19 pages trial FBI Director Kash Patel filed a lawsuit against The Atlantic and its journalist Sarah Fitzpatrick over their article on Patel’s drinking problem, saying it was a cause for concern for the administration, which claimed that Kash Patel did not drink much alcohol. One sentence of the lawsuit states, “Director Patel does not drink alcohol at these establishments or anywhere else, and this is not and has never been a matter of concern to the government.” The article refutes the claim, saying that Patel drinks to the point of apparent intoxication at Ned’s in Washington DC, the Poodle Room in Las Vegas, etc. The lawsuit claims that Patel is so intoxicated that he is uncommunicative and that all of his meetings are conducted under the influence of alcohol and that he was drunk when Charlie Kirk was murdered, all of which are false. But it did not deny one particular incident the Atlantic reports, which claimed Patel became ‘terrified’ on April 10 and thought he was fired because he couldn’t log into his system. “On April 10, 2026, Director Patel had a routine technical issue logging into government systems, which was promptly corrected. Director Patel’s sole focus is on carrying out the Administration’s law enforcement priorities,” the lawsuit states. The lawsuit says The Atlantic is free to criticize the FBI’s leadership, but this particular report crossed legal limits and seeks $250 million in damages for damage to Patel’s reputation.“In fact, Fitzpatrick could not get a single person to go on the record in defense of these outrageous allegations, instead relying solely on anonymous sources she knew were both highly biased and in no position to even know the facts,” the lawsuit states. In a statement posted on Twitter, The Atlantic said, “We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel, and we will vigorously defend The Atlantic and our journalists from this frivolous lawsuit.”This is the second case that Patel has filed against a media house and on charges of drinking and partying. Last year, he sued Frank Figliuzzi, an MSNBC analyst and former FBI agent, claiming that Patel was spending more time in nightclubs than at FBI headquarters. That case is still pending.
