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FBI Director Kash Patel, closing seen by grand of the public partying with the U.S. males’s Olympic hockey crew after it won the gold in February, has struggled badly for grand of his tenure. Nonetheless The Atlantic solid Patel’s troubles in a original gentle with a brutal original assert on Friday, alleging that FBI personnel own expressed considerations regarding the director’s unexplained absences and excessive drinking, which own petrified colleagues and his security element.

It reached the level that some throughout the bureau own nervous that the ancient podcast persona’s non-public habits “has change into a threat to public security.”

The identical assert, which has no longer been independently verified by MS NOW, added that Patel’s erratic habits at the FBI would possibly per chance cost him his job and that he’s “deeply concerned that his job is in jeopardy.”

Patel and his attorney wasted minute time in condemning the reporting as “faux” and vowing to file a lawsuit against the e-newsletter and the award-winning reporter who wrote the epic, Sarah Fitzpatrick.

On Monday morning, he did exactly that, filing a $250 million defamation lawsuit.

In response to the lawsuit, The Atlantic acknowledged in a allege, “We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel and can vigorously shield The Atlantic and our journalists in distinction meritless lawsuit.”

Time will lisp what becomes of Patel’s litigation strategy, however the day earlier than filing his lawsuit, the beleaguered FBI director looked on Fox Records and did precisely what many in Donald Trump’s orbit own done earlier than: scrambled to sing a bunch of things to meet an viewers of one.

When host Maria Bartiromo asked, for instance, for his response to allegations that he has a drinking enviornment, Patel didn’t solution at present, though his response heralded “President Trump’s shining management.”

As phase of the same interview, the FBI director went on to speak that the bureau has “files” that bolsters Trump’s conspiracy theories regarding the 2020 presidential election, adding, “We are going to be making arrests. And it’s coming, and I promise you, it’s coming soon.”

In level of truth, there is no longer any evidence to enhance the president’s discredited conspiracy theories — he lost in 2020, elegant and sq. — as Patel seemingly knows. Nonetheless if The Atlantic’s reporting is factual, and the director is “deeply concerned that his job is in jeopardy,” he additionally seemingly knows that there’s no greater manner to bolster his job security than going on Fox Records and vowing to arrest the president’s perceived political enemies whereas defending Trump’s strange claims about his 2020 defeat.

See this dwelling.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s additionally the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”