Kash Patel has accused the magazine of “fake news” after it claimed that he is wrestling with a spiraling alcohol problem
US President Donald Trump’s FBI Director Kash Patel has threatened to sue The Atlantic for publishing a report claiming that he fears for his job due to his “excessive drinking” and “unexplained absences.”
Patel said in an X post on Saturday: “See you and your entire entourage of false reporting in court.” He also accused the magazine of “fake news” and called the lawsuit a “legal lay up.”
A few hours earlier, Patel’s legal team announced that they had warned The Atlantic against releasing the article before publication.
“They were on notice that the claims were categorically false and defamatory. They published anyway. See you in court,” Jesse R. Binnall of the Binnall Law Group wrote on X.
The lawyer also published a letter he said was sent to The Atlantic, in which he demanded that the news outlet preserve all communications relating to Patel, including information relating to the anonymous sources cited in the article, which waspublished on Friday.
In it, The Atlantic cited “two dozen” unnamed officials and insiders, claiming that they had raised concerns about Patel’s conduct and alcohol problems, with some reportedly describing his “behavior as a national-security vulnerability.”
“I stand by every word of this reporting. We have excellent attorneys,” the article’s author, Sarah Fitzpatrick, said on MS NOW’s ‘The Briefing’ on Friday.
The intelligence chief has allegedly drunk to the point that his security detail has had trouble waking him up on multiple occasions, had missed briefings, and has sometimes been “unreachable behind closed doors,” according to the article.
The piece also reported that Patel feared for his job following the recent firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi, a staunch Trump loyalist who was fired earlier this month amid bipartisan accusations of mishandling the release of the Epstein files.