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 US District Court in the District of Columbia, seeks $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.
You know what’s fun about formal legal proceedings?
Discovery!
Good luck with that you drunken buffoon.
That’s probably why he filed suit. Nobody cares about the lawsuit outcome but he might be able to surface some of the sources or people who talked so he can punish them.
It’s unbelievable how absurd a country can be.
FBI has been a shit show forever. Hoover blackmailed hundreds while he was a secret transvestite.
Prediction: they reach the discovery phase and Kash drops the whole thing when he realises how much of his life and character will be exposed.
Not even a prediction really, more like a certainty.
It won’t go that far. He’s a public figure so only actual malice by the reporter and magazine is actionable.
But they got the news out he was fighting, so looks good for them even when the case is dropped. Just like Trump. Though Trump has enough money getting to this part is cheap, wonder how Patel will fare. Though I assume he has income available for this but I’d keep an eye on fbi expenses that will pay for this.
As a public figure, the bar to successfully win a defamation lawsuit requires proof of actual malice. This means that he has to prove by clear and convincing evidence that either the reporter knew the information was absolutely false, or had very good reason to suspect the information was false and still recklessly report it as fact. It’s a pretty high bar.
They weren’t making statements of fact as a witness themselves, there were people interviewed about things they claimed to witness themselves. Statements in the article that seems to have rattled him go like this:
But Patel, according to multiple current officials, as well as former officials who have stayed close to him, is deeply concerned that his job is in jeopardy. He has good reasons to think so—including some having to do with what witnesses described to me as bouts of excessive drinking.
and this:
“We’re all just waiting for the word” that Patel is officially out of the top job, an FBI official told me this week, and a former official told my colleague Jonathan Lemire that Patel was “rightly paranoid.” Senior members of the Trump administration are already discussing who might replace him, according to an administration official and two people close to the White House who were familiar with the conversations.
They also report Patels response to the claims:
The FBI responded with a statement, attributed to Patel: “Print it, all false, I’ll see you in court—bring your checkbook.”
I mean, it seems like they did a lot of interviewing, found a lot of sources, gave the opportunity for a response, etc. You know… good journalism. Unless the claim is that the Atlantic reporters made up these claims wholecloth or that they had good reason to distrust what seems to be a dozen plus sources from multiple government departments, it doesn’t seem like this lawsuit has a leg to stand on.
I know he’s been enjoying his celebrity hobnobbing, I didn’t realize he was spending so much time with Barbra Streisand.
…[The FBI] has required the deployment of ‘breaching equipment’ to extract him from locked rooms
Wait, how did I miss this??
$250 million for being an out of control drunk? Only in the USA. The rest of the civilised countries would tell moron to go piss in the wind.
Reason #3489 US civil law needs a loser pays law like non shit hole countries.
