FBI Director Kash Patel reacted strongly after The Atlantic published a story alleging that he’s a total drunkard and “freaked out” because he mistakenly believed President Donald J. Trump had fired him.
In the Friday hit piece that will fuel the next wave of attacks on the nation’s top cop, the outlet claims that “bouts of excessive drinking” have adversely impacted Patel’s ability to carry out his job and that his “conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences” have “alarmed” DOJ and FBI officials.
According to the piece titled “The FBI Director Is MIA” by Sarah Fitzpatrick, the director went into panic mode when a technical issue prevented him from accessing a Bureau computer system and thought that he had been terminated.
Kash Patel’s colleagues are alarmed by what they describe as erratic behavior and excessive drinking—conduct that could cost him his job, Sarah Fitzpatrick reports. She spoke with more than two dozen people with knowledge of his conduct, some of whom described it as a…
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) April 17, 2026
“On Friday, April 10, as FBI Director Kash Patel was preparing to leave work for the weekend, he struggled to log into an internal computer system,” the report reads. “He quickly became convinced that he had been locked out, and he panicked, frantically calling aides and allies to announce that he had been fired by the White House, according to nine people familiar with his outreach. Two of these people described his behavior as a ‘freak-out.’”
Fitzpatrick’s piece alleges that Patel is a juicer who drinks “to the point of obvious intoxication” and that meetings have had to be rescheduled “as a result of his alcohol-fueled nights,” citing the standard anonymous sources in “six current and former officials and others familiar with Patel’s schedule.”
The Atlantic also wildly claims that the director’s security detail had “difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated, according to information supplied to Justice Department and White House officials.”
“A request for ‘breaching equipment’—normally used by SWAT and hostage-rescue teams to quickly gain entry into buildings—was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors, according to multiple people familiar with the request,” according to the report.
Patel responded to the besmirching of his character in the only way he can: He’s suing the bastards.
see you and your entire entourage of false reporting in court… But do keep at it with the fake news, actual malice standard is now what some would call a legal lay up. https://t.co/MfbHH8OtLv pic.twitter.com/kw5U3LrfMM
— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) April 18, 2026
Writing in a Friday post to X, “see you and your entire entourage of false reporting in court… But do keep at it with the fake news, actual malice standard is now what some would call a legal lay up,” Patel also shared an email exchange between Fitzpatrick and FBI spox Ben Williamson calling her reporting “completely false at nearly 100% clip.”
Patel’s attorney, Jesse R. Binnall, shared a letter sent to The Atlantic and its “journalist” BEFORE the piece was published, putting them on notice that the claims in the report “were categorically false and defamatory.”
But they published it anyway.
This is the letter we sent to The Atlantic and Sarah Fitzpatrick BEFORE they published their hit piece on FBI Director @FBIDirectorKash. They were on notice that the claims were categorically false and defamatory. They published anyway.
See you in court. pic.twitter.com/Ke8cqNh8hY
— Jesse R. Binnall (@jbinnall) April 17, 2026
“See you in court,” Binnall wrote.
“The Atlantic’s ‘reporting’? Fabricated stories about ‘breaching equipment’ that was never requested. Intoxication claims with not a single witness willing to put their name on one. A paragraph — I’m not kidding — about the FBI Store not carrying ‘intimidating enough’ merchandise. Every serious DC reporter passed on this. Sarah Fitzpatrick and Jeffrey Goldberg printed it anyway,” FBI media adviser Erica Knight said in a post to X .”Lawsuit is being filed.”
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