FBI director Kash Patel files $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic

You know what's fun about formal legal proceedings?

Discovery!

Good luck with that you drunken buffoon.

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.

"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..."

I know he's been enjoying his celebrity hobnobbing, I didn't realize he was spending so much time with Barbra Streisand.

It's unbelievable how absurd a country can be.

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.

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.

...[The FBI] has required the deployment of ‘breaching equipment’ to extract him from locked rooms

Wait, how did I miss this??

What’s the saying? Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel?

$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.

Just another of the pedo's DUI hires.

“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.