Kash Patel’s lawsuit against The Atlantic shows that the FBI director is not a heavy drinker, as the report claimed.
The 19-page lawsuit filed by FBI Director Cash Patel against The Atlantic and its journalist Sarah Fitzpatrick, over their article on Patel’s drinking problem, which she said was causing concern to the department, claimed that Cash Patel did not drink excessively.
“Director Patel does not drink excessively at these establishments or anywhere else, and this is not, and has never been, a concern throughout the government,” one sentence in the lawsuit said, contradicting the article’s claim that Patel drank to the point of apparent intoxication at the Ned’s in Washington, D.C., the Boodle Room in Las Vegas, etc. The lawsuit claimed that Patel was too intoxicated to be accessible, that all of his meetings were drinking charades, and that he was drunk when Charlie Kirk was killed, all false.
But she did not deny a specific incident in an Atlantic report that alleged Patel “felt intimidated” on April 10 and thought he was fired because he couldn’t log into his system. “On April 10, 2026, Director Patel experienced a routine technical issue logging into a government system, which was quickly fixed. Director Patel’s sole focus is implementing the Department’s law enforcement priorities,” the lawsuit said, adding that the parts that Patel “scared” about the “job risk” were all false.
The Atlantic was free to criticize the FBI’s leadership, but this particular report crossed the legal line, the lawsuit said, and sought $250 million in damages for damage to Patel’s reputation.“In fact, Fitzpatrick was unable to persuade a single person to defend these outrageous allegations, relying instead entirely on anonymous sources who she knew were highly partisan, willing to grind, and in no position to know the facts,” the lawsuit said. In a statement posted on X, The Atlantic said: “We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel, and will vigorously defend The Atlantic and our journalists against this baseless lawsuit.”This is the second lawsuit filed by Patel against a media organization, alleging that he consumed alcoholic beverages and parties. Last year, he sued Frank Figliuzzi, an MSNBC analyst and former FBI agent, over an allegation suggesting Patel was spending more time at nightclubs than at FBI headquarters. This case is still pending.
