Patel posts Van Hollen's bar receipt for imbibing with "gang-banging rapist"

FBI Director Kash Patel cranked up the heat on Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen (D) on Tuesday by blasting out the leftist's eye-watering bar tab from a swanky D.C. spot on social media. 

Patel and Van Hollen went at it during a hearing earlier that day over some Atlantic hit piece claiming the FBI boss has a drinking problem. After the fireworks, Patel dropped a campaign filing from December 12, 2025, showing Van Hollen's operation blew $7,128 at the Lobby Bar in D.C.

“The only person that ran up a $7,000 bar tab in Washington, D.C., at the Lobby Bar was you. The only individual in this room that has been drinking on the taxpayer dime during the day is you,” Patel said during the hearing.

A spokesman for Van Hollen told NBC that “this was a catering charge at a local restaurant where the Senator hosted an after-hours holiday reception as a thank you to the 50+ members of our team, paid for by campaign funds, not taxpayer dollars.”

During Tuesday’s hearing, Van Hollen unloaded on Patel over the drinking-on-the-job smears.“Director Patel, these reports about your conduct, including reports of your being so drunk and hungover that your staff had to force entry into your home, are extremely alarming,” Van Hollen said.

“So, there have been no occasions when your security detail had difficulty waking or locating you?” Van Hollen asked Patel.

“Nope, it’s a total farce. I don’t even know where you get this stuff, but it doesn’t make it credible, because you say so,” Patel fired back.

Patel has already slapped The Atlantic with a defamation lawsuit over the anonymous-source hit job. When Van Hollen kept swinging, Patel clapped back with a photo from El Salvador President Nayib Bukele showing the Democrat senator cozying up to accused MS-13 member Kilmar Abrego Garcia at a table that sure looked like it featured margaritas.

Bukele captioned the photo by saying that Abrego Garcia was “sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador.”

“Unlike your baseless reports, the only person that was slinging margaritas in El Salvador on the taxpayer dollar with a convicted gang-banging rapist was you,” Patel said.

Both Patel and Van Hollen dared each other to take sobriety tests right there in the hearing. Classic.

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Trump has hundreds of Venezuelans deported against court orders

The absurdity of the modern world continues unabated. A plane carrying over 200 Venezuelans, unceremoniously deported by the United States, has touched down in El Salvador. This, we are told, is in apparent defiance of a US judge's order prohibiting the Trump administration from carrying out such an act. 

One can almost hear the collective tut-tutting of the liberal establishment from here.

El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, took to social media to announce the arrival of 238 members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and 23 members of the Mexican gang MS-13 on Sunday morning. Their appearance in this Central American nation came mere hours after a federal judge blocked President Trump from invoking a wartime law dating back to 1798 to justify the deportations. Bukele, with a wry smirk no doubt, later posted: "Oopsie... Too late."

The detainees, Bukele informs us, were promptly whisked away to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center "for a period of one year" - a stint that is, apparently, "renewable." One wonders if they will ever see the light of day again. "The United States will pay a very low fee for them, but a high one for us," he added, a statement dripping with implication.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed the alleged gang members' arrival and thanked Bukele, dubbing him "the strongest security leader in our region." High praise indeed. Yet hours before, on Saturday evening, US District Judge James Boasberg had ordered a halt to deportations covered by Trump's proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 - a law allowing the government to detain and deport those threatening the nation's safety without due process. After hearing planes with deportees were taking off, Judge Boasberg demanded they be turned back, according to the Washington Post.

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A video accompanying one of Bukele's posts shows lines of shackled individuals, hands and feet bound, escorted by armed officials from the plane. Some are bundled into the back of armored vehicles. In January, Trump signed an executive order declaring Tren de Aragua and MS-13 foreign terrorist organisations. And so the great game of nations continues, with the lives of the wretched caught in the middle.

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