FBI director Kash Patel has filed a $250 million lawsuit over an explosive report claiming he had a drinking problem so troubling it could threaten national security.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday, comes after The Atlantic published a story alleging Patel has been binge-drinking on the job, behaving erratically, and that a SWAT team asked for “breaching” gear because he was uncontactable behind a locked door.
The bombshell report cited more than two dozen anonymous sources expressing concern at the FBI director’s “conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences” that “alarmed officials at the FBI and the Department of Justice.”
The White House, the Department of Justice and Patel all denied the allegations.
“Print it, all false, I’ll see you in court—bring your checkbook,” the FBI director warned in a statement last week.
However, The Atlantic has stood by its report and defended its journalism. Staff writer Sarah Fitzpatrick, who wrote the article, also said in an interview on MS NOW on Friday night, “I stand by every word of this reporting. We have excellent attorneys.”
In his lawsuit, Patel’s lawyers described the article as a “sweeping, malicious, and defamatory hit piece.” They argue The Atlantic “crossed the legal line by publishing an article replete with false and obviously fabricated allegations designed to destroy Director Patel’s reputation and drive him from office.”
“Indeed, Fitzpatrick could not get a single person to go on the record in defense of these outrageous allegations, instead relying entirely on anonymous sources she knew to be both highly partisan with an ax to grind and also not in a position to know the facts,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit also alleges that the magazine and Fitzpatrick published the article “despite being expressly warned, hours before publication, that the central allegations were categorically false.”
Patel is now seeking $250 million in damages over the article. In order to win the case, he must prove “actual malice,” which means the author either knew a claim was false or displayed “reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”
The Daily Beast has not independently corroborated the anecdotes reported in The Atlantic’s article.
However, Fitzpatrick has said that she interviewed “more than two dozen people” about Patel’s conduct, “including current and former FBI officials, staff at law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, hospitality-industry workers, members of Congress, political operatives, lobbyists, and former advisers.”
Her report claimed Patel “is known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication, in many cases at the private club Ned’s in Washington, D.C., while in the presence of White House and other administration staff” and the Poodle Room in Las Vegas, “where he frequently spends parts of his weekends.”
“Early in his tenure, meetings and briefings had to be rescheduled for later in the day as a result of his alcohol-fueled nights,” said bombshell report, which was initially headlined “Kash Patel’s Erratic Behavior Could Cost Him His Job.”
It was not the first time Patel’s drinking has hit the headlines. Earlier this year, during a taxpayer-funded trip to Italy, he was filmed chugging a beer during a raucous locker room celebration with Team USA at the Winter Olympics.
Viral videos showed him raising his fists and beer in the air while he appears to be singing lyrics of the 2002 patriotic anthem, “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American),” alongside the hockey players.
According to NBC News, president Donald Trump, who doesn’t drink, reportedly told Patel he wasn’t happy about his antics.
The FBI director has also come under fire over his taxpayer-funded plane, which he used to travel to an NHL game in Long Island and to visit his girlfriend multiple times across the country.
Patel is being represented by former Trump attorney Jesse Binnall, who represented former North Carolina lieutenant governor Mark Robinson in a failed defamation lawsuit against CNN.
Robinson, a MAGA Republican previously endorsed by Trump, had sued over claims that he posted messages on a pornography website in which he called himself a “black NAZI,” expressed support for slavery, and described Martin Luther King Jr. as “worse than a maggot.”
“Defamatory speech is not free speech, and it is an honor to represent Kash Patel in this lawsuit seeking accountablity for The Atlantic article’s malicious falsehoods,” Binnall wrote on X.
