House Dems Demand Kash Patel Complete Alcohol Test Under Penalty of Perjury
The letter concludes with a request for Patel to complete an “Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT)—a 10-question screening tool considered the ‘gold standard’ …”
Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), sent a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel on Tuesday demanding that he take a 10-question test identifying hazardous drinking behaviors and submit a statement “attesting that [his] answers are true under the penalty of perjury.”
The request comes in the wake of an explosive article published by The Atlantic last Friday, which alleged that Patel “has alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences.” The piece is titled, “The FBI Director Is MIA.” It’s important to note that it is based entirely on anecdotes from anonymous sources.
The article opens with a bang. Struggling to access an internal FBI computer system, Patel “quickly became convinced that he had been locked out, and 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.'”
[For context, this purported incident occurred just eight days after former Attorney General Pam Bondi had been fired, so there was some basis for concern.]
In the end, it turned out to be a technical error, but the episode had allegedly caused quite a stir inside the bureau and beyond. Sources told The Atlantic, “The White House fielded calls from the bureau and from members of Congress asking who was now in charge of the FBI.”
The article pressed on with more inflammatory claims.
Sarah Fitzpatrick, who wrote the story, contacted Patel for a statement before it was published. He replied, “Print it, all false, I’ll see you in court — bring your checkbook.” She included his response in the article.
She also reached out to the White House for comment. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt replied, “Director Patel remains a critical player on the administration’s law and order team.”
Patel has vigorously denied these allegations and, on Monday, he filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against both The Atlantic and Fitzpatrick.
Nonetheless, the Democratic lawmakers wrote their letter. It began:
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.” 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 awaken you.
They cited instances in which Patel’s “inability to control [his] impulses” had “reportedly undermined high-stakes criminal investigations.”
The letter concludes with a request for Patel to complete an “Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT)—a 10-question screening tool considered the ‘gold standard’ … for assessing harmful patterns of alcohol consumption.” Additionally, they asked him to provide “a sworn statement attesting that your answers are true under the penalty of perjury.”
[Note: The questionnaire can be viewed by scrolling to the end of the letter.)
The lawmakers set a 5 p.m. April 28 deadline for submitting the requested materials.
Rep. Jamie Raskin: Kash Patel ‘on the run now’https://t.co/MFndekm9Uz
— The Hill (@thehill) April 22, 2026
During a joint press conference with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Tuesday, Patel told reporters: “I’ve never been intoxicated on the job. Any one of you that wants to participate, bring it on – I’ll see you in court.”
When reporters asked Blanche to comment on the article, he said he had not read it, but noted that he was concerned about its anonymous sourcing.
The House Democrats also sent a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, urging him “to compel Patel’s appearance at a formal hearing under oath” if he fails to comply with their demands by the deadline. Something tells me Jordan won’t be cooperating.
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Does “Democrats demand” carry any of the same authority as “students demand?” What keeps Patel from treating this like the toilet paper it is?
Nothing. “Students demand” usually comes with a threat of violence if they don’t get their way, so administrations often give them what they want. None of these Dems are likely to commit any violence, so Patel can safely ignore them.
They have their Antifa thugs they hire to do their violence. But you already knew that.
The Dems clearly are using this ploy to try to undermine Patel’s leadership of the FBI as well as his lawsuit for defamation and get the scalp of another of Trump’s highly effective cabinet members. There is no reason whatsoever for Patel to give these legislative mafiosi the time of day.
He should just use three letters in reply. G.F.Y.
By all means, do it. Go ahead and try to get the chairman of the committee to issue a subpoena to Patel. See how far that gets you.
Performative nonsense.
Kamala, Nancy and Hillary…. Lush Queens. Sometimes hard to separate wine from whine.
Lunatics
Assuming this is all BS I would agree provided all the requesting dems complete the same tests with the penalty for failure being their immediate resignation. For that matter I’d insist on a complete drug tests with the results published regardless of what they are,
Nancy would break the tester.
Drug, alcohol, IQ, and sanity tests for all Congress Critters, and those aspiring to become such!
Caught with 1 beer and it’s a shakedown
Harris looked totally tanked many times and nothing
Another attempt at deflecting so that the SPLC is off the front page. Raskin and Goldman cooked this up. Couldn’t be because they’re at risk as the DOJ investigated SPLC?
Cool. So now if a ‘news article’ written by ‘journalists’ (FWIW all of us are ‘journalists’ under 1A) without on the record named sources or any actual direct evidence but instead using unattributed/anonymous sources (who may not even exist or if they exist may have an ax to grind) is enough of a predicate to demand ‘testing’ of SR Executive Branch officials?
I seem to recall a good deal of pushback for any suggestion that Biden wasn’t capable of running an effective re-election campaign much less the Nation. The very same folks who now demand, without evidence, that Patel be tested were viciously attacking anyone who pointed to large body of evidence re Biden diminished physical/mental capacity/cognition….right up to the moment they couldn’t anymore when Biden imploded in the debate.
Let’s agree to this new basis for testing but insist on testing lots of SR d/prog in and out of office including those now in media for all sorts of things. Once they agree to testing we choose, comply and results are released then we’ll have Patel show up for their test. Not before.
(FWIW all of us are ‘journalists’ under 1A)
FWIW, there’s no right in the First Amendment in regard to journalists. There’s one in regard to “the press”, but that’s the printing press, not journaists.
But, you’re right on everything, IMO.
Sure though ‘the press’ in 1A didn’t really mean the mechanical printing press itself but the freedom (from being abridged by gov’t) of those who operated it or other means including public correspondence to publish.
“The press” means the mechanical printing press itself, just as “speech” means the physical process of moving one’s mouth while blowing air through one’s larynx. The freedom of speech and of the press is the part that belongs to humans, when they speak or publish. Nothing about “journalists”, though. The freedom of speech belongs to anyone who wishes to speak, not just professional public speakers. And the freedom of the press belongs to anyone who wishes to publish anything, not just to people who are paid to write things for publication.
Which is my point. The term ‘press’ doesn’t mean an inanimate object. It means all those use or could use it OR its technological successors. That’s baked into my stance that all of us are ‘journalists’ b/c the 1A doesn’t limit the ‘freedom of the press from being abridged’ (by gov’t) to me no of a narrow class aka journalist, employee of corporate media or even someone with an avid hobby. Everyone is equally able to rely upon the 1A to create, publish and transmit their ideas. Not sure what the confusion is or why we’re all being so pedantic when we seem to agree on the point 1A rights belongs to individual humans not inanimate objects.
No, Chief, “The press” is different from “the freedom of the press”, just as “speech” is different from “the freedom of speech”. And both freedoms are different from the people who exercise them.
“The press” means an inanimate object, or the act of using one, just as “speech” means a biological process or the act of using it. Neither “speech” nor “the press” mean the people who use those things, or who take those acts; those people are the ones who have the freedom to do so.
There is tons of evidence. The same chick that wrote a fictitious account of some rando claiming Justice Kavanaugh drugged her for gang rape in college wrote a giant story based on “anonymous allegations”, “unnamed sources familiar with the situation”, ” actions some characterize as..” and so on. How could you doubt such a well established story?
Um… in case you misplaced your sarcasm tag (/S) whenever I use the word ‘evidence’ it is implied that the ‘evidence’ must be reliable/factual not the wish casting innuendos, projections and outright false assertions of delusional leftist wokiestas who engage in a scheme of circular citation with their fellow travelers to attempt to promote today’s ‘narrative’.
The “wrap-up smear” ala Nancy Pelosi.
Before we impose the Spanish Inquisition, we need some real evidence of misconduct.
Remember, there was real evidence when Wilbur Mills (who was with Fannie Foxe) was fond drunk in the reflecting pool.
And she was a bombshell….
Ah, yes. The Tidal Basin Bombshell. Those were the days of scandals that were fun
I’m tired of people impugning the character of Wilbur Mills. The fact is, he never set foot in that tidal basin. It was Fanne Foxe who panicked and jumped in there. Incidentally, it’s difficult to find a public figure who more effectively turned lemons into lemonade than Foxe, who used the incident to springboard herself into much greater fame and fortune, including getting advanced degrees in business and marine science.
I’d give Raskin a two word response.
Mine would be three – the version starting with “Go.”
I prefer General McAuliffe’s one-word response.
What if instead we give him ‘Three Steps Towards the Door’….but only if he promises all of us that we will ‘never see him no more’?
Sarah Fitzpatrick..hmm.sounds familiar. Oh, yeah. She was the chick who made wild claims Justice Kavanaugh drugged women to rape them during the hearings.
A story with no one on record that she gave the customary 2 hrs for Patel to comment on before printing. A story everyone went on record with real names to refute. A story shopped to a whole bunch of outlets that realized what crap it was and passed until The Atlantic bit.
Dems can go screw themselves.
He should agree to do so after every Democrat Congress member and Senator takes the same test and drug test under the supervision of the FBI and uses its labs.
Would provide some interesting results.
House Dems can pound sand
Hmm . . .
Gotta wonder if the Democrats want to direct our attention away from the matter of the House Misconduct Fund . . .
Moving from a magazine article to a formal congressional demand in under five days without independent fact-finding stinks to high heaven. Two things:
1. When a news outlet with a known ideological leaning like the Atlantic publishes a report and a political party immediately uses for the basis of a probe indicates coordinated opposition rather than objective oversight.
2. The Atlantic report relied on unnamed sources. A credible investigation would involve interviewing those sources privately or verifying flight logs and security records before demanding the subject take a medical screening under penalty of perjury.
“based entirely on anecdotes from anonymous sources.”
Translation: Never actually happened and the only “proof” is from the homeless guy we paid $20 to agree that it happened.
Maybe they based it on evidence that the SPLC uncovered.
They haven’t lear’ed anything. They came up with “me too” as a way to target a couple of republicans, and in the end it has been about 50 dems per republican to suffer the consequences. If they had the ability to think strategically, they’d realize that they suck at strategic thinking.
Lord help them if they open up the substance abuse issue. Kamala alone has had a half dozen “very public” appearances where she was obviously 2 sheets to the wind. As the 5L box says, “will last up to 6 weeks in the refrigerator; 2 days MAX if an older female democrat is in the vicinity.”
🚨KASH PATEL JUST CRUSHED THE ATLANTIC INTO THE GROUND — THE LYING LEFT-WING RAG IS FORCED TO PRINT A FULL RETRACTION AFTER THEIR PATHETIC DEFAMATORY HIT PIECE BLEW UP IN THEIR FACES!
Follow
@UnmaskTheSys
The desperate magazine that tried to smear the FBI Director is now crawling on its knees: they’re printing a retraction in the next edition and have already suspended the hack reporter on unpaid administrative leave while they scramble to “vet her sources.”
“It should never have gotten this far,” admitted Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Joe Barron.
“Our reporters are expected to conduct themselves with integrity.”
Translation: They got caught red-handed lying their asses off and are about to get sued into oblivion.
The outlet is expected to settle Patel’s massive lawsuit before it even reaches discovery — because they know the receipts will destroy them.
Kash Patel is untouchable. The fake news machine just got absolutely humiliated again.
Share this everywhere if you’re loving these corrupt media clowns getting exposed and bankrupted!
https://x.com/mcafeenew/status/2047056701975875716
This claim originated on Facebook as satire. There are no official announcements or statements from the Atlantic magazine about publishing a retraction in its next edition.
Ted Kennedy. Chris Dodd.
Swallllllllllwelllllllll!!
John Boehner was famously half in the bag quite often. As for Patel assuming he was locked out of a computer system just a day or two after Noem was given the heave ho and freaked out isn’t much of a story.
Patel is just the latest target of the left smear machine trying to tank every Trump administration official.
We have to use our badges to get through multiple doors coming in in the morning. When one fails, a little thrill of “did I get fired?” is not unusual.
Patel should be defended to the hilt. But Trump has a habit for picking unsuitable people whose Tv appearance or professed views impress him. After all this cools down, Trump should replace him with somebody who is even more right wing , but who isn’t a showboating, skirt chasing little drunk.
You believe everything the left says?
I make up my own mind based on my observations and the evidence. Unlike you, I am not an emotional tard who reflexively reacts.
Yet the drunks on the left still get plowed.
I say put the congressman under a drug and alcohol test at work every day.
Good Lord. This is palpable desperation. LOL
“I’ll do one if Pelosi and Kamala do one as well.”
Them first.
As well as release of the details of the Congressional sex abuse fund.
I wonder if this is somehow related to the recent indictments of the splc
“I’ll comply with that demand right after Speaker Johnson institutes Monday morning drug and alcohol tests for all members of the House and the Senate does the same!
I believe in the same standards for everyone!”
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