FBI Director Kash Patel speaks during a Senate subcommittee hearing Tuesday at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. During the hearing Patel agreed to take an alcohol abuse test if Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., did likewise. Photo by Annabelle Gordon/UPI | License Photo
FBI Director Kash Patel, under fire for media accounts of alleged excessive drinking, vowed during a heated exchange at a Senate hearing Tuesday to take a test for alcohol abuse if his questioner did as well.
Patel, under heated questioning from Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., during a Senate appropriations subcommittee hearing on the Trump administration’s 2027 budget request, pledged to take an Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test as long as Hollen also did.
“Let’s go, side by side,” the FBI chief said after voicing accusations of his own about an incident in which Van Hollen was purported to be shown drinking margaritas on the taxpayer’s tab during a visit to El Salvador.
The testy back-and-forth came as Patel is defending himself against allegations contained in an April 17 article in The Atlantic in which nine unnamed current and former FBI officials spoke of Patel drinking to the point of obvious intoxication, including in front of White House officials, and of his security detail having difficulty waking him at times, apparently because he was intoxicated.
The article also quoted sources saying FBI agents had to request breaching equipment to reach him behind locked doors while intoxicated.
Patel in turn sued the publication, seeking $250 million in damages while calling the article a “sweeping, malicious and defamatory hit piece.”
During Tuesday’s hearing, Van Hollen referenced a demand made by House Judiciary Democrats that Patel complete and share the results of an alcohol disorders test.
“Are you willing to take the test — it’s called the AUDIT test?” Hollen asked.
“I will take any test you are willing to take,” Patel responded.
The remark came after he had veered into accusations of his own regarding a meeting last year between Van Hollen and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele over the imprisonment there of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an undocumented man who was mistakenly deported as part of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement surge.
Patel referenced a conspiracy theory dubbed “margarita-gate” by its proponents in which a photo posted by Trump ally Bukele showed Van Hollen meeting Abrego Garcia while seated at a table with salt-rimmed margarita glasses in front of them.
Bukele’s caption implied the Democratic senator and the wrongly deported man had been “sipping margaritas” as they met.
Van Hollen said upon his return that the drinks were placed there during the meeting by a Salvadoran government employee before the photographs were taken and that neither he nor Abrego Garcia had touched them.
Patel, however, at Tuesday’s hearing accused Van Hollen of corruption in connection with the photo and Abrego Garcia of committing crimes for which he has never been charged.
“The only person who was slinging margaritas in El Salvador on the taxpayer dollar with a convicted gang-banging rapist was you,” he said.
Van Hollen called that “a provably false statement” and “sort of like urban legend in right-wing media about margaritas in El Salvador, which is provably false.
“And so coming from the mouth of an FBI director to make provably false statements in a hearing like this is extremely troubling and it leads me to ask whether or not the other things you’ve been saying are false statements.”
This week in Washington
President Donald Trump speaks during a Health Care Affordability event in the Oval Office at the White House on Thursday. Trump announced announced a new drug price deal with Regeneron. Photo by Will Oliver/UPI | License Photo
