FBI director Kash Patel has sued The Atlantic and reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick over a story that alleged Patel has “alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences.”
The defamation suit, filed Monday morning in US District Court in the District of Columbia, seeks $250 million in damages.
The Atlantic called the suit “meritless.”
“We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel, and we will vigorously defend The Atlantic and our journalists against this meritless lawsuit,” a spokesperson told CNN.
Prediction: they reach the discovery phase and Kash drops the whole thing when he realises how much of his life and character will be exposed.
Not even a prediction really, more like a certainty.
It won’t go that far. He’s a public figure so only actual malice by the reporter and magazine is actionable.
But they got the news out he was fighting, so looks good for them even when the case is dropped. Just like Trump. Though Trump has enough money getting to this part is cheap, wonder how Patel will fare. Though I assume he has income available for this but I’d keep an eye on fbi expenses that will pay for this.
You know what’s fun about formal legal proceedings?
Discovery!
Good luck with that you drunken buffoon.
That’s probably why he filed suit. Nobody cares about the lawsuit outcome but he might be able to surface some of the sources or people who talked so he can punish them.
Hes also beholden to discovery, including emails and communications to and about him and his issues.
This is just saber rattling to the MAGA crowd. He will drop the lawsuit in a few months when this falls out of the news cycle.
It might even be worth not filing to dismiss the suit just to get to discovery and see what juicy newsworthy nuggets float up.
What’s the legal process for a defamation claim that the DOJ would inevitably claim executive privilege on discovery?
In a so called sane world, the defense will be granted a motion to have the case tossed. I haven’t read the article, so I don’t know if the prosecution carefully filed with a crooked judge or not; so I couldn’t tell you what’s likely to actually happen.
I’m hoping the idiots forgot they don’t own all the judges, cause they actually believe everyone loves them and that their farts don’t stink. Of course, even then they’d scream and cry about impeaching the judge after not getting what they want. Cause if you can smell the stinky diaper, you’re obviously lying, cause their shit don’t smell…or something…
ಠ_ಠ
It feels like the current judicial outcome is a reasonable federal judge getting smacked down by insane appeals court rulings, which turns the whole thing in to a slow crawl to SCOTUS, who eventually rules on one iota of the case, that is probably moot at that point, and the target owes their lawyers a shit load of money while the DOJ/FBI digs in to their background to harass them ad infinitum.
Pretty much. And we all know the whole thing smells like shit, but they just keep getting away with it.
…[The FBI] has required the deployment of ‘breaching equipment’ to extract him from locked rooms
Wait, how did I miss this??
Oh my god I want this to be stated in court so bad 😆
As a public figure, the bar to successfully win a defamation lawsuit requires proof of actual malice. This means that he has to prove by clear and convincing evidence that either the reporter knew the information was absolutely false, or had very good reason to suspect the information was false and still recklessly report it as fact. It’s a pretty high bar.
They weren’t making statements of fact as a witness themselves, there were people interviewed about things they claimed to witness themselves. Statements in the article that seems to have rattled him go like this:
But Patel, according to multiple current officials, as well as former officials who have stayed close to him, is deeply concerned that his job is in jeopardy. He has good reasons to think so—including some having to do with what witnesses described to me as bouts of excessive drinking.
and this:
“We’re all just waiting for the word” that Patel is officially out of the top job, an FBI official told me this week, and a former official told my colleague Jonathan Lemire that Patel was “rightly paranoid.” Senior members of the Trump administration are already discussing who might replace him, according to an administration official and two people close to the White House who were familiar with the conversations.
They also report Patels response to the claims:
The FBI responded with a statement, attributed to Patel: “Print it, all false, I’ll see you in court—bring your checkbook.”
I mean, it seems like they did a lot of interviewing, found a lot of sources, gave the opportunity for a response, etc. You know… good journalism. Unless the claim is that the Atlantic reporters made up these claims wholecloth or that they had good reason to distrust what seems to be a dozen plus sources from multiple government departments, it doesn’t seem like this lawsuit has a leg to stand on.
As a public figure, the bar to successfully win a defamation lawsuit requires proof of actual malice.
There are very, very few things I envy about the US, but this is one of them. Australian defo law is fucked; it so ridiculously favours the complainant that the respondent basically has to prove that they didn’t defame them.
“Your Honor, I’d like to submit Exhibit A:”
“Exhibit accepted.”
“The Defense rests, Your Honor.”
“Yeah, I figured. This is going to be a quick one…”
“Might wanna dial it back 80% there, bud”
Just another of the pedo’s DUI hires.
He’s trying to be like his boss. But he doesn’t have the pull to intimidate news outlets and discovery will be the end of this lawsuit.
They’ll pay off Trump, because he’s got the juice to make life miserable for them, but they’ll take Ka$h all the way. This should be a fun trial.
$250 million for being an out of control drunk? Only in the USA. The rest of the civilised countries would tell moron to go piss in the wind.
It’s unbelievable how absurd a country can be.
TBF, it’s mostly the people in power —and, not just government, either. The rest of us are barely keeping it together in so many uniquely defiant ways, every single gawdamn day. It’s a silent, hushed war on the poor that hisses clearly that you’ll be next if you speak up.
Don’t worry, though, fellow poors! We’re each still on deck for their wide, wide world of
fuckeryNew & Improved Democracy™ at some point down the line, regardless of compliance or allegiance or pretty much anything, really.☝🏼😅I mean, c’mon. It’s literally designed to imply there’s some hidden hope for you via this docile complicity… but there’s less than zero, in fact. This personal “choice” we each have, baked into our modern existence (as non-nepo spawn) and is intended to keep the rest of us that much more easily oppressed by the whole circus for every single person that can’t risk saying “No.” to this construct.
The ol’ rat maze has a see-through lid, but don’t let them catch you looking up. 🤫
Yes, it’s so obvious by now that even the Maga morons might be able to understand it.
And yet this is nothing new: The U.S. has been an oligarchy for at least thirty years or more, as evidenced, for example, by the fact that many, many people in the richest country in the world live as if they were citizens of one of the poorest Third World countries.
Been saying it since the early 80s, back when I was some idiot punk kid that didn’t know what he was talking about. At least, now I’m not a kid, eh? 😝 Hack the planet.
FBI has been a shit show forever. Hoover blackmailed hundreds while he was a secret transvestite.
E.g. when they blundered the Atlanta Bomber hunt, but the list is a long one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FBI_controversies
I know he’s been enjoying his celebrity hobnobbing, I didn’t realize he was spending so much time with Barbra Streisand.
“Don’t Rain On My Parade!”
What’s the saying? Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel?
“Actual malice” is the high legal standard that public figures must meet to prevail in a defamation case.
I was curious what side enjoys the benefit here given, y’know… the First Amendment, and it seems like this is definitely a performative move on the government’s side.
Adam Steinbaugh, a First Amendment lawyer at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, shared a different assessment on Monday.
“Patel said proving actual malice is a ‘lay up’ (no), but the allegations in this complaint don’t even hit the backboard,” Steinbaugh wrote on X. “It will, however, accomplish the primary goal: making media outlets weighing a story think about the cost for attorneys to get a meritless lawsuit tossed.”
I’m not sure this holds up logically. WaPo and NYT did gangbusters during Trump’s first term, before their ownership structure and content guidelines pivoted hard toward institutional supplication.
There is value to the credibility that comes from standing up to actual authoritarianism, if you’re not captive to the billionaire mindset. I have to imagine that the cost/benefit for publicity like this is pretty attractive to these publications’ accounting departments.
Reason #3489 US civil law needs a loser pays law like non shit hole countries.
