16 new york | august 19–september 1, 2019government speaks lies. Russians, former
Soviets, do this as a manner of survival. It’s
how they deal with the fucked-up reality of
falsehood as official truth,” he said. “Just
try and pretend that it’s not you, it’s not
happening to you. That’s the way in which
you get through this.”
We were walking through the Congres-
sional Cemetery, where the cherry blossoms
were nearing the end of their bloom and the
ground was dusted with petals crushed into
the mud like flowery slush. It was only a
week earlier that he’d been sentenced—no
jail time, just some community service and
a few years’ probation. But in the months
leading up to that day, terrified of another
outcome, Patten became delusional. He
convinced himself that if he was going to the
pen, he’d do it his way. It’s only human, after
all, to grasp for something—anything—to
control when your world falls apart. And
Patten grasped at everything he could.
“I don’t want to go to Club Fed,” he told me
once during that period. Instead, he wanted
to go to the D.C. jail. “Put me in real prison,”
he said. “If we’re going to do it, let’s do it.”
“My wife would kill me for saying this,
but I think I’m black,” he said. “I trust black
people more than white people, particu-
larly after this experience. I don’t know
why.” He added, “Don’t make a lot of this in
your article because it does come off sort of
strange. I just would feel more at home at
D.C. jail than at Club Fed.”
Under this racist fantasy, he obsessed
over how to succeed inside the jail he
would never go to, as if it were a matter of
will. He lost 40 pounds. He got sober.
More sober than he’d ever been. At Tony’s
Boxing Gym, a fitness center in a location
Patten refers to as “the hood,” he wrappedhis knuckles in tape and trained to fight.
He became the kind of person who flexes
in front of mirrors and snaps shirtless
selfies. He posted one on Instagram.
It wasn’t all for nothing. He felt better
now. His self-esteem had improved mea-
surably. And Laura couldn’t stop talking
about how hot she thought he was. But it
still ate at him, what he considered to be
the unfairness of this season of his life—
the world recoiling in some mix of disgust
and horror at the work he had always
viewed as just the extremely lucrative busi-
ness of international politics.
If pressed, he could eventually summon
some regret. When he first began his inter-
national career, he said, “I bought into this
narrative of good guys and bad guys.” But
over time, the world became less and less
clear. “Picking up Paul Manafort’s client is
a move towards a dark direction,” he said,
though at the time it didn’t seem that way.
In Iraq, his ex-girlfriend had accused him
of working for the side with “blood on their
hands,” but Patten wouldn’t see it that way.
“Maybe they were fighting us because we
were invading their fucking country, you
know?” he said.
“I don’t think, where I am today, that
I crossed lines totally into darkness, but
I came close. I came close enough to scare
myself,” he said. We were having tea by the
window in Blue Duck Tavern in Washing-
ton’s West End neighborhood. Patten is a
big tea drinker who transports his own
leaves and equipment with him to restau-
rants. Sometimes he stirs berry jam into
the beverage instead of honey—a habit he
picked up in Russia. It was in this estab-
lishment, he said, that he’d scared himself.
He was concerned about getting into spe-
cifics, but he tried to explain anyway.
“I’ve come into the company of people
who produce arms, and I’ll just say, in this
restaurant, I did have a meeting with a
major well-known mercenary and another
character about setting up selling fighter jets
to a country threatened by Russia,” he said.
“And I’m thinking that’s kind of a far way to
go from exporting democracy, you know?”
For now, Patten is performing his com-
munity service and abiding by the terms of
his 36 months of parole. When we met
earlier this summer, he was considering a
run for Senate in Maine against his old
boss Susan Collins, although he has since
ruled this out.
As for whether he expects the president
will pardon him, he’s uncertain. He is, at
the end of the day, still an optimist, but he’s
also, as you’ve seen, frequently wrong.
“I think there’s a chance,” he said. “Do
I bank on that chance? No. I am resigned
to be a felon for the rest of my life.” ■in his communications. “Was there some
bawdy language in some of the email? Yeah,
sure. There’s some bawdy language. Some
non–politically correct language in places.
If somebody is going to go sifting through
my emails, they’re going to have to deal with
that. I’m not going to be held to politically
correct standards of speech,” he said. He
told me he referred to former Hillary Clin-
ton campaign manager Robby Mook as
“nothing but a little faggot.” Then, quickly,
he corrected himself. “No, I didn’t use that
word. Sorry. I called him ‘a little gay man.’ ”
Observing the look on my face, he went
on. “I called him a little gay man, which is
descriptive. He is little, and he is gay.
True! When you compare him with Paul
Manafort, master of the universe, and this
nothing water boy for Hillary, they’re not
comparable.”
Then he grew more defensive. He pulled
out his laptop. “I’m not a bigot when it
comes to gays. I regret the word that I used
in sort of a fit of pique. Here’s my friend
Harris on holiday, so—” He showed me a
photo of a man on a beach in a small swim-
suit. I expressed confusion. “No, I’m not in
this photo,” Patten said, “but you get the
gist.” I expressed more confusion. “I’m sup-
porting my assertion that I’m not a bigot,”
Patten said. “I know it’s cliché.”
Unlike the Senate, Patten said he never
got the impression that the special coun-
sel’s investigators cared about the language
he used in his private communications.
Instead, they wanted him to be a sort of
fixer for them—guiding them through the
underworld of quasi- criminal lobbying
and power-brokering and money launder-
ing where the big fish of the special coun-
sel’s investigation operated. Even Mueller
couldn’t understand that racket. At least
not without some help.I
t was the early afternoon of
April 19, the day after the release of
the Mueller report, and most of
Washington, with its vast hunger for
all things Russiagate, was still pro-
cessing the 448-page document. Patten
wasn’t taking part. He could barely bring
himself to scan the pages that mentioned
him by name, the pages that could explain
what had happened to his life since the FBI
first knocked. “I avoided it because I felt like
I did my time on this shit,” he told me. “They
took over my life.
“What do you call it when you have two
completely different interpretations of the
same thing?” he said. “My Russian ,
his advice to me was to practice c
dissonance. That’s so Russian. Th w
when your country has been a totalitarian
dictatorship for most of your life and theintelligencer“My Russian
friend, his
advice to me
was to practice
cognitive
dissonance.
That’s so
Russian.”