Kash Patel Got Arrested for Public Urination After a Night of Drinking

The Intercept·Apr 24

Kash Patel Got Arrested for Public Urination After a Night of Drinking

FBI Director Kash Patel was twice arrested in incidents involving alcohol, once for public intoxication and once for public urination after leaving a bar, he admitted in a 2005 letter about disclosures on his Florida Bar application. The letter obtained by The Intercept was part of Patel’s personnel file at the Miami-Dade Public Defender’s Office, where he once worked. The document, written “per instructions of my employer,” describes incidents of alcohol-related indiscretions not uncommon for those in their teens and twenties. Two decades later, as Patel pushes back against allegations that drinking is impairing his leadership of the nation’s top law enforcement agency, these arrests show how Patel’s alcohol use has been subjected to scrutiny before in his professional life. “In a gross deviation from appropriate conduct, we attempted to relieve our bladders while walking home.” One incident recounted by Patel occurred in 2005, about four months before he wrote the letter. At the time, he was a law student at Pace University in New York celebrating with friends. “We went to a few of the local bars and consumed some alcoholic drinks,” he wrote. When they walked home, they made a bad decision. “In a gross deviation from appropriate