KASH PATEL GOT ARRESTED FOR PUBLIC URINATION AFTER A NIGHT OF DRINKING
The FBI director was arrested twice in his youth for alcohol-related incidents that he said were “not representative of my usual conduct.”
FBI Director Kash Patel during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 18, 2026. Photo: Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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.