House

Ocasio-Cortez: Patel ‘a person who’s easily manipulated’

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by Ryan Mancini - 04/21/26 10:51 AM ET

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by Ryan Mancini - 04/21/26 10:51 AM ET

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Monday accused FBI Director Kash Patel of being “a person who’s easily manipulated” following reporting in The Atlantic that described episodes of excessive drinking and alleged that Patel’s colleagues are alarmed over his behavior.

Ocasio-Cortez told MeidasTouch reporter Pablo Manríquez that Patel’s alleged intemperance is “absolutely” a national security threat.

“I think we saw, you know, after the men’s Olympic hockey championships, the fact that this is a guy who is hurling bottles up in the air — it’s not just embarrassing, it’s a person who’s easily manipulated,” she said.

“If he’s conducting himself in this compromised way in public — especially in a position in the FBI — when you are acting crazy, you are creating opportunities for blackmail and kompromat on any maligned actor,” the New York Democrat continued.

She reiterated that Patel’s alleged behavior is “absolutely” a national security threat before adding that “he should be out of that seat.”

Patel sued The Atlantic for $250 million after the magazine published “The FBI Director is MIA” on Friday. The outlet reported that Patel has consumed alcohol “to the point of obvious intoxication” in front of White House officials and other Trump administration staff. The story also claims that Patel had been “an irregular presence” at the agency’s headquarters, “often away or unreachable.”

Members of the FBI director’s security detail had also “had difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated,” The Atlantic reported. They told reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick, on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information and private conversations, that Patel’s “personal behavior is a national-security vulnerability.”

Fitzpatrick also wrote that Patel “panicked” after a failed attempt to log in to an internal computer system earlier this month. He was “convinced that he had been locked out” and was “frantically calling aides and allies to announce that he had been fired by the White House,” nine people familiar with the matter told Fitzpatrick. Two of these people called the incident a “freak-out.”

Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) defended Patel, telling Manríquez that he did not “know anything about his drinking.”

“I think he’s executing his job brilliantly up to this point, so I don’t see why that would even be a controversial thing,” he told the reporter. “As long as it doesn’t affect his job in a negative way, I’m cool.”

Patel’s defamation lawsuit accused The Atlantic’s sources as “animated by hostility” and slammed The Atlantic for “never” interviewing Patel “or gave him any meaningful opportunity to address the charges in his own words. This is not negligence. It demonstrates a deliberate and malicious smear.”

He took a swipe at The Atlantic on the social platform X on Friday night ahead of filing the suit, telling the outlet he will see “you and your entire entourage of false reporting in court… But do keep at it with the fake news, actual malice standard is now what some would call a legal lay up.”

The Atlantic stated that it stands by Fitzpatrick’s reporting, calling the lawsuit “meritless.”

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