FBI Director Kash Patel is hanging onto his job by a thread, reported Sarah Fitzpatrick for The Atlantic on Friday — and a large part of that stems from erratic behavior, including unexplained absences and problem drinking, that have alarmed FBI staff.
For the entirety of his time in charge, Patel, a former GOP House Intelligence Committee staffer known for his hard-right, pro-Trump attitude, has faced rumors of being absent from critical parts of his job, which he has denied. New reporting gives deeper insight into how bad it has gotten — and how much Patel fears he’s about to lose his job any moment.
“Patel, according to multiple current officials, as well as former officials who have stayed close to him, is deeply concerned that his job is in jeopardy,” wrote Fitzpatrick. “He has good reasons to think so — including some having to do with what witnesses described to me as bouts of excessive drinking.” Further, “Patel was among the officials expected to be fired after Attorney General Pam Bondi’s ouster, on April 2. ‘We’re all just waiting for the word’ that Patel is officially out of the top job, an FBI official told me this week, and a former official told my colleague Jonathan Lemire that Patel was ‘rightly paranoid.’”
The White House has reportedly already begun talks about who could replace Patel if he is let go.
“Speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information and private conversations, they described Patel’s tenure as a management failure and his personal behavior as a national-security vulnerability,” said the report.
Further, Patel’s drinking has been such a problem that his security detail has struggled to rouse him at times when he is needed for certain FBI duties, and “A request for ‘breaching equipment’ — normally used by SWAT and hostage-rescue teams to quickly gain entry into buildings — was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors, according to multiple people familiar with the request.”
According to the report, Patel is so fearful for his job that last Friday, when he was locked out of the FBI computer system due to an IT error, “he panicked, frantically calling aides and allies to announce that he had been fired by the White House, according to nine people familiar with his outreach. Two of these people described his behavior as a ‘freak-out.’”
Ultimately the problem was resolved, but during the chaos, “the White House fielded calls from the bureau and from members of Congress asking who was now in charge of the FBI,” and some agents privately expressed “relief” when they thought he really had been fired.
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