Kash Patel just took a legal loss. A federal judge in Houston dismissed the FBI director’s defamation lawsuit against former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi on Tuesday, ruling that a comment about Patel spending more time in nightclubs than at FBI headquarters was not defamatory at all.
The case stems from a May 2025 appearance Figliuzzi made on MS NOW’s Morning Joe. According to Newsweek, Figliuzzi told co-host Jonathan Lemire: “Well, reportedly, he’s been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of the Hoover building.” Figliuzzi also claimed at the time that Patel’s daily intelligence briefings had been scaled back from every day to roughly twice a week, and that the bureau was in a state of chaos.
Patel filed the lawsuit in June 2025, calling the nightclub remark a “fabricated specific lie.” His legal team argued that Figliuzzi “had no basis for this statement,” and Patel’s suit flatly stated he had “not spent a single minute inside of a nightclub” since taking over as FBI director.
Judge: no reasonable person would take it literally
U.S. District Court Judge George Hanks Jr., an Obama appointee, didn’t buy it. He ruled that Figliuzzi’s words were “rhetorical hyperbole that cannot constitute defamation,” writing that no person of ordinary intelligence would have understood the remark as a literal description of Patel’s whereabouts. “Dir. Patel has failed to state a claim against Figliuzzi, and his lawsuit must be dismissed,” Hanks wrote in his decision.
The judge also explained that Figliuzzi delivered his answer “in an exaggerated, provocative and amusing way,” which is precisely the kind of speech courts have historically protected under First Amendment doctrine. Under Texas law, statements that audiences would recognize as rhetorical exaggeration are not actionable as defamation.
Figliuzzi’s attorney Marc Fuller called it a victory for the free press. “This is a victory for press freedom and the First Amendment,” Fuller said in a statement to CNBC. “Director Patel’s claim against Frank was baseless, and we are pleased that the court dismissed it.”
Figliuzzi himself celebrated on Substack, writing: “I’m appreciative of the judge’s ruling. This is a win for the first amendment and for a free press.”
The judge did, however, rule against Figliuzzi’s request to recover his attorney fees and court costs under Texas’s anti-SLAPP statute, the law designed to dismiss lawsuits that target protected speech and public participation.
MS NOW walked back the comment, but the lawsuit pressed on
Notably, MS NOW had already distanced itself from Figliuzzi’s remark before the lawsuit was resolved. Co-host Lemire later acknowledged on-air that the nightclub claim was “a misstatement” and that the network had “not verified that claim.” Even so, Patel continued pursuing the lawsuit until Tuesday’s dismissal.
This case is separate from the legal battles some politicians are increasingly using to push back on media coverage they dislike. Patel has another, far larger fight ahead. The Daily Beast reports he filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic just a day before this dismissal, after the magazine published a report citing more than two dozen current and former officials who described him as “erratic” and said he had appeared intoxicated on the job on multiple occasions.
At a press conference Tuesday, Patel came out swinging. “I can say unequivocally that I never listen to the fake news mafia, and when they get louder, it just means I’m doing my job,” he told reporters. He also addressed footage of him drinking beer with the US men’s hockey team at the Winter Olympics in February. “I’m like an everyday American who loves his country, loves the sport of hockey, and champions my friends when they raise a gold medal,” he said.
“I’ve never been intoxicated on the job, and that is why we filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit. And any one of you that wants to participate, bring it on.” The Atlantic, for its part, said it stands by its reporting. Patel’s pattern of legal action against media outlets has drawn attention not just for its ambition but for its mixed results, and the ethics-related scrutiny some officials face shows legal pressure on public figures can cut in multiple directions.
