Kash Patel's dismissal grows overdue

FBI Director Kash Patel managed to embarrass himself and his agency on a world stage Sunday when he inserted himself into the American men's hockey team's rowdy locker room celebration of its gold-medal victory at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.

Chugging and spraying beer from a bottle, jumping up and down and shouting, and striding around with one of the gold medals slung around his neck is traditional for athletes who just earned top honors on the ice using their skills and bodies and even sacrificing a few teeth.

But Patel has earned himself a discharge for conduct unbecoming. This wasn't his first cringeworthy exhibition. In October, he came under fire for flying on an FBI jet to Pennsylvania to watch his friend, country singer Alexis Wilkins, perform. On he went to Nashville and then to a Texas ranch owned by a major Republican donor.

For a top law enforcer, he displays a questionable appetite for perks. 

Patel justified the latest trip by saying it was to meet with Italian law enforcement officials and Americans helping to provide security at the Olympics and that he was "humbled" by the team's invitation to celebrate.

He clearly wasn't humbled enough. What's worse, traveling on the public dime for schmoozing and socializing are far from the only stains on what's become Patel's viciously partisan stewardship of the FBI.

Patel is unqualified to lead the nation's top law enforcement agency. He worked in subsidiary national intelligence positions during Trump's first term but really got the former president's attention by railing against the "deep state." At the FBI he has pursued flailing investigations aimed at punishing Trump critics from predecessor James Comey to John Bolton, the former national security adviser, both of whom were in the first administration.

Perhaps Patel is still there because Trump is averse to setting an example or, to put it lightly, a tone of self-discipline. In any case, operational chaos under Patel has been credibly reported for months from within the FBI.

The director shook confidence in his judgment after the Sept. 10 assassination of right wing activist Charlie Kirk. That evening Patel rushed to post on X that "the subject" in Kirk's killing was "in custody." An hour and a half later, he posted that "the subject in custody has been released after an interrogation by law enforcement." Even a rookie agent would be disciplined for such blunder. Patel reportedly dined that evening at Rao's in Manhattan.

This past weekend, new and serious incidents were unfolding while he socialized, including an armed intruder shot and killed at Mar-a-Lago, and unrest in Mexico, after the nation's military killed a top drug kingpin.

If anyone was trying to get fired from a high profile job, they couldn't have given a boss more motive than Patel has given Trump. Will the president finally act on the director's antics? That's hard to predict in a White House that undervalues professional conduct.