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National News
Australian reporter lays into fleeing Rick Scott over unconstitutional ‘witch hunt’
An Australian TMZ reporter confronted Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) outside a Senate hearing Thursday, challenging him to explain how punishing someone for using the Fifth Amendment could be constitutional.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee had just voted 8-5 along party lines to hold former top federal health official Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress for invoking his Fifth Amendment right 111 times at a hearing last week. TMZ reporter Charlie Cotton caught Scott in the hallway immediately after.
"Now maybe I'm just, like, not in the know because I'm Australian," Cotton said to Scott, "but how can you hold someone in contempt and punish someone for using a constitutional right? Isn't it there to use as a right?"
Scott argued Fauci had no grounds to use it.
"He had a pardon, so he — he didn't have that right to do that once he had the pardon," the senator said.
"But didn't he have risk of prosecution because if he'd misspoke, or if he'd lied or something?" Cotton pressed.
"Yeah, if he lied," Scott admitted.
"So he was at risk?" Cotton pointed out.
"He didn't have the right," Scott insisted.
"But not from the hearing," Cotton said, "because the hearing — if he lied, you said that he could be held, you know, accountable for that."
"He could've just told the truth," Scott said. "That's all he had to do."
"Well, he felt like it was a witch hunt," Cotton pushed back, "and you guys would stop at nothing to catch him and send him to prison."
"That's not my intention," Scott said. "I just want to get information."
"It's Rand Paul's intention, though," Cotton pressed.
"No," Scott said. "It's for his actions."
As Cotton was asking his next question, the Republican senator quickly walked away.
"Yep. Okay then," the TMZ reporter said.
Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told Newsweek that invoking the Fifth was "the right legal move" — the pardon covered past conduct, but pleading the Fifth protected Fauci from perjury charges based on anything he said at the hearing.
As CEO of Columbia/HCA, Scott himself invoked the Fifth Amendment 75 times in a 2000 civil deposition while the company faced a federal investigation that led to a $1.7 billion settlement — at the time the largest Medicare fraud case in American history, Florida Phoenix reported.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) planned to hand-deliver the contempt referral to the Justice Department Thursday, bypassing a full Senate floor vote, CBS News reported.
National News
Kash Patel faces deadline to swat down ‘inherently plausible’ drinking allegations
FBI Director Kash Patel has five days to respond to a motion arguing his own public record proves The Atlantic's drinking allegations are 'inherently plausible.'
Judge Emmet G. Sullivan set the Aug. 17 deadline after granting a joint extension request, according to the court docket. The Atlantic filed its motion to dismiss on July 27.
The Atlantic's April story, "The FBI Director is MIA," reported that Patel drank to excess, missed work, and posed a national-security risk. Patel called it false and sued for $250 million.
"Print it, all false, I'll see you in court—bring your checkbook," Patel told the magazine through his spokesman before it published.
The Atlantic's lawyers argue Patel cannot meet the legal standard required of public officials in defamation cases. That standard — called actual malice — requires proof that a publisher knew a story was false or strongly suspected it was, according to the filing.
"The Complaint does not come close to satisfying this demanding constitutional standard," the filing said. "It does not allege a single fact showing that any statement in the Article is false, much less that Defendants had 'serious doubts' or 'actual knowledge of falsity' for any of these statements."
The filing goes further, arguing Patel's own public behavior undercuts his suit, according to the motion.
"The Article itself shows that the Allegedly Defamatory Statements are not implausible," the filing said, "but rather inherently plausible."
The filing said reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick spoke to more than two dozen sources, according to the motion. They included current and former FBI officials, members of Congress, and hospitality workers.
Six sources confirmed that briefings had to be rescheduled because of Patel's alcohol-fueled nights, the motion said.
Nine sources confirmed he panicked when a computer malfunction led him to believe he had been fired, according to the filing.
The story described officials telling Fitzpatrick that Patel's security detail had difficulty waking him on multiple occasions, and that a request was made for specialized breaching equipment — tools normally used by SWAT teams — because he was unreachable behind locked doors, according to the filing.
The filing noted that Patel's drinking was already a matter of public record before the story ran.
In February, Patel was filmed chugging beer in the U.S. men's Olympic hockey team's locker room in Milan. FBI headquarters was simultaneously managing a cartel violence outbreak in Mexico, CNN reported.
Days after The Atlantic published, a 2005 letter from Patel's Florida Bar application — obtained by The Intercept — disclosed he had been arrested twice on alcohol-related charges, once for public intoxication in 2001 and once for public urination after leaving a bar in 2005.
The story's fallout reached Capitol Hill the following month, according to Senate records.
At a May budget hearing, Patel agreed to take an alcohol use disorders test after Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) demanded it. Patel called the allegations "a total farce."
The Atlantic suit is the latest in a long line, according to the motion.
A federal judge in Texas dismissed Patel's defamation suit against MS NOW analyst Frank Figliuzzi the day after Patel filed against The Atlantic. The judge called Figliuzzi's comment about Patel's nightclub visibility "rhetorical hyperbole."
None of Patel's five defamation suits has succeeded, according to the filing.
Patel's response is due Aug. 17. The Atlantic's reply is due Aug. 31.
