Kash Patel, the director of the FBI, filed a lawsuit against the Atlantic over a story alleging that he “has alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences.” Patel’s suit seeks $250 million in damages.
In a statement Monday, the Atlantic said: “We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel, and we will vigorously defend The Atlantic and our journalists against this meritless lawsuit.”
“Kashyap P. Patel, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, brings this lawsuit to hold Defendants The Atlantic Monthly Group LLC and its staff writer, Sarah Fitzpatrick, accountable for a sweeping, malicious, and defamatory hit piece published on April 17, 2026,” the complaint reads. “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.”
A copy of Patel’s lawsuit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, is available at this link.
The Atlantic, Patel asserts in the suit, “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 well-documented, 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.”
In the article, “The FBI Director Is MIA,” Fitzpatrick cited more than two dozen anonymous “witnesses” who, among other things, alleged that Patel had engaged in “bouts of excessive drinking” and “unexplained absences” that “often alarmed officials at the FBI and the Department of Justice.”
“Several officials told me that Patel’s drinking has been a recurring source of concern across the government. They said that he is known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication,” Fitzpatrick reported in the Atlantic article. “Early in his tenure, meetings and briefings had to be rescheduled for later in the day as a result of his alcohol-fueled nights, six current and former officials and others familiar with Patel’s schedule told me.”
Fitzpatrick’s piece also said that “on multiple occasions in the past year,” members of the FBI director’s security detail “had difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated, according to information supplied to Justice Department and White House officials.” In addition, according to the Atlantic article, “A request for ‘breaching equipment’ — normally used by SWAT and hostage-rescue teams to quickly gain entry into buildings — was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors, according to multiple people familiar with the request.” The Atlantic story also said that “some of Patel’s colleagues at the FBI worry that his personal behavior has become a threat to public safety.”
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