SNL pokes fun at report about FBI director’s engraved Kentucky bourbon bottles
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Saturday Night Live featured a cold open skit referencing Patel’s engraved bourbon bottles
- Patel allegedly transported customized Woodford Reserve bottles and gifted them.
- The FBI said the bottles were routine and part of a tradition that started ago.
The report about FBI Director Kash Patel handing out specially-engraved bottles of Woodford Reserve as gifts was highlighted in the cold open of this past weekend’s “Saturday Night Live” episode.
The skit, about six minutes long, features actors Colin Jost and Matt Damon portraying Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in a bar discussing controversial events, such as the war in Iran and the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Actor Aziz Ansari, portraying Kash Patel, joins the others and highlights his customized bottle of bourbon.
“Yes, somehow this is a real thing that I, the FBI Director has made. This is real,” Ansari says during the skit.
Hegseth, Kavanaugh and Patel have come under fire for allegations of excessive drinking. Allegations about Kavanaugh drinking excessively were highlighted when he was up for confirmation to the Supreme Court. Similarly, significant concerns arose about Hegseth’s drinking habits when he was up for confirmation to be secretary of defense.
More recently, “The Atlantic” has reported on allegations that Patel is an excessive drinker. The FBI director has sued the magazine and reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick for defamation over the story.
The SNL skit from the weekend is a reference to a more recent report from “The Atlantic” that Patel allegedly has been taking cases of customized 750mL bottles of Woodford Reserve — with his name on them — on a Department of Justice plane and giving them as gifts. He even left a bottle in an Olympic locker room in Milan, according to the magazine.
The magazine obtained, from an online auction, one such bottle, which was also signed by Patel with “#9,” which they say is presumably a reference to his post as the ninth director of the federal law enforcement agency.
Brown-Forman spokeswoman Elizabeth Conway told the Herald-Leader: “The bottles were engraved after the point of purchase. I do not have information regarding where or by whom the engraving was done.”
The FBI reportedly does not deny that Patel has engraved Woodford Reserve bottles or that he’s handing them out. But the agency told “The Atlantic” that they were “routine” and “part of a tradition in the FBI that started well over a decade ago.”
