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.
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.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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