House Democrats are demanding an honest accounting of FBI Director Kash Patel's alleged drinking problem.
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have called on the 46-year-old Patel to take an alcohol-abuse test or testify under oath after The Atlantic published a deeply sourced report on his alleged excessive drinking, and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) sent him a letter seeking a sworn statement statement authenticating the accuracy of his answers by 5 p.m. Tuesday, reported The Hill.
“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 committee's Democrats wrote in a letter sent to Patel.
The lawmakers also asked President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the bureau to share his security clearance questionnaire responses, the results of his World Health Organization’s alcohol disorders test and a sworn written statement attesting to the accuracy of all materials he submits to the committee by next week's deadline.
“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 lawmakers 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 drunk behind locked doors in episodes making you so unreachable that agents have had to fetch SWAT-level breaching equipment to waken you,” the lawmakers added.
Patel filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against the Atlantic on Monday, and a spokesperson for the House Judiciary Committee's Republican majority defended Patel's tenure as FBI director.
“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," the spokesperson told The Hill. "This is just another unserious effort from anonymous sources and partisan actors to attack the President and his Administration."