Senator Dick Durbin is calling FBI Director Kash Patel the most unqualified and dangerous director in the bureau’s history, responding to a cascade of new reporting that details Patel traveling with personalized branded bourbon bottles, threatening to polygraph and prosecute staff over a missing bottle, ordering lie detector tests for more than two dozen members of his team, and retreating from key operational leaders as bad headlines mount.
“Kash Patel is the most unqualified, dangerous FBI Director we’ve ever had,” Durbin posted on social media Thursday. “While Trump is waging an unpopular war with Iran and global threats remain high… Patel’s focus is elsewhere: himself.”
The Bourbon Report That Triggered the Latest Firestorm
The immediate trigger for Durbin’s post was a new investigation published Wednesday by The Atlantic‘s Sarah Fitzpatrick, reporting that Patel regularly travels with a supply of personalized branded bourbon — bottles of Woodford Reserve Kentucky straight bourbon engraved with the words “Kash Patel FBI Director” and bearing a rendering of the FBI shield. Surrounding the shield is text featuring Patel’s title and his preferred stylization of his first name: Ka$h. Some bottles also bear his signature and the number nine — a figure Patel uses in connection with his directorship, though it does not reflect the actual historical sequence of FBI directors, of whom there have been far more than nine.
Eight people, including current and former FBI and Justice Department employees, told The Atlantic that it is routine for Patel to travel with a supply of the personalized bourbon — including on government aircraft. He reportedly transported cases of the whiskey on a DOJ plane during a February trip to Milan, where he was filmed celebrating with the gold medal-winning U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team. A bottle was left behind in an Olympic locker room. In March, Patel brought at least one case of the bourbon to the FBI’s training facility at Quantico during a seminar that featured Ultimate Fighting Championship athletes. When a bottle went missing, Patel reportedly threatened to polygraph and prosecute staff over its disappearance, according to the same Atlantic investigation.
The FBI’s Response — and What It Did Not Deny
The FBI did not dispute that the bourbon gifting occurred. In a statement, the bureau said “the bottles in question are part of a tradition in the FBI that started well over a decade ago, long before Director Patel arrived” and that Patel “has followed all applicable ethical guidelines and pays for any personal gift himself,” according to The Hill. The bureau declined to clarify which ethical rules applied, when the bottles were engraved, or whether any had been reimbursed. When The Atlantic contacted a former senior FBI official to ask whether he had ever seen a director distribute personally branded liquor, the official burst out laughing. Several current and former agents described the bottles as demoralizing, telling the outlet the director appears to operate under a different standard than rank-and-file employees — an institution that has historically maintained strict standards around alcohol use while on duty.
Panic Mode: Polygraphs, Retreats, and a Director Walling Off His Own Staff
The bourbon story landed on top of a week of escalating chaos inside the bureau. On Thursday, NBC News reported that Patel ordered polygraph examinations for more than two dozen former and current members of his security detail, as well as information technology staff — in a bid to identify who had been speaking to reporters. Sources described him as “in panic mode to save his job.” The FBI’s own spokesman declined to comment on whether polygraphs had been ordered, while disputing that Patel had isolated himself from senior staff.
Three people familiar with Patel’s recent actions told NBC News the director had walled himself off from some senior bureau leaders as the media storm intensified — raising concern inside the FBI about his ability to stay abreast of pressing threats and investigations. This is not the first time Patel has deployed broad polygraphing: sources told NBC News that dozens of agents were previously subjected to the same treatment after details about a request Patel made to obtain a gun became public.
The Atlantic’s First Report — and Patel’s $250 Million Response
The bourbon story is a sequel to an even more explosive piece The Atlantic published in April, in which Fitzpatrick relied on more than two dozen sources to allege that FBI personnel had expressed deep concern about Patel’s unexplained absences, erratic behavior, and excessive drinking — allegations that had reportedly alarmed colleagues and potentially created a national security risk. The report’s opening anecdote described Patel being locked out of an internal FBI computer system on April 10 and reportedly becoming convinced he had been fired, calling aides and allies in distress, according to NBC News.
Patel denied the allegations and filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic, calling the article a “sweeping, malicious, and defamatory hit piece.” The Atlantic’s senior vice president of communications responded: “We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel, and we will vigorously defend The Atlantic and our journalists against this meritless lawsuit.” Rather than quieting the story, the lawsuit drew additional scrutiny — in part because it confirmed the basic factual premise that Patel had been locked out of the FBI computer system, describing the incident as a “routine technical problem.”
The FBI Investigated the Reporter
In a move that drew immediate condemnation from press freedom organizations, the FBI launched a criminal leak investigation targeting Fitzpatrick herself in the wake of her first article — an investigation NBC News described as “highly unusual” because it did not stem from a disclosure of classified information and instead focused on leaks to a reporter, according to NBC News. The agents involved are part of an insider threats unit based in Huntsville, Alabama. The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg said in a statement: “If confirmed to be true, an FBI criminal leak investigation targeting our reporter would represent an outrageous attack on the free press and the First Amendment itself. We will defend The Atlantic and its staff vigorously.” The FBI’s assistant director flatly denied any such investigation existed, telling NBC News: “The reporter you mention is not being investigated at all.”
Fitzpatrick’s response was to publish the bourbon story. “After my story appeared, I heard from people in Patel’s orbit and people he has met at public functions, who told me that it is not unusual for him to travel with a supply of personalized branded bourbon,” she wrote in The Atlantic.
A Pattern That Predates the Bourbon
The bourbon controversy is only the latest chapter in a directorship marked by persistent questions about conduct and judgment. In February, Patel went viral for celebrating in a Milan locker room with the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team — footage showed him chugging beer and spraying it in the air while Trump was on speakerphone with the team, conduct that officials said displeased the president, who does not drink. Patel has also faced scrutiny over his use of a government jet for personal travel, including trips involving his girlfriend. In late November 2025, NBC News first reported that Trump and White House advisers had privately discussed removing Patel from his job. Politico reported more recently that things “aren’t looking great” for the director and that he appears likely to be the next high-profile Trump administration official to be pushed out.
Durbin’s Broader Indictment
For Durbin, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee with decades of oversight experience, the bourbon story is a symbol of a deeper failure of leadership. His post explicitly connects Patel’s self-focused conduct to the broader national security context — an ongoing war with Iran, global threats at an elevated level — and argues that the FBI director’s attention is consumed by his own image and survival rather than the mission of the bureau he leads.
The Senate Judiciary Democrats framed it more bluntly: “Bottom-shelf bourbon for a bottom-shelf FBI Director.” Whether the accumulation of controversies — the drinking allegations, the branded merchandise, the polygraphs, the $250 million lawsuit against a reporter, the FBI investigating its own journalist targets — finally prompts the White House to act is the central open question. Trump, a lifelong teetotaler who was reportedly displeased by the Milan footage, has so far kept Patel in the job. But the number of people inside the bureau described as demoralized, alarmed, or quietly reaching out to reporters continues to grow.