Kash Patel, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), during a House Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, March 19, 2026.
Daniel Heuer | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A Houston federal court judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit by FBI Director Kash Patel alleging that former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi defamed him by saying Patel last year had “been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of” the bureau’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
“The Court finds that Figliuzzi’s statement is rhetorical hyperbole that cannot constitute defamation,” U.S. District Court Judge George Hanks Jr. wrote in his decision. “Accordingly, Dir. Patel has failed to state a claim against Figliuzzi, and his lawsuit must be dismissed.”
The dismissal came a day after Patel filed an unrelated $250 million defamation lawsuit in D.C. federal court against The Atlantic magazine over a new article that alleged he has abused alcohol.
While ruling on the key question of defamation in Figliuzzi’s favor, the judge denied his request that he be awarded court costs and attorneys’ fees under Texas’ anti-SLAPP law. SLAPP is an acronym for Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation.
Figluizzi’s lawyer, Marc Fuller, in a statement to CNBC, said, “This is a victory for press freedom and the First Amendment.”
“Director Patel’s claim against Frank was baseless, and we are pleased that the court dismissed it,” Fuller said.
Patel’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Figliuzzi, former assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI, made his crack about Patel on May 2, 2025, on the MS Now show “Morning Joe.”
“Yeah, well, reportedly, he’s been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of the Hoover building,” said Figliuzzi.
Patel sued him in June, accusing Figliuzzi of “fabricating a specific lie” about the FBI because of Figliuzzi’s “clear animus” to him.
As evidence of that animus, Patel’s lawsuit referenced scathing statements about him by Figliuzzi, which questioned his competence and claimed that “his record shows no devotion to the Constitution, but blind allegiance to [President Donald] Trump.”
“Since becoming Director of the FBI, Director Patel has not spent a single minute inside of a nightclub,” Patel’s suit said.
In his decision Tuesday, Hanks wrote that Figliuzzi’s nightclub jibe, “when taken in context, cannot have been perceived by a person of ordinary intelligence as stating actual facts about Patel.”
“A person of reasonable intelligence and learning would not have taken his statement literally: that Dir. Patel has actually spent more hours physically in a nightclub than he has spent physically in his office building,” Hanks wrote.
“By saying that Patel spent ‘far more’ time at nightclubs than his office, Figliuzzi delivered his answer ‘in an exaggerated, provocative and amusing way,’ employing rhetorical hyperbole,” the judge wrote.
