The current FBI Director and former podcaster Kash Patel was arrested on two occasions in his youth in incidents involving drinking, revealed by The Intercept on Friday.
Now 46, Patel was arrested as a minor while an undergraduate in Virginia, and a second time for public urination after drinking in New York City when he was a law student.
Patel revealed both incidents in a letter submitted for his personnel file when he was a Miami-Dade public defender. He had been asked to explain the arrests he admitted to when applying for admission to the Florida Bar.
“Both of these incidents are not representative of my usual conduct of behavior, and it is my hope that the [Florida Bar] views them as an anomaly,” he said.
Patel filed a $250 million lawsuit this week against The Atlantic after the magazine reported that he “is known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication.”
Karoline Leavitt said Trump still has confidence in the FBI Director on Friday.
Erica Knight, a spokesperson for Patel, called the reporting on his past arrests an “attack” that was “nothing more than an attempt to undermine a process that has already deemed him suitable to serve and a distraction to the record-breaking success of the FBI under Director Patel.”