FBI Director Kash Patel filed a defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic this morning in DC over allegations in a recent article by Sarah Fitzpatrick that he frequently drinks and racks up job absences.
Ben wrote about the upcoming lawsuit on Sunday.
The lawsuit described The Atlantic‘s article as a “sweeping, malicious, and defamatory hit piece.”
“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,” according to the lawsuit.
Jesse Binnall, Patel’s attorney, posted the letter they sent to The Atlantic before it published the piece. It included all the claims Patel disputed and the fact that The Atlantic had reached out to the FBI’s Office of Public Affairs two hours before publication.
Binnell identified seven claims Patel considers defamatory, which Ben emphasized in his piece:
“Claim #5 — Director drinks “to the point of apparent intoxication” at Ned’s (DC) and The Poodle Room (Las Vegas) “in the presence of White House and other administration staff”;Claim #7 — “on multiple occasions in the past year, members of his security detail had difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated and this information was supplied to DOJ and White House officials”;Claim #8 — “breaching equipment” was requested at HQ because Patel had been “unresponsive behind locked doors” and there were concerns about reaching him “in an emergency”;Claim #9 — Director Patel’s conduct is a “threat to public safety” including in the event of a domestic terrorist attack;Claim #11 — Director Patel is “dragging his feet on terror cases,” delaying/refusing FISA warrants;Claim #14 — alcohol played a role in Patel’s public statements about active investigations “including the murder of Charlie Kirk”;Claim #19 — Director Patel had security detail shut down the FBI Association Store so he could shop alone and expressed frustration that merchandise “wasn’t intimidating enough.”
Patel and his attorneys insist that The Atlantic published the article with actual malice, which is the threshold they must prove:
Defendants published the Article with actual malice, despite being expressly warned, hours before publication, that the central allegations were categorically false; despite having abundant publicly available information contradicting those allegations; despite obvious and fatal defects in their own sourcing; despite The Atlantic’s welldocumented, long-running editorial animus toward Director Patel; despite a request for additional time to respond that Defendants refused to honor; and despite deliberately structuring the pre-publication process to avoid receiving information that would refute their narrative. Defendants cannot evade responsibility for their malicious lies by hiding behind sham sources.
“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,” they added.
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