Patel's Position Looks Shakier: $250M Lawsuit Filed, Pearl Harbor Snorkel Trip Revealed, and Reports of an April 'Freak-Out' Emerge

The Login Incident Nobody Reported Until Now

On April 10, FBI Director Kash Patel couldn't log into an internal computer system at the end of the workday. His response, according to The Atlantic — which spoke to nine people familiar with what happened — was to start frantically calling aides and allies, convinced the White House had fired him.

Two of those nine sources described his reaction as a "freak-out." The White House reportedly fielded calls from the FBI and members of Congress asking who was now in charge of one of America's premier law enforcement agencies.

The answer: still Patel. It was a technical error. Quickly resolved. "It was all ultimately bullshit," one FBI official told The Atlantic.

The director of an agency with 38,000 employees — including trained investigators who verify facts under oath — spiraled over an IT glitch. That matters in any organization, especially one responsible for federal law enforcement.

Multiple Sources Say Patel Knows His Job Is at Risk

The Atlantic reports that Patel "has good reasons" to worry about job security. Senior Trump administration officials are already discussing potential replacements, according to one administration official and two people close to the White House cited by The Atlantic.

"We're all just waiting for the word" that Patel is officially out, one current FBI official told The Atlantic this week. A former official told The Atlantic's Jonathan Lemire that Patel was "rightly paranoid."

The White House pushed back. Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that under Trump and Patel, "crime across the country has plummeted to the lowest level in more than 100 years." Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche added: "Patel has accomplished more in 14 months than the previous administration did in four years."

Patel's own statement, attributed to him by the FBI: "Print it, all false, I'll see you in court — bring your checkbook."

That's a threat, not a denial.

$250 Million Lawsuit Against The Atlantic

Patel filed suit against The Atlantic seeking $250 million in damages over its earlier story — published last month — reporting that he engaged in excessive drinking and frequent absences.

That original story cited over two dozen unnamed current and former FBI officials, members of Congress, law enforcement, and former advisers, according to Forbes. It alleged his behavior "often alarmed officials at the FBI and the Department of Justice" and presented national security risks.

The Justice Department's own ethics handbook — cited by The Atlantic — prohibits employees from "habitually using alcohol or other intoxicants to excess."

Patel called it fake news and lawyered up.

The Bourbon Bottles

The Atlantic published a second story this week reporting that Patel regularly travels with a stash of personally branded bourbon from Kentucky distillery Woodford Reserve. The bottles reportedly bear an engraving reading "Ka$h" — with a dollar sign — plus an FBI shield, an eagle, and the number nine, a reference to his status as the ninth FBI director.

The Atlantic said it purchased one of the bottles through an online auction.

The FBI's assistant director Ben Williamson pushed back to Forbes, calling the premise "false and misleading" and saying the bottle tradition predates Patel's tenure by several years. Williamson added that "Patel has followed all applicable ethical guidelines and pays for any personal gift himself."

The Atlantic's sources dispute that the liquor-gift tradition existed before Patel. One of these accounts is inaccurate.

Pearl Harbor Snorkeling Trip — Off the Public Schedule

Meanwhile, the Associated Press obtained government emails revealing that during an official visit to Hawaii last August, Patel took a VIP snorkeling tour of Pearl Harbor — specifically swimming near the wreckage of the USS Arizona, where approximately 1,177 U.S. sailors and Marines died during Japan's 1941 attack.

The U.S. Navy confirmed the tour happened.

The trip was NOT on Patel's public schedule at the time, according to ABC News.

Navy spokesperson Capt. Jodie Cornell said in a statement that all participants were briefed on safety and the site's historic significance, and that swimmers were instructed not to touch the Arizona. Cornell also called it "standard practice" for the Navy to host distinguished visitors this way.

FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson framed it on X as a "historical tour to honor our heroes who died on the USS Arizona — not a party," and said the visit was part of Patel's national security engagements with counterparts in New Zealand, Australia, and the Honolulu Field Office.

A VIP tour of a historic site during an official Indo-Pacific trip is defensible. But keeping it off the public schedule creates a transparency gap that invites scrutiny — and Patel is already facing multiple questions that omitting details does not help answer.

The Coverage Problem

Left-leaning outlets are covering each new Patel story as another piece of evidence he is unfit for the job. That framing overlooks that several of these "stories" rely almost entirely on unnamed sources with institutional incentives to undermine a director who came in promising to reform a bureau many of them have built careers in.

Conservative media is largely dismissing the reporting as a hit job, without seriously examining the substance. The April login freak-out — if accurate — raises legitimate leadership questions regardless of political alignment.

A more pressing question: Why is the FBI's own communications apparatus — Ben Williamson — spending this week defending bourbon bottles and snorkeling trips instead than discussing case clearance rates?

What This Means

The FBI is the country's primary federal law enforcement agency. It handles terrorism, organized crime, and national security threats. It employs 38,000 people.

Whether Patel stays or goes, the signal being sent from inside that agency right now is dysfunction. Officials leaking to magazines. The director filing nine-figure defamation suits mid-tenure. A login error triggering a leadership crisis.

The agency needs a director with full attention to the job. Right now, it's unclear if that's what it has.