FBI Director Kash Patel filed a $250 million lawsuit on Monday against The Atlantic over a piece published Friday alleging he has alarmed colleagues with excessive drinking, erratic behavior and frequent absences.

The Atlantic published a piece on Friday, headlined, “The FBI Director Is MIA,” which cited multiple anonymous sources telling the outlet that the FBI director had an “emotional outburst” related to difficulty logging into a computer system, has had “bouts of excessive drinking” and been absent enough to prompt security concerns.

The lawsuit states The Atlantic, and its staff writer, Sarah Fitzpatrick, must be held “accountable for a sweeping, malicious, and defamatory hit piece published on April 17, 2026.” 

It continued, “Defendants are of course free to criticize the leadership of the FBI, but they crossed the legal line by publishing an article replete with false and obviously fabricated allegations designed to destroy Director Patel’s reputation and drive him from office.” 

KASH PATEL TAUNTS SWALWELL WITH FBI SIT-DOWN AS RESIGNATION FALLOUT GROWS

Fitzpatrick reported, among other claims, that Patel has been difficult to wake up by his security team on multiple occasions because he was seemingly intoxicated.

Patel vowed over the weekend to sue The Atlantic for the story.

The suit states, “Defendants published the Article with actual malice, despite being expressly warned, hours before publication, that the central allegations were categorically false; despite having abundant publicly available information contradicting those allegations; despite obvious and fatal defects in their own sourcing; despite The Atlantic’s well-documented, long-running editorial animus toward Director Patel; despite a request for additional time to respond that Defendants refused to honor.”

FBI DIRECTOR KASH PATEL: WE HAVE MADE AMERICA SAFER IN JUST ONE YEAR

“We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel, and we will vigorously defend The Atlantic and our journalists against this meritless lawsuit,” The Atlantic said in a statement.

Patel took aim at the piece in a post to X on Saturday. 

“Memo to the fake news – the only time I’ll ever actually be concerned about the hit piece lies you write about me will be when you stop. Keep talking, it means I’m doing exactly what I should be doing. And no amount of BS you write will ever deter this FBI from making America safe again and taking down the criminals you love,” Patel wrote.

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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Atlantic in a statement that Patel “remains a critical player on the Administration’s law and order team.” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche also threw his support behind the FBI Director, telling Fitzpatrick, “Patel has accomplished more in 14 months than the previous administration did in four years. Anonymously sourced hit pieces do not constitute journalism.”

Patel made an announcement Sunday during an appearance on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” where he confirmed his intent to pursue legal action against the publication.

“Absolutely, it’s coming tomorrow,” Patel said when asked about whether he would officially file a lawsuit.

The report said Patel had been able to hang on to his job so far “because of his commitment to using the federal government to target political or personal adversaries of the president.” It also said he’s been aggressive in cracking down on employees he deems disloyal.

Patel told Bartiromo that the story was proof he was doing his job.

“We have to fight back against the fake news,” he said, adding, “I won’t tolerate their attacks on me, because in their indirect attacks on the men and women of the FBI that we’ve cleaned up, and this historic, prolific year of crime reduction across the board… They’ve never going to stop me from completing the mission that President Trump asked me to do, which is safeguarding America, and we’re doing it better than ever before.”

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Andrew Weber, a national security expert, revealed on Sunday that removing Iran’s highly enriched uranium would likely take thousands of U.S. troops and experts to evacuate the material from the country.

Weber served as the assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical & Biological Defense Programs under former President Barack Obama and played a role in removing enriched uranium from Kazakhstan that was left behind by the Soviet Union.

CBS News’ Cecilia Vega asked Weber during a “60 Minutes” interview if the same sort of mission would be possible in Iran.

“In Iran, we couldn’t send a team in to do this unilaterally without great risk,” he said. “You would need to set up in the middle of the country a secure perimeter. It would probably take thousands of U.S. troops to secure the facility while our experts excavated the HEU that’s located inside deep tunnels at a place called Isfahan.”

NEXT MOVE ON IRAN: SEIZE KHARG ISLAND, SECURE URANIUM OR RISK GROUND WAR ESCALATION

Matthew Bunn, a nuclear policy analyst and former White House adviser, said forces in the U.S. have been training for something like this.

“It’s not like Iran hasn’t thought about the possibility that we might do this. But U.S. Special Forces have been training for deep underground facilities of one kind or another for a long, long, long time,” Bunn told CBS.

Vega also asked about President Donald Trump, after the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facility in 2025, saying that Iran’s program had been completely obliterated.

“Yeah, that statement is just not true,” Bunn said. “You can’t say that a program that still has enough nuclear material for a bunch of nuclear bombs is obliterated. Unfortunately. There’s no doubt that the combination of the strikes in June of last year, and the ongoing war, have seriously set back Iran’s capabilities. But the remaining capabilities are substantial. You can’t bomb away their knowledge.”

TRUMP RENEWS BRIDGE, POWER PLANT THREAT AGAINST IRAN IN PUSH FOR DEAL, MOCKS ‘TOUGH GUY’ IRGC

Trump has said the U.S. could take Iran’s enriched uranium.

“Iran will not have a nuclear weapon, and we’re going to get the dust back. We’ll get it back. Either we’ll get it back from them or we’ll take it,” Trump said at the White House in March.

The White House did not immediately return Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

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Peace talks with Iran were expected to begin in Pakistan on Tuesday, but recent reports from Iranian state media have thrown the meetings into doubt. The fragile two-week ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran will expire on Wednesday, and there has been no news on extending the truce.

Trump has said repeatedly that his goal in going to war with Iran was to ensure that the country does not build a nuclear weapon.