Washington, DC: Drink is apparently driving Kashyap ‘Kash’ Patel towards losing his job as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Patel, one of the main faces of Donald Trump’s administration, is apparently paranoid that he may be on the verge of losing his job as head of America’s top probe agency.
His “excessive drinking” is one of the reasons for him to believe that he may be fired from the job, a report in The Atlantic says.
The report quotes and unnamed FBI official as saying: “We’re all just waiting for the word” that Patel is officially out of the top job. The media outlet claims to have spoken to more than two dozen people about Kash Patel’s conduct, Hindustan Times has said.
According to the report, Patel’s conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences are part of the problem in his conduct.
Patel almost believed that he had been ousted from his job on April 10 after he was unable to log into an internal computer system. He made frantic calls to his aides and allies to announce that he had been fired by the White House, The Atlantic reported, citing nine people familiar with the incident.
Gossip spiralled as he dialed several people to say that he was fired, only to be found that it was because of a technical error that he couldn’t log into his system.
Reports, however, suggest that talks are on within the Trump administration for Patel’s replacement.
He has been described as “erratic, suspicious of others, and prone to jumping to conclusions before he has necessary evidence”.
Several FBI officials have said that Patel’s drinking has been a constant cause of concern across the government.
He is known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication, in many cases at the private club Ned’s in Washington, DC, while in the presence of White House and other administration staff, the report in The Atlantic added.
His drinking spree on weekends continue at the Poodle Room, in Las Vegas. This has resulted in meetings having to be rescheduled, it added.
Justice Department and White House officials claimed that on several occasions last year, Patel’s security detail members had difficulty waking him apparently because he was so intoxicated. A request for “breaching equipment” was made on one occasion, because Patel had been unreachable and wouldn’t open the door. A breaching-equipment request is usually made in hostage situations to gain access to a building or room.
While his tenure has been dubbed as “management failure” and his personal behavior as a “national-security vulnerability”, the White House has credited Patel with controlling the crime rate in the US.
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt recently said that crime across the country has plummeted to the lowest level in more than 100 years and many high profile criminals have been put behind bars under Trump and Patel.
