FBI Director Kash Patel has issued a strong warning to The Atlantic, threatening legal action over what he calls a “categorically false and defamatory” article published on Friday. The report in question accuses Patel of “bouts of excessive drinking,” which allegedly have undermined his leadership at the FBI.
Described by Patel’s attorney as a “hit piece,” the article claims that the director’s “conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences” have raised concerns among Justice Department and FBI officials. In a particularly dramatic allegation, the piece suggests that Patel’s security team once had to request “breaching equipment” to extract him from a locked room.
In a statement featured in the article, Patel responded assertively, saying, “Print it, all false, I’ll see you in court — bring your checkbook.”
Jesse Binnall, representing the FBI director, took to the social media platform X to share a letter sent to journalist Sarah Fitzpatrick prior to the story’s release. The letter claimed that “most” of the “substantive claims” made about Patel were “false, unsourced, and facially defamatory.”
“They were on notice that the claims were categorically false and defamatory. They published anyway,” Binnall stated emphatically, concluding with, “See you in court.”
He added, “See you in court.”
Binnall notes the “vast majority of the claims in the draft article rely solely on vague, unattributed sourcing such as ‘people familiar with the matter’ or ‘some have characterized.’”
The lawyer specifically called out an allegation that Patel’s security detail had so much difficulty waking him after a night of drinking that they requested “breaching equipment” to get into his locked room.
Binnall said the allegations “has no corroborating public record whatsoever and appears to be either fabricated or drawn from a single hostile and unreliable source.”
“A reasonable and responsible pre-publication investigation, including a simple request to the FBI for relevant documentary evidence, would have quickly disproven this claim and many of the others,” he argued.
Erica Knight, the FBI director’s communication strategist, described the story as one “every real DC reporter chased, couldn’t verify, and passed on.”
“The Atlantic’s ‘reporting’? Fabricated stories about ‘breaching equipment’ that was never requested. Intoxication claims with not a single witness willing to put their name on one. A paragraph — I’m not kidding — about the FBI Store not carrying ‘intimidating enough’ merchandise,” Knight wrote on X. “Every serious DC reporter passed on this. Sarah Fitzpatrick and Jeffrey Goldberg printed it anyway.
“Lawsuit is being filed.”
In an interview on MS NOW, Fitzpatrick maintained that she stood by her reporting.
