WASHINGTON: FBI Director Kash Patel filed a defamation lawsuit on Monday (Apr 20) in opposition to a US journal that reported he regularly drinks to extra and is at risk of shedding his job.
Patel is searching for US$250 million in damages from The Atlantic and the creator of the article, Sarah Fitzpatrick, for what the go well with described as a “sweeping, malicious, and defamatory hit piece.”
“Defendants are after all free to criticize the management of the FBI,” the grievance filed in a federal district courtroom in Washington says.
“However they crossed the authorized line by publishing an article replete with false and clearly fabricated allegations designed to destroy Director Patel’s status and drive him from workplace,” it says.
In line with The Atlantic, Patel’s job as head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the highest regulation enforcement company, is in jeopardy partly due to what it stated have been “bouts of extreme consuming” and “unexplained absences.”
In his defamation grievance, Patel took concern with the journal’s use of nameless sources for the story.
“Fitzpatrick couldn’t get a single individual to go on the document in defence of those outrageous allegations, as an alternative relying solely on nameless sources she knew to be each extremely partisan with an ax to grind,” the go well with says.
“Defendants printed the Article with precise malice, regardless of being expressly warned, hours earlier than publication, that the central allegations have been categorically false.”
