The Senate budget hearing took a sharp and personal turn Tuesday when FBI Director Kash Patel launched a blistering counter-attack against Senator Chris Van Hollen, accusing the Maryland Democrat of “slinging margaritas” in El Salvador.
The verbal fireworks began when Van Hollen questioned Patel regarding recent allegations of professional misconduct.
Patel quickly shifted the focus toward Van Hollen’s own travel history, specifically a trip the Senator took last year to visit Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Garcia was being held in a Salvadoran jail at the time following an arrest in Maryland.
“The only person that ran up $7,000 bar tab in Washington, DC, at the Lobby Bar was you,” Patel said. “So the only person in this room who has been drinking on the taxpayer dime was you.”
The remark appeared to be a calculated effort to deflect from a recent article in The Atlantic that had characterized Patel as unreachable to his staff and prone to excessive drinking—claims Patel dismissed as “unequivocally, categorically false.”
READ: FBI Probes ‘The Atlantic’ Reporter After Explosive Patel Exposé
“I will not be tarnished by baseless allegations,” Patel stated, before turning the tables on his interrogator with the El Salvador reference.
While the session was officially convened to discuss the FBI’s annual budget and law enforcement resources, the “slinging margaritas” accusation became the focal point of the afternoon for the pair.
The exchange highlighted the deep-seated friction between the FBI’s leadership and the Democratic lawmakers overseeing the agency’s conduct.
The Senator did not immediately pivot the conversation back to the budget, as the hearing descended into a public display of personal animosity between the nation’s top law enforcement official and a member of the Senate committee.
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