The End of Kash Patel?
The FBI director seriously can’t stick around much longer… right? Plus, violence flares again in Iran, while Labour faces disaster in key UK local elections.
On this day in 1970, President Richard Nixon defended the invasion of Cambodia amid the Vietnam War. Regardless, opposition to the war grew, and ultimately, in 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution. Meant to rein in presidents’ use of military force, the WPR has not proved effective – as demonstrated by Donald Trump.
Good morning! Andrew here again. Every day that goes by, it feels more and more incredible that Kash Patel remains the FBI director. When will Donald Trump send this merch-hawking wantrepreneur packing?
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we review Patel’s latest week from hell, the US and Iran trade “love taps,” Trump’s new tariff scheme fails too, and there’s a looming disaster for Keir Starmer’s Labour government in the UK.
Krashing Out
Kash Patel never had any business being the FBI director, and never would have filled the job if Donald Trump hadn’t been elected president again.
It’s hard to believe the paranoid, self-promoting conspiracy theorist will hold the role much longer, not with all of the alternately humiliating and horrifying news stories coming out about his management of America’s domestic spying agency.
Patel seems to know the walls are closing in.
This week, according to MS Now, the FBI director “walled himself off from some senior bureau leaders,” and also ordered current and former members of his security team and IT staffers to take polygraph tests in a furious hunt for leakers.
MS Now additionally reported that the FBI has begun investigating Sarah Fitzpatrick, the journalist at The Atlantic who exposed Patel’s frequent drinking “to the point of obvious intoxication,” in a story with many deeply embarrassing details about his tenure at the FBI.
Patel has adamantly denied that report, filing a $250 million defamation lawsuit against Fitzpatrick and her magazine, which makes you wonder: Why would the FBI need to root out leakers and conduct a legally questionable investigation into a journalist if her story was based on “false and obviously fabricated allegations,” as Patel claimed in court?
Fitzpatrick, to her great credit, responded to news of the probe with a new story about how Patel often travels with “a supply of personalized branded bourbon” – bottles of Woodford Reserve with the phrases “Kash Patel FBI Director” and “KA$H PATEL” on them, which he likes to give out as gifts.
Patel’s week from hell comes after he was brutally parodied on ‘Saturday Night Live’ by a wide-eyed Aziz Ansari. “I’m a trailblazer,” Ansari declared. “I’m the first Indian person to suck at their job.”
And yet, this is hardly Patel’s first terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week.
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