Kash Patel Blusters About Suing Over Devastating Profile
A lot has happened. Here are some of the things. This is the TPM Morning Memo.
“obvious drunkenness”
Update: Kash Patel filed a defamation suit against the Atlantic and editor Sarah Fitzpatrick this morning in federal court in Washington, DC.
Friday night, The Atlantic published a devastating story about Kash Patel’s first year as head of the FBI.
The gist of the article is this: “the issues surrounding his conduct go well beyond what has been known to date and include both obvious drunkenness and unexplained absences.”
Most of the article focused on Patel’s alleged drinking on the job. The anecdotes were numerous… and astonishing:
- “On several occasions over the past year, members of his security detail had difficulty waking Patel because he was apparently intoxicated, according to information provided to the Justice Department and White House officials. A request for “breach equipment” — normally used by SWAT and hostage rescue teams to quickly enter buildings — was made last year because Patel was inaccessible behind locked doors, according to several people familiar with the request. “
- “Early in his tenure, meetings and briefings had to be rescheduled for later in the day because of his drinking nights, six current and former officials and others familiar with Patel’s schedule told me.”
- “FBI officials and others in the administration have privately questioned whether alcohol played a role in instances where he shared inaccurate information about active law enforcement investigations, including following the murder of Charlie Kirk.”
Patel responded to the article’s pre-publication by threatening to sue The Atlantic: “Print it, it’s all false, I’ll see you in court – bring your checkbook.” » After publication, he threatened legal action today and issued this rather memorable, if legally inaccurate, statement on
As has become a habit among officials on the sidelines during Trump II, Patel tried to save his own skin by doubling down on Trump’s political enemies in a series of appearances on Sunday morning talk shows:
DiGenova handles the ‘grand conspiracy’ case
After a series of rapid-fire reports from multiple media outlets Friday afternoon through Saturday, the shuffling of deck chairs in the mother of all vindictive Trump lawsuits in South Florida looks like this:
- Career DOJ Maria Medetis Long is no longer the lead prosecutor in the case “after resisting pressure to quickly bring charges” against former CIA Director John Brennan, CNN reports. His boss, Miami U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones, had told Justice Department officials that “charges could still be months away, sources said, which senior justice officials told him was not acceptable.”
- Former DCUS attorney Joseph diGenova, 81, who represented Trump’s 2020 campaign and Trump in the previous Russia investigation, is now leading the “grand conspiracy” probe, with the title of advisor to the attorney general. DiGenova starts today.
- Also assigned to the case: Christopher-James DeLorenz, a former employee of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon during the Mar-a-Lago investigation, who transferred to South Florida from Main Justice, where he had served as an assistant to then-Assistant Attorney General Todd Blanche.
The South Florida case, part of which occurs in Ft. Pierce, for whom Cannon is the sole judge, is believed to be pursuing a grand unifying conspiracy theory that the federal government sought to frame Trump through multiple investigations that spanned nearly a decade.
Oversight of Trump’s Justice Department
- In a letter signed last week by Civil Rights Division Chief Harmeet Dhillon, the Trump Justice Department demanded that ballots from the Detroit area be 2024 that the federal election be overturned, intensifying its scrutiny of false claims of voter fraud, which judges continue to reject en masse.
- HuffPo: “As lawsuits against the Trump administration pile up, several federal lawyers defending the U.S. government — and its repeated failure to comply with court orders — regularly fall back on the same argument: They simply have no idea what’s going on. »
- WSJ: In a letter with highly politicized language, Trump’s DOJ refuses to cooperate with the French investigation into Elon Musk’s X.
Todd Blanche Auditions for AG Post
Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman: “In Todd Blanche’s three weeks as acting AG, he has taken screws that seemed completely turned and tightened them a notch. His early actions suggest that, hard as it is to conceive, he will be even more vicious, more subservient to Trump, and more willing to throw away the public interest and the rule of law than was his perfectly subservient predecessor.”
Extraordinary glimpse inside SCOTUS
In a well-packaged blockbuster, The New York Times obtained a tranche of internal Supreme Court memos on the 2016 case that ushered in the shadow docket as we know it today:
Shadow Dossier expert Steve Vladeck published a very accessible column this morning on the results of the New York Times’ remarkable reporting.
No SCOTUS retirements this year
Contrary to all speculation, Justice Samuel Alito does not plan to retire this year, Fox News reports. Justice Clarence Thomas isn’t going anywhere either, according to Jan Crawford of CBS News.
Sorry, Aileen Cannon, Neomi Rao, James Ho et al.
Happy reading
Madiba K. Dennie: Neomi Rao understands what it means to be a Trump judge
Latest news from the Middle East…
- After declaring on Friday that the Strait of Hormuz was open to navigation, Iran quickly decided to close it again on Saturday until the United States lifted its blockade of Iranian ports. Two Indian-flagged ships came under fire after the new Iranian announcement and were forced to turn around.
- On Sunday, the U.S. Navy decommissioned and then boarded an Iranian-flagged cargo ship that was allegedly trying to enforce the U.S. blockade.
- Vice President JD Vance is leading the US delegation to talks expected this week with Iran in Pakistan, even though Iran has signaled it would not participate following the weekend’s events in the Strait of Hormuz.
Topic of the day
A recap of the unusual FISA Section 702 maneuvers late last week on the Hill:
Death toll during boat strike campaign: 180
Three people were killed in the Caribbean Sea on Sunday in the 52nd illegal US strike against boats suspected of drug trafficking, bringing the campaign’s death toll to at least 180 people.
Monitoring mass deportations
- Turkish national Rumeysa Ozturk, a pro-Palestinian Tufts University student whose detention by masked federal agents because of her political views was filmed, has completed her Ph.D. in February and returned home to Türkiye as part of a settlement agreement with the Trump administration.
- Marcy Wheeler: Minnesota continues to clean up after Pam Bondi’s trophy hit
- Politico: They were arrested by ICE and deported. The judges release them.
Corruption: false colonies
A new court filing has confirmed it – how else can I say it? — the Trump administration is in settlement talks with President Trump and his family over their $10 billion prosecution for leaking their tax information to news agencies.
In related news: Lawfare obtained, via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, a copy of the $1.25 million settlement agreement between the Trump administration and former Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn to settle his false malicious lawsuits.
Corruption: Trump Library Edition
As The New Republic’s Greg Sargent reports, Democrats are looking into what happened to corporate donations to Trump’s presidential library that were part of corruption lawsuit settlement deals with him — especially since the fund created to receive the donations was dissolved last year.
ABC, Paramount, Meta and X have now all confirmed they made the settlement payments, but it’s unclear where the money went.
“None of these companies can accurately say where their multimillion-dollar donations to Donald Trump’s library slush fund are, or where they will go,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) told TNR.
Court of Appeal lets ballroom continue
The D.C. Circuit is playing with fire by allowing construction of President Trump’s ballroom until at least June while it hears his appeal of a lower court order halting the project. The administrative suspension clears the way for Trump to speed up construction so he can present the courts with a decision. accomplished fact they will be more reluctant to order their dismantling. That’s exactly the scenario that U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, D.C., warned the administration about during the very first hearing of the case, but the panel of Judges Patricia Millett (Obama), Neomi Rao (Trump), and Brad Garcia (Biden) is opening the barn door at least until oral arguments on June 5.
Headline of the day
I didn’t expect to see this headline in my lifetime: “Germany reinvents itself as an arms factory.”
Thank you, President Trump.
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