Over the weekend, The Atlantic dropped a huge exclusive about FBI Director Kash Patel. The Atlantic piece was well-sourced, with senior FBI agents and DOJ officials raising the alert that Patel’s behavior is leaving the FBI enormously compromised. According to sources, Patel drinks to excess regularly, gets blackout drunk and then passes out behind locked doors. Patel also gets drunk and compromises ongoing investigations by making bizarre announcements which turn out to be false. Reportedly, Donald Trump expressed disapproval of Patel after he flew to the Milano-Cortina Olympics and got drunk with the US men’s hockey team after their gold-medal game. And on and on. The Atlantic made it sound like Patel will probably be fired or let go sometime soon. Well, Patel followed up on his promise to sue The Atlantic:
The F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, sued The Atlantic on Monday, accusing it of defamation over an article that claimed his excessive drinking and unexplained absences were putting his job in jeopardy. The article, under the headline “The FBI Director Is MIA,” was published on Friday and detailed Mr. Patel’s behavior in his role leading the Federal Bureau of Investigation, citing more than two dozen anonymous sources. The author, Sarah Fitzpatrick, wrote that Mr. Patel’s conduct had “often alarmed officials at the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice.” The article said he “has also earned a reputation for acting impulsively during high-stakes investigations.”
Mr. Patel denied the claims in a statement to The Atlantic, which the article included. The White House also denied the claims, with Karoline Leavitt, its press secretary, telling The Atlantic that “Director Patel remains a critical player on the administration’s law and order team.”
Mr. Patel immediately began threatening a lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against both The Atlantic and Ms. Fitzpatrick. The suit seeks $250 million in damages.
A spokeswoman for The Atlantic said on Monday that the publication stood by its reporting. “We will vigorously defend The Atlantic and our journalists against this meritless lawsuit,” she said in a statement.
In his complaint, Mr. Patel accused the defendants of “publishing an article replete with false and obviously fabricated allegations designed to destroy Director Patel’s reputation and drive him from office.” He pushed back on allegations that he “drinks to the point of obvious intoxication” at places like the members-only clubs Ned’s in Washington and the Poodle Room in Las Vegas.
“Director Patel does not drink to excess at these establishments or anywhere else, and this has not, and has never been, a source of concern across the government,” the complaint said.
Mr. Patel also said in the suit that The Atlantic had published the article “despite being expressly warned, hours before publication, that the central allegations were categorically false.” He said in his suit that the F.B.I. had been given less than two hours to comment on a list of 19 claims provided by The Atlantic, and that his legal counsel had sent the publication a letter refuting the claims, asking for more time to respond and demanding that the article not be published.
Mr. Patel, as a public figure, must meet a higher standard than an ordinary citizen to prove his case. He must show not only that there were falsehoods in the article but also “actual malice” — a legal standard that means that the defendants published defamatory material either while knowing it was false or with reckless disregard as to its truth.
Someone pointed this out yesterday and I can’t get it out of my head – the reason why Donald Trump “successfully” sues all of these random people, media outlets and companies is because it’s a backdoor way of getting bribes. Patel’s lawsuit won’t work because The Atlantic isn’t going to pay a bribe to a drunken buffoon who probably won’t be FBI Director in six months’ time. Also, in a moment of “the walls are closing in,” a different Trump cabinet member was fired – Labor secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer is now out of a job. In recent months, Trump has been firing major administration figures at a steady clip around the start of the month – I feel like the first week of May will be interesting. Will it be Patel? Whiskey Pete Hegseth? RFK Jr.?
Statement from The Atlantic: pic.twitter.com/ZoIldjSbzl
— The Atlantic Communications (@TheAtlanticPR) April 20, 2026
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
