The FBI Director Is MIA: Patel's Drinking, Absences, and the "Freak-Out" Over a Login Error

On April 18, 2026, The Atlantic published "The FBI Director Is MIA" — a devastating account based on more than two dozen sources including current and former FBI officials, members of Congress, and hospitality-industry workers. The portrait it paints of FBI Director Kash Patel:

The drinking

• Patel regularly gets drunk at Ned's, a private club in D.C., surrounded by White House and Trump administration staff
• He frequently spends weekends at The Poodle Room in Las Vegas, also drinking
• His security detail has, on multiple occasions, had difficulty waking Patel because he appeared intoxicated
• In the early months of his tenure, meetings and briefings had to be rescheduled for later in the day because of his alcohol-fueled nights
• A SWAT team once asked for "breaching" gear because he was uncontactable behind a locked door

The absence

• Officials described Patel as an "irregular presence" at FBI headquarters
• He is "often away or unreachable"
• He oversees 38,000 employees — many of whom are trained to investigate and verify information presented under oath — and is regularly unavailable to them

The freak-out

On Friday, April 10, as Patel was leaving work for the weekend, he struggled to log into an internal computer system. He became convinced he had been locked out — and panicked:

• Frantically called aides and allies to announce he had been fired by the White House
• Two people described his behavior as a "freak-out"
• News ricocheted through the FBI; in some corners of the building, agents expressed relief
• The White House fielded calls from the bureau and from members of Congress asking who was now in charge of the FBI

He had not been fired. It was a technical error. It was quickly resolved.

"It was all ultimately bullshit." — an FBI official

The sources also described Patel as "erratic, suspicious of others, and prone to jumping to conclusions before he has necessary evidence" — which is a remarkable description of the person running the nation's premier law enforcement and intelligence agency, written by reporters and confirmed by the people who work for him.

The response

Patel denied everything and threatened to sue The Atlantic. His social media statement: "See you and your entire entourage of false reporting in court… actual malice standard is now what some would call a legal lay up."

The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg responded: "We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel."

Patel's legal team inadvertently revealed that The Atlantic had received even more allegations than it published — suggesting the piece was, if anything, restrained.

Context

This is the same FBI Director whose personal email, photos, and documents were leaked by Iran-linked hackers. The same one who has been accused of weaponizing DOJ investigations against political opponents. The same one who was confirmed despite warnings from virtually every living former FBI director. The 38,000 agents he oversees are fighting terrorism, cyberattacks, and organized crime while their director is getting drunk at private clubs, missing briefings because of hangovers, calling people to say he's been fired when his computer glitches, and triggering SWAT callouts because he can't be reached behind a locked door.

The head of the FBI is MIA. The Atlantic didn't editorialize that — they titled the piece that way because 26 sources told them it was true.