FBI Director Kash Patel testifies during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on September 16, 2025, at the Capitol in Washington, DC, USA.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
FBI Director Kash Patel filed a lawsuit Monday morning seeking $250 million in damages against The Atlantic for a defamatory article alleging alcohol abuse.
Mr. Patel vowed over the weekend to sue The Atlantic over an article published on Friday.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., as well as The Atlantic, and the article’s author, Sarah Fitzpatrick, is named as a defendant in the civil complaint.
Patel’s lawsuit seeks to hold the defendants “accountable for a widespread, malicious, and defamatory hit piece.”
“Defendants are of course free to criticize the leadership of the FBI, but they crossed a legal line by publishing an article filled with false and clearly fabricated allegations designed to tarnish Director Patel’s reputation and force him from office,” the complaint alleges.
The complaint says the magazine and Mr. Fitzpatrick published the article “with actual malicious intent, despite being explicitly warned hours before publication that the central claim was completely false.”
“We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel,” Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg said in a statement to CNBC on Sunday.
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