Kash Patel sues The Atlantic for reporting on his "erratic" behavior and "excessive drinking"

“Defendants are of course free to criticize the leadership of the FBI, but they 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,” reads the lawsuit. Patel’s legal team is upset that allegations—which include that he is “known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication” and that “meetings and briefings had to be rescheduled for later in the day as a result of his alcohol-fueled nights”—were made anonymously, and that the magazine “refused to honor” a request for “additional time to respond” to the allegations. The lawsuit claims that Patel’s team was given less than two hours to respond. In the article, both Karoline Leavitt and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, as well as a spokesperson for the FBI, do go on record to defend Patel. In fact, the FBI’s statement included in the article, attributed to Patel, threatened this very lawsuit: “Print it, all false, I’ll see you in court—bring your checkbook.” The article, written by Sarah Fitzpatrick, states that more than two dozen sources were interviewed.

“We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel, and we will vigorously defend The Atlantic and our journalists against this meritless lawsuit,” a spokesperson for the magazine told CNN. The lawsuit alleges that The Atlantic “published these statements with actual malice,” which is the legal bar for proving defamation regarding public figures. This has been a problem for previous defamation lawsuits from the Trump administration; last week, a suit filed against the Wall Street Journal was dismissed after Trump’s legal team failed to convince a judge that the outlet acted maliciously by sharing a letter it reported Trump wrote to Jeffrey Epstein. We’ll see if Patel has any better luck with this one.