Bush aide raises alarm over extent of Trump official's addiction problem

Kash Patel testifies before a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., January 30, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

President Donald Trump’s FBI director, Kash Patel, reportedly has a serious drinking problem — and a top aide to the last Republican president argued this is a very big deal.

“He's angry — so angry and affronted,” former President George W. Bush adviser Steve Schmidt said on his Substack on Wednesday. Schmidt was describing Patel after breaking down both Trump’s longstanding aversion to people with drinking problems (the president’s older brother, with whom he was close, died at a young age from alcoholism) and the FBI director’s heated appearance before Congress. “He recognizes that it's all slipping away. What the performance at the hearing validated was this, from ‘The Atlantic’ story that kicked it all off [to] when he was locked out of his computer and he melted down and he panicked. You got a sense yesterday of what a Kash Patel meltdown looks like.”

Schmidt then added that Patel’s personal crisis is not limited to his own career. Because he is widely viewed as an incompetent FBI director, and 2,800 FBI agents left last year since he took over (four times the normal attrition rate), Schmidt argued that Patel’s potential drinking problem is a threat to America’s ability to enforce its laws on the federal level.

“This was the premier law enforcement agency,” Schmidt said. “The respect for it is crumbling faster than the morale inside of it is, which is saying something. Kash Patel is unfit. He is untrustworthy. Kash Patel is a buffoon. And yesterday, he was the latest buffoon unmasked at a congressional hearing.”

Patel, who filed a lawsuit against “The Atlantic” for covering his alleged drinking problem, is also reportedly in “panic mode” because he is afraid Trump will fire him. MS NOW reported last week that Patel has polygraphed more than two dozen former and current members of his security detail to find out who has leaked disparaging information about him. He has also reportedly “walled himself off” from the FBI”s senior leaders because of the media reports about him often being drunk on the job.

Despite these efforts, Schmidt predicted on Wednesday that Patel will soon go the way of other ex-Trump officials who displeased the president, from former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem (fired for spending roughly $220 million on a self-promotional ad campaign) to former Attorney General Pam Bondi (fired for failing to successfully prosecute Trump’s political enemies).

“Pam Bondi — remember her?” Schmidt said. “Where is she, by the way? Kristi Noem — her? This was the next version of that. And soon, I suspect, he will be gone. Because Donald Trump tolerates a lot of things, but the one thing he's never tolerated around him is a drunk. A drunk like Kash Patel.”

In addition to being accused of drunkenness on the job, Patel has been accused of demanding FBI agents express support for Trump and retaliating against those who did not vote for him; accused of using a government jet to travel for a “date night” with his girlfriend, country music performer Alexis Wilkins, as well as ordering SWAT agents to protect her; and accused of neglecting basic and important functions of his duties as FBI director.

Patel has also fired agents who investigated Trump for his role in the January 6th insurrection and was recorded using a government jet to fly to the Milan Winter Olympics so he could party with the US hockey team after its gold medal victory. He was seen on video after their win chugging beer and spraying alcohol in the air, which reportedly infuriated Trump.

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