the magazine noted dryly, did not do this. When Fitzpatrick asked a former senior FBI official whether he had ever seen personally branded liquor bottles distributed by a previous FBI director, he burst out laughing.

Staff time in the barrel

In March, Patel traveled to the FBI’s training facility in Quantico, Virginia, for what was billed as a “training seminar.” That session was taught by (checks notes) Ultimate Fighting Championship fighters. Patel reportedly brought at least one case of his personalized bourbon with him.

And at some point, one of the bottles went missing.

According to Kurt Siuzdak, a retired FBI agent who advises current agents on legal matters, Patel “lost his mind.” He threatened to polygraph and prosecute his own staff over the missing bottle. Multiple agents contacted Siuzdak seeking legal guidance. “It turned into a shitshow,” Siuzdak told The Atlantic.

Siuzdak’s advice to current FBI employees? “I tell people to run from him.”

The FBI has historically maintained what The Atlantic described as “a zero-tolerance approach to unauthorized use of alcohol on the job.” It now has a director who is polygraphing staff over the whereabouts of his personally branded whiskey.

Bottled up insecurities

Eight sources, including current and former FBI and DOJ employees, told The Atlantic that Patel had distributed the Ka$h Patel bourbon bottles during official events. Some agents, according to the magazine, worried that declining a bottle from the director could itself trigger a loyalty polygraph.

George Hill, a former FBI supervisory intelligence analyst who served under multiple directors, told Fitzpatrick: “Handing out bottles of liquor at the premier law-enforcement agency—it makes me frightened for the country. Standards apply to everything and everyone—especially the boss.”

There’s an irony worth noting. Patel melted down over someone supposedly stealing a bottle from him, when nobody wants to accept one from him in the first place.

To Kash a criminal

The same week Fitzpatrick’s follow-up story dropped, reports emerged that the FBI had launched a criminal leak investigation targeting Fitzpatrick herself, examining how her sources inside the bureau communicated with her.

Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, did not mince words. “If confirmed to be true, an FBI criminal leak investigation targeting our reporter would represent an outrageous attack on the free press and the First Amendment itself,” he said. “We will not be intimidated by illegitimate investigations or other acts of politically motivated retaliation.”

The romaines of the day

It may be time to put up a head of lettuce against Patel to see which lasts longer, because his prospects for holding onto his job have not improved. Politico reported that things “aren’t looking great” for Patel inside the White House, and that he may be the next senior official to exit. The regime has been conspicuously silent, declining to defend him or even mention his name publicly as the controversies mount.

Of relevance to the television-obsessed president, an SNL cold-open featuring surprise guest Aziz Ansari recently lampooned Patel with deadly precision.

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee moved quickly, too. They posted a mock bourbon label on social media reading: “The Kash Patel bourbon: strong notes of insecurity, narcissism, incompetence and alcohol-fueled national security risk. Pairs well with taxpayer-funded getaways and the occasional SWAT-assisted wake-up call.”

The warning on the label was *chef’s kiss*: “Impairs judgment, undermines critical FBI decisions and causes paranoia.”