Tuesday was a big day for Kash Patel’s legal portfolio… just not in the direction he intended.
As we noted earlier this week, the $250 million defamation complaint against The Atlantic filed by Patel and his lawyer Jesse Binnall was already straining credulity before the ink dried. The 19-page document opened with what amounted to a LinkedIn post, may have been drafted with AI assistance, and contained the word “feable” — which is not, for the record, how you spell “feeble” especially not in a quarter-billion-dollar lawsuit.
Tuesday brought two new developments that managed to make the whole enterprise look even worse.
While Patel was busy promoting his shiny new Atlantic suit, a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas dismissed his other defamation lawsuit — the one against former FBI counterintelligence assistant director Frank Figliuzzi, who said on Morning Joe that Patel had “been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of the Hoover building.”
U.S. District Judge George Hanks Jr. was not impressed. The court found that Figliuzzi’s comment “when taken in context, cannot have been perceived by a person of ordinary intelligence as stating actual facts about Patel.” A reasonable person, the judge continued, “would not have taken his statement literally: that Dir. Patel has actually spent more hours physically in a nightclub than he has spent physically in his office building.” In other words: it was a joke. A sarcastic, hyperbolic quip. The kind of thing that is not defamation, but is, in fact, just someone clowning on a public official on cable television, something Americans are constitutionally permitted to do.
Figliuzzi had requested attorneys’ fees under the Texas anti-SLAPP law, but the court denied that request, finding the state’s anti-SLAPP statute inapplicable in federal court. So Patel walks away empty-handed, but without a fee-shifting penalty. Lucky him. Or, to adopt the Director’s preferred legal framing: a complete layup, narrowly avoided.
Now here’s where the Atlantic suit comes back into the picture. Patel’s complaint explicitly cites the Figliuzzi litigation to support his assertion of The Atlantic‘s actual malice, arguing that the magazine knew about the pending lawsuit, knew that similar nightclub-adjacent allegations had been “retracted” by MSNBC, and published anyway. From the complaint: the FBI “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.”
Got that? The Figliuzzi lawsuit was Exhibit A in the actual malice argument against The Atlantic. The lawsuit Patel just lost. The one a federal judge just ruled was based on protected rhetorical hyperbole. The precedent that the nightclub-adjacent criticism of Patel is the kind of thing a reasonable person doesn’t take literally.
You might want to take that exhibit out of the binder, Jesse.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday afternoon, Patel and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche held a press conference to announce what Blanche is framing as a sweeping fraud indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center. But it took a notable detour when NBC News reporter Ryan Reilly had some questions about Patel’s lawsuit instead.
Specifically, Reilly asked Patel whether on April 10, Patel “had a routine technical problem logging into a government system, which was quickly fixed.” The Atlantic had reported that this login issue triggered a “freak-out” in which Patel believed he’d been fired.
REILLY: Can you explain the computer log in issue? Your lawsuit contends you were not able to log into the system
PATEL: Let’s have a survey. How many of you people believe that’s true?
REILLY: Did you communicate with anyone you thought you were fired?
PATEL: It’s an absolute lie. It never happened. You are lying.
REILLY: The lawsuit says the opposite!
The lawsuit denies the freak-out characterization, but it does not deny the login problem. It admits it, right there on the page, in the document Binnall filed in federal court that Patel suffered a “routine technical problem logging into a government system.” Patel, it seems, does not believe the allegations in his own complaint.
When Reilly, reasonably, one would think, pointed this out, Blanche took over. The Acting Attorney General, sensing an opportunity to demonstrate the administration’s commitment to collegial discourse, stepped forward and told the reporter: “Stop. You’re being extraordinarily rude. And I know maybe that’s part of your profession, but please just stop. If you ask a question, he can answer it… Just a little bit of respect, man, just a tiny little bit. Try it some time.”
Ryan Reilly was asking the FBI Director to explain his own lawsuit. That is the rude behavior in question.
As we’ve covered from the start, this suit always looked less like litigation and more like a message to Trump that Patel is a fighter. Nothing about Tuesday changed that read. It did, however, raise a new question… has Kash Patel actually read his own complaint?
Earlier: FBI Director Promises To Pound ‘The Atlantic’ Like A Six Pack On A Tuesday
Kash Patel’s $250 Million Defamation Lawsuit Looks Better With Beer Goggles
Did Kash Patel’s Lawyers Have ChatGPT File A $250 Million Lawsuit?
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1
The post Kash Patel’s $250 Million Lawsuit Was Going Fine Until He Started Talking About It appeared first on Above the Law.
Tuesday was a big day for Kash Patel’s legal portfolio… just not in the direction he intended.
As we noted earlier this week, the $250 million defamation complaint against The Atlantic filed by Patel and his lawyer Jesse Binnall was already straining credulity before the ink dried. The 19-page document opened with what amounted to a LinkedIn post, may have been drafted with AI assistance, and contained the word “feable” — which is not, for the record, how you spell “feeble” especially not in a quarter-billion-dollar lawsuit.
Tuesday brought two new developments that managed to make the whole enterprise look even worse.
While Patel was busy promoting his shiny new Atlantic suit, a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas dismissed his other defamation lawsuit — the one against former FBI counterintelligence assistant director Frank Figliuzzi, who said on Morning Joe that Patel had “been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of the Hoover building.”
U.S. District Judge George Hanks Jr. was not impressed. The court found that Figliuzzi’s comment “when taken in context, cannot have been perceived by a person of ordinary intelligence as stating actual facts about Patel.” A reasonable person, the judge continued, “would not have taken his statement literally: that Dir. Patel has actually spent more hours physically in a nightclub than he has spent physically in his office building.” In other words: it was a joke. A sarcastic, hyperbolic quip. The kind of thing that is not defamation, but is, in fact, just someone clowning on a public official on cable television, something Americans are constitutionally permitted to do.
Figliuzzi had requested attorneys’ fees under the Texas anti-SLAPP law, but the court denied that request, finding the state’s anti-SLAPP statute inapplicable in federal court. So Patel walks away empty-handed, but without a fee-shifting penalty. Lucky him. Or, to adopt the Director’s preferred legal framing: a complete layup, narrowly avoided.
Now here’s where the Atlantic suit comes back into the picture. Patel’s complaint explicitly cites the Figliuzzi litigation to support his assertion of The Atlantic‘s actual malice, arguing that the magazine knew about the pending lawsuit, knew that similar nightclub-adjacent allegations had been “retracted” by MSNBC, and published anyway. From the complaint: the FBI “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.”
Got that? The Figliuzzi lawsuit was Exhibit A in the actual malice argument against The Atlantic. The lawsuit Patel just lost. The one a federal judge just ruled was based on protected rhetorical hyperbole. The precedent that the nightclub-adjacent criticism of Patel is the kind of thing a reasonable person doesn’t take literally.
You might want to take that exhibit out of the binder, Jesse.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday afternoon, Patel and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche held a press conference to announce what Blanche is framing as a sweeping fraud indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center. But it took a notable detour when NBC News reporter Ryan Reilly had some questions about Patel’s lawsuit instead.
Specifically, Reilly asked Patel whether on April 10, Patel “had a routine technical problem logging into a government system, which was quickly fixed.” The Atlantic had reported that this login issue triggered a “freak-out” in which Patel believed he’d been fired.
REILLY: Can you explain the computer log in issue? Your lawsuit contends you were not able to log into the system
PATEL: Let’s have a survey. How many of you people believe that’s true?
REILLY: Did you communicate with anyone you thought you were fired?
PATEL: It’s an absolute lie. It never happened. You are lying.
REILLY: The lawsuit says the opposite!
The lawsuit denies the freak-out characterization, but it does not deny the login problem. It admits it, right there on the page, in the document Binnall filed in federal court that Patel suffered a “routine technical problem logging into a government system.” Patel, it seems, does not believe the allegations in his own complaint.
When Reilly, reasonably, one would think, pointed this out, Blanche took over. The Acting Attorney General, sensing an opportunity to demonstrate the administration’s commitment to collegial discourse, stepped forward and told the reporter: “Stop. You’re being extraordinarily rude. And I know maybe that’s part of your profession, but please just stop. If you ask a question, he can answer it… Just a little bit of respect, man, just a tiny little bit. Try it some time.”
Ryan Reilly was asking the FBI Director to explain his own lawsuit. That is the rude behavior in question.
As we’ve covered from the start, this suit always looked less like litigation and more like a message to Trump that Patel is a fighter. Nothing about Tuesday changed that read. It did, however, raise a new question… has Kash Patel actually read his own complaint?
Earlier: FBI Director Promises To Pound ‘The Atlantic’ Like A Six Pack On A Tuesday
Kash Patel’s $250 Million Defamation Lawsuit Looks Better With Beer Goggles
Did Kash Patel’s Lawyers Have ChatGPT File A $250 Million Lawsuit?
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1
