FBI Director Kash Patel SUES The Atlantic magazine over ‘defamatory’ article claiming he has serious alcohol problem

Kash Patel has sued The Atlantic magazine, claiming she has a serious drinking problem over a ‘malicious and defamatory hit track’.

The 46-year-old FBI director filed a lawsuit against the magazine and staff writer Sarah Fitzpatrick on Monday, accusing them of publishing an article “filled with false and clearly fabricated allegations” aimed at “removing her from office.”

The article, shared on April 17, was titled “FBI director is MIA” and claimed Patel was “alarming colleagues with binge drinking and unexplained absences.”

Fitzpatrick quoted unnamed sources within the FBI as saying that Patel’s alcohol intake made him unreachable at crucial moments and made the search for Charlie Kirk’s assassin difficult.

The article claimed that agents once had to use SWAT breach equipment to break down his door, and that Patel threw a nervous breakdown because he mistakenly believed he had been fired by President Trump.

Patel’s lawsuit states that all these allegations are false and ‘outrageous’. His lawyers say Fitzpatrick “relied entirely on anonymous sources that he knew were both highly partisan and in no position to know the facts.”

The FBI director said his team warned the outlet that the story was “categorically false” hours before it was published and accused The Atlantic of having a “longstanding editorial hostility” toward him.

Patel is seeking at least $250 million in damages against the magazine.

Following Patel’s lawsuit being filed, The Atlantic said in a statement to the Daily Mail: ‘We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel and will vigorously defend our journalists against this baseless lawsuit.’

Patel’s tenure at the FBI was allegedly marred by “periods of binge drinking and unexplained absences,” according to The Atlantic report, which Patel called “outrageous”

Since taking over the FBI in January 2025, Patel has been seen drinking alcohol on occasion, including during his headline-making celebrations at the Winter Olympics earlier this year.

His behavior at the Winter Olympics, where he was filmed drinking beer with the US men’s hockey team after their gold medal victory, reportedly infuriated President Trump, who famously never drinks alcohol.

The article, which Patel said was defamatory, claimed that the director’s “erratic” behavior worried many at the FBI during his tenure.

The allegations included an incident last week in which Patel allegedly went ‘freaking out’ after mistakenly believing he had been sacked due to a technical issue that locked him out of his computer system.

He allegedly called aides and allies in a panic because he feared he would be fired by the Trump administration. This backlash quickly reached the White House, according to the report, according to The Atlantic.

Anonymous insiders told Fitzpatrick that Patel’s behavior raised fears about whether the FBI could respond to a national crisis or terrorist attack with him at the head of the bureau.

“This is what keeps me up at night,” an unnamed official told the publication.

In the lawsuit filed Monday, Patel lists 17 examples of what he described in an article in The Atlantic as “false and defamatory statements” from his time leading the FBI.

These include claims that he was ‘known to drink excessively’ and ‘frequently spent parts of his weekends’ at the famous Ned’s in Washington DC and The Poodle Room in Las Vegas.

The article also stated that Patel was upset with the ‘look of FBI products’ and complained that it ‘wasn’t scary enough’.

The article shared on April 17 was published with the following headline: FBI director MIA

The Atlantic’s report claims that early in his tenure running the bureau, meetings were sometimes rescheduled for later in the day to accommodate Patel’s drinking

Trump allegedly told Patel in February that he was unhappy with locker room footage of the director drinking beer and yelling with Olympic gold medalists.

After The Atlantic’s report on Patel’s drinking was published, the FBI director was quick to criticize the “hit piece” online, immediately threatening to sue the channel.

Patel said in a statement to the Daily Mail after the lawsuit was filed: ‘The Atlantic’s story is a lie. They were given the facts before publication and they still chose to print the lies.

‘I took this job to protect the American people, and this FBI has achieved the most efficient reduction in crime in US history. Fake news will not report this and their toxicity will never erode or stop our Mission.’

Patel had previously threatened legal action against The Atlantic immediately after the article was published, describing it as a ‘hit piece’.

In a post on

The email said: ‘This is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever read. Completely wrong and almost 100% clip. And with a two-hour deadline.’

In the caption, Patel wrote: ‘See you and your entire team doing fake news in court. But stick with the fake news, the standard of genuine malice has now become what some call the legal hotbed.’

In the lawsuit she filed on Monday, Patel accused The Atlantic of failing to find “a single person to go on record” about the allegations and said the article was based entirely on anonymous sources.

“The defendants cannot escape responsibility for their malicious lies by hiding behind fake sources,” the lawsuit said.

The Atlantic’s report also alleged that early in his tenure running the bureau, meetings had to be rescheduled for later in the day to accommodate what it described as Patel’s so-called ‘night drinking’ habits.

Drinking to the “point of apparent intoxication,” as alleged in the report, violates the FBI’s code of conduct and leaves the nation’s top law enforcement official vulnerable to possible coercion or exploitation.

Sarah Fitzpatrick, the author of the Atlantic article, said she stands by every word of this news story criticized by Patel and his team.

Patel’s advisor Erica Knight released a statement about X, saying Patel had only taken ’17 total days’ leave and had worked more hours than his predecessors.

Patel’s drinking habits also allegedly damaged the high-profile manhunt for Charlie Kirk’s assassin in September 2025, with Patel distorting the announcement of a ‘suspect’ in custody.

Hours after the Conservative activist was murdered, Patel went to X to announce that the ‘suspect’ in Kirk’s murder had finally been ‘in custody’.

However, he soon retracted his previous statement and announced that the suspect was ‘released after interrogation by law enforcement officials’. A different suspect, Tyler Robinson, was later arrested and charged with murder.

Two sources with knowledge of his movements revealed that he was in fact in New York City that evening, dining at Rao’s, an upscale Italian hotspot that opened at 7 p.m., NBC News reported.

In response to The Atlantic’s recent bombshell allegations, Patel’s advisor Erica Knight issued a scathing statement about X, calling it a story that “every real DC reporter has followed, failed to verify, and reported.”

The Atlantic report claimed that officials were becoming increasingly concerned about whether the FBI could respond to a national crisis such as a terrorist attack with Patel at the helm.

‘Here’s the truth. Since being sworn in, Director Patel has taken a total of 17 days of leave (half as much leave as Comey and Wray) and has spent twice as much time in the office as either of them, Knight wrote.

“The so-called ‘drunken incidents’ that The Atlantic breathlessly reports have occurred exactly ZERO times,” he added.

He went on to list statistics he said were obtained under Patel’s tenure, including 67,000 arrests nationwide and ‘2,200 kilos of fentanyl seized, enough to kill 178 million Americans.’

‘Atlantic’s “report”? Made-up stories about “equipment violations” that were never requested. “It is alleged that there is not a single witness willing to mention his name amid the allegations of drunkenness,” he wrote.

‘Every serious DC reporter covered this. “Sarah Fitzpatrick and Jeffrey Goldberg pressed on anyway,” he added. ‘A lawsuit is being filed.’