FBI director Kash Patel files US$250M defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic

FBI Director Kash Patel, pictured above testifying on Capitol Hill, has sued The Atlantic. (Oliver Contreras/AFP/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

FBI director Kash Patel has sued The Atlantic and reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick over a story that alleged Patel has “alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences.”

The defamation suit, filed Monday morning in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, seeks US$250 million in damages.

The Atlantic called the suit “meritless.”

“We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel, and we will vigorously defend The Atlantic and our journalists against this meritless lawsuit,” a spokesperson told CNN.

Patel threatened to sue The Atlantic both before and again after the story was published last Friday. He was quoted by the magazine as saying, “I’ll see you in court — bring your checkbook.”

Fitzpatrick said in an interview on MS NOW on Friday night, “I stand by every word of this reporting. We have excellent attorneys.”

The lawsuit says statements in Fitzpatrick’s article “falsely assert” that Patel “is a habitual drunk, unable to perform the duties of his office, is a threat to public safety, is vulnerable to foreign coercion, has violated DOJ ethics rules, is unreachable in emergencies, has required the deployment of ‘breaching equipment’ to extract him from locked rooms, allows alcohol to influence his public statements about criminal investigations, and behaves erratically in a manner that compromises national security.”

The Atlantic “published these statements with actual malice,” the suit states.

“Actual malice” is the high legal standard that public figures must meet to prevail in a defamation case. It means that the author either knew a claim was false or displayed “reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”

Defamation cases often fall apart because the plaintiffs fail to prove “actual malice.” In this case, Patel’s lawyers say The Atlantic ignored pre-publication denials, “failed to take even the most basic investigative steps” that “would have easily refuted their claims” and showed “clear editorial animus” against Patel.

Fitzpatrick wrote 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.”

The sources spoke on condition of anonymity “to discuss sensitive information and private conversations,” and they “described Patel’s tenure as a management failure and his personal behavior as a national-security vulnerability.”

CNN has not independently corroborated the anecdotes reported in The Atlantic’s article.

By Brian Stelter, CNN