FBI Director Kash Patel filed a lawsuit Monday against The Atlantic magazine over a story it published Friday that alleged he drinks to excess and has had unexplained absences at the bureau.
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His attorneys allege in the lawsuit that the story is a “sweeping, malicious, and defamatory hit piece,” and Patel is seeking $250 million from the magazine.
The report’s opening anecdote said that Patel was locked out of an internal computer system at the FBI on April 10, which convinced the FBI director that he had been fired by the White House, prompting him to call aides and allies, the magazine reported, citing nine people familiar with his outreach.
In the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Patel’s lawyers confirmed that the FBI director had been locked out of the bureau’s computer system on April 10, describing the issue as a “routine technical problem logging into a government system, which was quickly fixed.” That incident quickly sparked inquires from numerous news outlets, including NBC News, about whether Patel had been fired, which administration officials subsequently denied.
Patel’s lawsuit said it was “false” that Patel had “panicked” or engaged in a “freak-out” over the incident, and said the FBI told The Atlantic before publication that talk of his firing was a “made-up rumor.” The FBI did not immediately respond to a question from NBC News on Monday about whether the reported technical incident on April 10 ever led Patel to believe that he had been fired.
The lawsuit further alleges that The Atlantic article by Sarah Fitzpatrick contains other “demonstrably and obviously false” claims.
Patel, 46, is “at FBI headquarters nearly every single day, and when he is not at headquarters, he is visiting field offices — which he has done more frequently than any of his predecessors, a fact independently verifiable through his public social media account that Defendants were specifically directed to review,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit adds that “Director Patel does not drink to excess” at establishments mentioned in the article “or anywhere else, and this has not, and has never been, a source of concern across the government.”
Patel’s lawsuit also claims that he “has not targeted political or personal adversaries” and that “FBI personnel actions are taken only where employees have acted unethically or undermined the mission.”
Patel has fired FBI employees involved in investigations into President Donald Trump, and several former FBI employees have pending lawsuits over their firings.
Patel’s lawsuit says the anonymous sources in the story are “partisans with axes to grind and are not in a position to know the facts.”
Asked to respond to the allegations in the report an interview on “Fox Business Sunday,” Patel told show host Maria Bartiromo that “I’m happy to announce on your show that we’re not going to take this laying down. You want to attack my character, come at me. Bring it on. I’ll see you in court.”
The FBI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Patel’s lawyer, Jesse Binnall, said in a statement to NBC News, “Defamatory speech is not free speech, and it is an honor to represent Kash Patel in this lawsuit seeking accountability for The Atlantic article’s malicious falsehoods.”
The Atlantic’s senior vice president of communications, Anna Bross, also said Monday in a statement, “We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel, and we will vigorously defend The Atlantic and our journalists against this meritless lawsuit.”
NBC News also reached out to Fitzpatrick, a former senior investigative producer and editor for NBC News, for comment.
Patel has served as FBI director since February 2025 after he was confirmed by the Senate in a largely party-line vote.
Trump at times has been dissatisfied with Patel’s leadership. This past February, Patel went viral for celebrating in a Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics locker room with the U.S. men’s hockey team after its victory against Canada. One video from the locker room showed Patel chugging a beer and spraying it it in the air, while another showed him cracking open a tall boy can while Trump was on speakerphone to talk with the team.
NBC News reported afterward, citing a person familiar with the matter, that Trump was disappointed in Patel and expressed his displeasure in a conversation with him.