FBI Director Kash Patel’s legal team acknowledged in a court filing that his security detail possessed “breaching equipment” after a report about his alcohol use claimed the director had been unreachable.
Last month, The Atlantic moved to dismiss a $250 million lawsuit brought by Patel in April after the magazine reported he had alarmed colleagues with excessive drinking and unexplained absences as FBI director.
His attorneys filed an opposition brief on Monday, asking a federal judge to allow the lawsuit to proceed.
The Atlantic’s April article alleged that breaching equipment was “requested” because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors. The magazine noted that the equipment was “normally used by SWAT and hostage-rescue teams to quickly gain entry into buildings.”
Patel’s attorneys argued the claim was implausible — and in doing so, acknowledged the equipment was already on hand.
“Breach equipment is already provided to all FBI protection details as standard protocol,” the filing said. “One would not ‘request’ what one already possesses.”
The same filing then faulted The Atlantic for never seeking “documentation of the alleged breach” — even though the magazine never reported that a breach occurred, only that the equipment was requested.
The filing also never directly denies the core claim in The Atlantic’s sub-headline.
“Kash Patel has alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences,” the article said, but Patel has never directly refuted that assertion in court documents.
“The leap from disclosed a club membership, to too drunk for his detail to wake him is not an inference supported by the public record,” the brief argued.
“A beer at a sporting celebration does not make it plausible that Director Patel was an alcoholic, regularly intoxicated, or incapacitated at work,” the filing added.
The Atlantic said it has asked the court to allow it to seek FBI and Justice Department records — including depositions of key individuals — as part of its defense.
“If Director Patel did not want to face this process, he should not have filed this suit,” Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg insisted.
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