FBI Director Kash Patel testifies before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 16, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
FBI Director Kash Patel on Monday morning filed a lawsuit seeking $250 million in damages from The Atlantic magazine for what he claims is a defamatory article that alleges he abuses alcohol.
Patel, over the weekend, had vowed to sue The Atlantic for the article that was published on Friday.
The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. In addition to The Atlantic, the civil complaint names the article’s author, Sarah Fitzpatrick, as a defendant.
Patel’s suit said it seeks to hold the defendants “accountable for 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,” the suit alleges.
The complaint says the magazine and Fitzpatrick published the article “with actual malice, despite being expressly warned, hours before publication, that the central allegations were categorically false.”
Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, in a statement to CNBC on Sunday, had said, “We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel.”
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