FBI Director Kash Patel has seen a defamation lawsuit he brought against an MS NOW pundit who accused him of spending more time in nightclubs than at the office dismissed by a Texas court.
Patel was incensed when former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi appeared on the Morning Joe breakfast show on May 2 last year and told hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski that the director had “been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of” the bureau’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Patel sued Figliuzzi in June, accusing him of “fabricating a specific lie” arising from “clear animus,” insisting: “Since becoming Director of the FBI, Director Patel has not spent a single minute inside of a nightclub.”
But U.S. District Court Judge George Hanks Jr ruled in Houston Tuesday that Figliuzzi’s remark “is rhetorical hyperbole that cannot constitute defamation.”
He elaborated: “When taken in context, [it] cannot have been perceived by a person of ordinary intelligence as stating actual facts about Patel.
“A person of reasonable intelligence and learning would not have taken his statement literally: that Director Patel has actually spent more hours physically in a nightclub than he has spent physically in his office building.
“By saying that Patel spent ‘far more’ time at nightclubs than his office, Figliuzzi delivered his answer ‘in an exaggerated, provocative and amusing way,’ employing rhetorical hyperbole.”
“Accordingly, Director Patel has failed to state a claim against Figliuzzi, and his lawsuit must be dismissed,” his decision concluded.
Marc Fuller, Figluizzi’s lawyer, told CNBC: “This is a victory for press freedom and the First Amendment. Director Patel’s claim against Frank was baseless, and we are pleased that the court dismissed it.”
The development comes in the same week that Patel launched an unrelated $250 million defamation suit against The Atlantic magazine over a profile published late last week in which he was characterized as habitually drinking to excess, creating a potential national security vulnerability, which the director has denied.
“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,” his lawyers wrote in their filing.
Georgia Republican Rep. Rich McCormick has since leaped to Patel’s defense, saying that whatever he did on his own time was his business, adding: “I’ve seen plenty of guys drink and have fun.”
Patel appeared on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo over the weekend and not only disparaged The Atlantic’s reporting but also claimed to have “evidence” that would finally prove President Donald Trump’s long-standing claim that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him by a vast nationwide conspiracy.
Rumors have swirled around Washington in recent days that Trump could be about to fire Patel, despite having lost three members of his cabinet – Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and now Lori Chavez-DeRemer – in relatively quick succession.
Trump is known to disapprove of drinking, after losing his brother to alcoholism and abstaining from alcohol throughout his life, and may prefer to avoid dragging the scandal out further.
Nearly 30,000 people have already signed a MoveOn petition demanding an inquiry into Patel’s alleged misconduct.
Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar signaled Monday that the Senate Judiciary Committee is thinking along similar lines.
