FBI Director Kash Patel denies drinking allegations in heated Senate exchange

WASHINGTON (AP) — FBI Director Kash Patel angrily lashed out at a Democratic lawmaker at a budget hearing Tuesday, calling allegations that he drinks excessively on the job and has been unreachable to his staff at times “unequivocally, categorically false.”

“I will not be tarnished by baseless allegations and fraudulent statements to the media,” Patel told Sen. Chris Van Hollen during a testy exchange that began when the Maryland Democrat confronted him about a recent article in The Atlantic magazine that painted an unflattering portrait of his leadership of the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency.

Patel has sued over the story. The Atlantic has said it stands by its reporting and would vigorously defend against the “meritless lawsuit.”

Patel shouted over Van Hollen and sought to turn the tables by accusing him of “slinging margaritas on the taxpayer dime” in El Salvador, a reference to a visit the Democrat paid last year to Kilmar Abrego Garcia while he was jailed there following his mistaken deportation to the country. “The only person who has been drinking during the day on the taxpayer dime was you.”

“Director Patel, come on,” Van Hollen said. “These are serious allegations that were made against you.” He at one point asked Patel if he was willing to take a test meant to measure whether an individual has a drinking problem, prompting Patel to shoot back, “I’ll take any test you’re willing to take.”

The senator also called Patel's claims that he had run up an expensive bar tab in El Salvador “provably false." After last year's meeting, Van Hollen publicly accused El Salvador’s government of having misrepresented the nature of his encounter with Abrego Garcia, saying officials there had staged the meeting with drinks appearing to be alcohol and angled to set the meeting by a hotel pool.

The testy exchange occurred at an annual Senate committee budget hearing featuring Patel and other senior law enforcement leaders. The director used the forum to tout what he described as major crime-fighting achievements since he took the position and received a friendly reception from Republican senators who praised his leadership.

Democrats, by contrast, pressed Patel on headline-generating travel that has blended personal leisure with his duties — including a trip to the Winter Olympics in Italy, where he partied with the U.S. men's hockey team after their gold medal win — as well as the mass terminations under his watch of agents who worked on investigations into President Donald Trump.

“You attended the Olympics in Milan,” said Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat. “How much did your trip cost and to what extent did that help you carry out your mission as director of the FBI?”

Patel responded that the FBI was responsible for security at the Olympics and asserted that his trip to Italy helped facilitate the transfer into U.S. custody of a Chinese cyber criminal who'd been detained by Italian authorities.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., speaks during the Senate Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies hearing on Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Request for the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration; the United States Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives the on Capitol Hill, Tuesday May 12, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

FBI director Kash Patel testifies before the Senate Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies hearing on Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Request for the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration; the United States Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, May 12, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

FBI director Kash Patel testifies before the Senate Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies hearing on Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Request for the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration; the United States Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, May 12, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump won’t have to pay an $83 million defamation award to a longtime advice columnist until the U.S. Supreme Court gets a chance to review the case or reject an appeal, according to a court entry Tuesday.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to a request by one of Trump's lawyers that it let the president delay the payment to E. Jean Carroll, though it required that Trump post a $7.4 million bond to cover any additional interest costs, a request Carroll's attorney had made.

The appeals court late last month refused Trump’s request for a rare meeting of the full 2nd Circuit to hear an appeal of a three-judge panel’s affirmance of the January 2024 verdict.

Afterward, Trump attorney Justin D. Smith asked the 2nd Circuit to stay the effect of its decision upholding the award so that Trump would not be forced to pay the judgment before the high court has a chance to consider an appeal.

Smith said last week there was a “fair prospect” that the Supreme Court will find in favor of Trump, who has called Carroll’s claims first made publicly in 2019 that she was sexually attacked by Trump in a Manhattan luxury department store dressing room in spring 1996 a “made up scam.”

The $83 million award to Carroll, 82, came from a jury that briefly heard Trump testify and observed his animated behavior for several days.

In upholding the verdict, a 2nd Circuit panel wrote last September that Trump continued his attacks against Carroll for at least five years, making them “more extreme and frequent as the trial approached.”

“He also continued these same attacks during the trial itself,” the appeals court said. “In one such statement, issued two days into the trial, Trump proclaimed that he would continue to defame Carroll ‘a thousand times.’ ”

The jury had been instructed to accept the findings of a jury that in May 2023 awarded Carroll $5 million after concluding Trump sexually abused her in the department store and then defamed her after she published her account of it in a 2019 memoir.

Trump is challenging the $83 million award on several grounds, asserting “absolute immunity” for comments he made while president as he disavowed knowing Carroll and attacked her motivations, saying they were politically driven or arose from a desire to promote her memoir.

FILE - E. Jean Carroll exits the New York Federal Court after former President Donald Trump appeared in court, Sept. 6, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez, File)