An old friend remembers how Kash Patel agreed to become the hockey coach for his son’s team.
At one time, FBI Director Cash Patel was involved in several controversies mostly surrounding his alleged erratic behavior, and people from his past, and those who knew Patel as “Coach Cash” have spoken about how passionate he was about hockey.
One Clarke Morey told CNNhow a decade ago that he saw Kash Patel working out in a D.C. gym wearing a Hartford Whalers jersey. Morey said he struck up a conversation with Cash and discovered he was a Department of Justice employee but very passionate about hockey.Morey said he asked Patel if he would coach his son’s team. The payment was never paid, and Patel was very busy at the time, but he never missed a practice or a game, often coming to the rink wearing his business suit, Morey said.
“The kids kind of fell in love with him, and he was always there and always available,” Morey said, adding that his son still texts Patel monthly and that the other kids — now young men in their 20s — discuss Coach Cash.“They filter through copies of the news and stuff and they wonder, ‘Is Cash okay?’ Because we heard this or we saw this person saying these things about him,” Morey said. “Other than the ugly things out there, kids know that his core values and moral fiber are always on point.”
Patel left the Justice Department in 2017 and began working as an aide to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, led by then-Republican Rep. Devin Nunes. That’s also when he took on more hockey coaching responsibility, volunteering as an assistant coach for a youth recreation team made up of students at Woodrow Wilson High School, now called Jackson Reed, in Northwest Washington.One former player told CNN that Cash was like a brother, and at the time they were unaware of how close he was to Donald Trump. Then Kash Patel started appearing on Fox News and got his own segment and the kids were surprised because they rarely talked about anything outside of hockey.
3 Kash Battle’s latest controversies
While Patel’s tenure as FBI director has been mired in one controversy after another, the three most recent are:
- The Atlantic described Patel as an alcoholic to the point of being drunk on the job. Patel filed a $250 million lawsuit against Atlantic.
- Patel received a shock from a federal judge in Texas who dismissed Patel’s defamation lawsuit against Frank Figliuzzi who said on air that Patel spent too much time in nightclubs. The court said that the comment was not verbatim.
- One report claimed that the FBI sought out a journalist who reported that Kash Patel’s girlfriend, singer Alexis Wilkins, was getting 24/7 protection. Patel said this never happened, but “the same reporter presented an unfounded story that caused a direct threat to my girlfriend’s life.”
