By Holmes Lybrand, CNN

(CNN) — FBI Director Kash Patel sparred with a lawmaker briefly during a Tuesday afternoon hearing at the Senate Appropriations Committee when asked about media reports alleging he drinks to excess.

In his opening statement, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, raised concerns about Patel’s leadership, noting reports of his personal behavior, the recent firing of counterintelligence agents tasked with monitoring threats from Iran, and subpoenas recently sent to reporters.

“Director Patel, I don’t care one bit about your private life,” Van Hollen said. “I don’t give a damn what you do on your own time and your own dime, unless and until it interferes with your public responsibilities.

The Atlantic recently published a story alleging Patel has “alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences.”

“You cannot perform those public duties if you’re incapacitated,” Van Hollen said to Patel Tuesday, noting “reports of you being so drunk and so hungover that your staff had to force entry into your home.”

Patel has since sued the Atlantic, calling the reporting false and saying he has never been drunk at work.

Patel shot back at Van Hollen later during the hearing, accusing the senator of “slinging margaritas” with a known felon, referring to a meeting Van Hollen had with Kilmar Abrego Garcia when he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador. Van Hollen has denied that anyone drank margaritas.

“Director Patel, come on. These are serious allegations that were made against you,” Van Hollen said.

After a brief match where the two continued to speak over each other, the senator asked if Patel would take a test — instituted in the military — to measure whether someone has a drinking problem.

“I’ll take any test you’re willing to,” Patel said.

The director added: “Let’s go. Side by side.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

The post FBI Director Patel spars with lawmaker who raises reports of his behavior during Hill testimony appeared first on News Channel 3-12.

The post Lompoc Mayor Asks State to Reconsider Long-Standing Surf Beach Fishing Ban appeared first on edhat.

By Daniel Dale, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump was at it again.

On Monday night, Trump embarked on one of his periodic late-night social media posting sprees. As usual, his dozens of posts and reposts were littered with debunked conspiracy theories and other wildly inaccurate claims – many of them about past presidential elections and his Democratic foes, notably including former President Barack Obama.

Trump’s posting continued on Tuesday morning. So did his wrongness.

Here’s a brief fact-check breakdown of just some of the content to which readers of his Truth Social feed were treated between about 10pm on Monday and about 8am on Tuesday.

An imaginary quote attributed to a Republican senator

The president shared a pro-Trump commentator’s social media post that featured a supposed attack on Obama from Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana. But the “Kennedy” quote is completely imaginary.

In the fake quote, “Kennedy” demanded that Obama return $120 million that the former president supposedly earned (but actually didn’t) in connection with his Obamacare health care law. The fact-check website Lead Stories reported in February that the fake quote “originated with a satire web publisher who baits conservatives into re-posting fake stories” and that the confusingly worded accusation about Obama that the post put in Kennedy’s mouth – “He allocated money under his own laws using taxpayer-generated prestige” – has also been baselessly attributed to various other public figures, from FBI Director Kash Patel to singers Vince Gill and Madonna.

Kennedy told the publication NOTUS after Trump’s post: “Somebody told me there was something floating around on the internet about me accusing President Obama of stealing $120 million or something. I didn’t say that. I don’t know the basis of it.”

Multiple false conspiracy theories about Obama

False conspiracy theories about Obama have long been a staple of Trump’s reposts on social media. This posting spree featured a bunch more.

Trump shared a post – from an account using the name and image of the late John F. Kennedy Jr. – that said, “Barack Hussein Obama wiretapping Trump Tower during the 2016 election was a million times worse than anything Nixon did during Watergate. It is time to arrest the Renegade.” (“Renegade” is Obama’s Secret Service codename.)

But there is no evidence anybody wiretapped Trump Tower during the 2016 election, let alone that Obama himself did so. In 2017, during the first Trump presidency, the Justice Department said in a court filing that it had no records to support Trump’s claim earlier that year of Trump Tower having been wiretapped in 2016.

During this posting spree, Trump also shared another false conspiracy post that included a link to a web page filled with lies about the Obama administration. These included false claims that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton had used her private email server to sell top-secret information to foreign entities, that Obama had ordered a coverup, and that nine of 13 New York police officers trying to expose the truth “committed suicide or died in suspicious circumstances.” For good measure, the p

The post Four Suspects Arrested Related to Organized Residential Burglary in Thousand Oaks appeared first on edhat.

The post Ojai Man Arrested for Stealing from Vehicles Throughout Ventura appeared first on edhat.