Some excerpts from the Complaint in Patel v. Atlantic Monthly Group LLC (D.D.C.), filed today:
Kashyap P. Patel, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, brings this lawsuit to hold Defendants The Atlantic Monthly Group LLC and its staff writer, Sarah Fitzpatrick, accountable for a sweeping, malicious, and defamatory hit piece published on April 17, 2026 {"Kash Patel's Erratic Behavior Could Cost Him His Job"}. Defendants are of course free to criticize the leadership of the FBI, but they crossed the legal line by publishing an article replete with false and obviously fabricated allegations designed to destroy Director Patel's reputation and drive him from office.
Indeed, Fitzpatrick could not get a single person to go on the record in defense of these outrageous allegations, instead relying entirely on anonymous sources she knew to be both highly partisan with an ax to grind and also not in a position to know the facts. Defendants published the Article with actual malice, despite being expressly warned, hours before publication, that the central allegations were categorically false; despite having abundant publicly available information contradicting those allegations; despite obvious and fatal defects in their own sourcing; despite The Atlantic's well-documented, long-running editorial animus toward Director Patel; despite a request for additional time to respond that Defendants refused to honor; and despite deliberately structuring the pre-publication process to avoid receiving information that would refute their narrative. Defendants cannot evade responsibility for their malicious lies by hiding behind sham sources….
The Article's assertions that Director Patel drinks to the point of obvious intoxication at Ned's in Washington, D.C. and to excess at the Poodle Room in Las Vegas, and that his drinking "has been a recurring source of concern across the government," are false. Director Patel does not drink to excess at these establishments or anywhere else, and this has not, and has never been, a source of concern across the government. Prior to publication, the FBI expressly informed Defendants that each of these allegations was "totally false." The FBI further warned Defendants that these allegations echoed a similar fabrication previously aired by MSNBC's Frank Figliuzzi on Morning Joe—anonymously sourced reporting that was later retracted by MSNBC and that is the subject of pending defamation litigation—yet Defendants published it anyway.
