FBI Director Kash Patel, standing at a lectern beside his boss Tuesday, publicly addressed recent allegations that he has drank to excess, interfering with his duties.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never been intoxicated on the job,\u201d Patel told a room full of reporters Tuesday, after highlighting what he considers to be a string of law enforcement successes since the start of his tenure.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis FBI director has been on the job twice as many days as every director before me,\u201d Patel said.<\/p>\n
Standing beside him, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche \u2014 whom Patel now reports to \u2014 also ridiculed recent reporting in The Atlantic, which said people had previously raised concerns with senior leaders about the FBI director.<\/p>\n
Blanche told reporters he didn\u2019t read the story, but that it included \u201cblatantly false\u201d information.<\/p>\n
Patel has previously denied the allegations made in The Atlantic\u2019s story and filed a\u00a0$250 million defamation lawsuit\u00a0against the magazine.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, though, he and Blanche were probed on the claims by a room full of reporters at an unrelated press conference.<\/p>\n
The story, published last week, alleged Patel \u201calarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences.\u201d<\/p>\n
Patel said Tuesday he never listens \u201cto the fake news mafia.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy concerns are completely around the anonymous reporting that comes forth constantly,\u201d Blanche said about the article, adding that it was \u201cbased on anonymous sources.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Atlantic has defended the work of reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick, who wrote the story.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe stand by our reporting on Kash Patel, and we will vigorously defend The Atlantic and our journalists against this meritless lawsuit,\u201d a spokesperson said Monday when the lawsuit was filed.<\/p>\n
Fitzpatrick responded to the legal threats in an interview with MS NOW on Friday night, saying she stood \u201cby every word of this reporting. We have excellent attorneys.\u201d<\/p>\n
The press conference Tuesday was held to tout the indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center over\u00a0its alleged use of paid informants in extremist groups.<\/p>\n
This story has been updated with additional details.<\/em><\/p>\n For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at\u00a0CNN.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" FBI Director Kash Patel, standing at a lectern beside his boss Tuesday, publicly addressed recent allegations that he<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":3063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-us"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3062"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3064,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3062\/revisions\/3064"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}