Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump FBI Director Lawsuit Backfires Instantly after Filing

Episode Date: April 24, 2026

In breaking news, FBI Kash Patel’s attempts to litigate his way into proving that he is not prone to “excessive drinking” on the job, has backfired spectacularly in just 24 hours as the House Democrats demand that he take an alcohol abuse test and submit for sworn testimony about his security clearance and possible drinking; Patel’s own outburst at a press conference calls into question is suitability for the job; new public records requests seek his credit cards and travel expense records, and a federal judge dismisses an earlier efamation case Patel bragged about that brought against a former FBI leader about —what else— his partying in nightclubs instead of doing his job. Popok ties this whirlwind together as the drum beat to replace him grows louder. Subscribe:  @LegalAFMTN  Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum with Dr. Steve Hassan: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show The Ken Harbaugh Show: https://meidasnews.com/tag/the-ken-harbaugh-show Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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but the greatest mistake he may have ever made was to sue the Atlantic for defamation and try to clear his name, as they have alleged, as the town drunk running the FBI. Now we've got two new reports. The House Democrats, led by Jamie Raskin, are requiring that Cash Patel appear before their committee under oath to testify about whether he is or is not an excessive drinker and how that may undermine and impair his ability to be the director of the FBI. We'll go over that new demand that just came out in the last few hours. in addition, it's a bad day for cash Patel in defamation cases.

Because one of the reasons he was so confident that he would win against the Atlantic with the new lawsuit he filed for, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars is because he brought a defamation case against the former leader of the FBI who made a crack on Morning Joe that this guy appears more at nightclubs than he does for his job. on the executive suite of the FBI. He got sued for defamation. That defamation case just got dismissed by the federal judge in Houston Division of Texas because it was nothing more than hyperbolic rhetoric that can't form the basis of defamation.

It's already been a terrible 24 hours for Cash Patel as he battles it out with members of the press now that he's trying to litigate his way into rehabilitating his beleaguered reputation. I'm Michael Popak, you're on the Midas Touch Network in LegalAF. Let's rip it from the headlines. We have a new letter. We'll post it on LegalAF Substack for our paid members coming from the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, Jamie Raskin, along with Congressman Nadler, Cohen, Lou Carrera,

Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, Congressman Johnson, and Congresswoman Lofgren, directed to Cash Patel, in which it is requiring him to fill out and conduct an audit, an audit about his alleged alcohol use. In particular, the audit stands for Alcohol Use Disorder Identifying Test, the AUDIT, which they want him, to fill out as a condition of keeping his security clearance. Here is, let me read to you for the letter. Dear Director Patel, a damning explosive report recently revealed that the men and women of the FBI are privately and at times publicly alarmed by your episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences

as reported in the Atlantic. There are numerous accounts that you consume alcohol to the point of illness, direct profanity-laced outburst at support staff, and pass out drunk behind lock doors so that you're unreachable, so that the agents had to fetch a SWAT-level breaching equipment to awaken you. After repeatedly and inexplicably disappearing for long stretches of time only to reappear conspicuously inebriated, it is no surprise, this is the letter, by the way, that your purported drinking habits and erratic schedule have had demonstrably disastrous effects on your performance of duties as FBI director.

By the way, I love the way Jamie Raskin writes. On the flip side, your inability to control your impasse, pulses has reportedly undermined high-stakes criminal investigations, including the manhunt for the mass shooter at Brown University and search for the assassin of Charlie Kirk. We understand that you have sued the journalists who have reported on the widespread concerns about your job performance demanding a whopping $250 million. However, the American people deserve to hear the facts directly from you, not from your lawyers, weeks or months from now, to determine for ourselves whether your continued leadership

in the FBI constitutes a severe national security vulnerability. Given the urgency and gravity of the risk to our nation, we request that you fill out and submit to Congress the attached alcohol use disorders identification test, the screening tool, the gold standard of the U.S. about alcohol consumption. And they want everything about him taking the test, filling out the test, certifying the test,

and the like. And here is the test. We'll post it in Legal AF substack for you to see. all the questions about the drinking part. Now, if Cash Patel thought during his press conference yesterday that battling it out with the press about allegations that he made in his complaint was going to make him look reasonable, sober in his assessment, I think he had another thing coming.

Here's a clip of just yesterday FBI director Patel with a curiously, impassive Todd Blanche acting Attorney General squirming next to him. Play the clip. You in court. Can you explain the computer login issue? Just explain the computer login issue. You were not able to log into the, your lawsuit contends that you were not able to log into the system. What did you think after you were unable to log into the system? Let's have a survey. How many of you people believe that's true? Hang on. Did you communicate? You asked the question. Let me answer it. No, no. Did you communicate with anyone that you thought you were fired after you were

unable to log it. The problem with you and your report, don't come me off, you ask the question. The problem with you and your baseless reporting is that is an absolute lie. It was never said, it never happened, and I will serve in this administration as long as the president and the attorney general want me to do so. And every time you guys report false lies, every time you guys raise baseless questions, when we are here to talk about the Southern Poverty Law Center's $3 million decade-long scheme to fraudulently fleece Americans.

You are off topic. It's a simple straightforward question. If you talk to anybody about whether you thought you're tired. The simple answer to your question is you are lying. And every time you do so, I've answered your question. It's simply as follows. I was never locked out of my systems. Anybody who says anyone that says the opposite is lying.

Thank you. The lawsuit that you filed says that directly. Man, stop. You're being extraordinarily rude. And I know maybe that's part of your profession, but please just stop. If you ask a question, he can answer it. And then now you're interrupting me. Like just a little bit of respect, man, just a tiny little bit. Try it sometime.

Good. Then we've got the report. This is all the last 24 hours, folks. We got the reporting. See, Cash Patel was bragging, well, I've sued for defamation before when somebody has said, I'm a drunk. And how did that go? Well, not well.

I guess it woke up the judge in the Houston Division, Southern District of Texas federal court, Judge Hanks, George Hanks, who was appointed by Obama, because he got around to finally ruling on a motion to dismiss that was filed by Cesar Frank Fuglutzi, who used to be the four, he was the assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI. He went on the morning Joe show and at one point said the following. This is Fuglizzi. this is the premise of the lawsuit that Patel has now lost on the eve of him filing his own second lawsuit about defamation against the Atlantic about his drinking. Fuglitsy said to the host on Morning Joe, yeah, well, reportedly he's been visible at nightclubs far more than he's been on the seventh floor of the Hoover building. And there are reports that daily briefings to him have been changed from every day to maybe twice weekly. This is both a blessing and a curse because if he's really trying to run things without any experience level things, without an experience, things could be bad.

If he's not plugged in, things could be bad, but he's not, but he's allowing agents to run things. So he don't know where this is going. He sued claiming that that, Patel sued claiming that that would leave the reasonable listener to believe he has a drinking problem, which has now been fully confirmed in reporting by, the Atlantic. The judge said, I'll give you the short version of it, the judge said, in order to succeed on a defamation claim, you have to show that the statement is capable of being defamatory. The judge found that at best the statement was rhetorical hyperbole, said in jest in an amusing way, and therefore could not be the basis of a defamation case. He found that, as a matter of law,

a person of ordinary intelligence listening to the would not believe that these were actual facts about Patel. He's also going to decide whether Fuglitsi should be entitled to attorney's fees and costs. So while Patel was bragging at the time that he filed the suit a couple of days ago against the Atlantic, that I've done it before. Well, that case just failed. He's already got that defamation case failed. I believe that the Atlantic in its reporting will focus instead on actual malice, which is the protection that media has against its reporting. I'm Michael Popak, and I got some big news for our audience.

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Look, this was good, solid reporting. You can see it from the Atlantic's review. The Atlantic article itself, at least two insiders within the FBI testified and gave information against Cash Patel about his drinking and his management style at the department. That alone gives tremendous credibility to the reporting, corroborating the reporting, and should get over the hurdle of actual malice, where Cash Patel has to allege facts, to demonstrate that the Atlantic knew that the reporting was false or had reckless disregard for its truth or falsity. It's not enough for the person who's the subject of the article to say, I didn't do it.

I'm not a drunk. That's not enough to create a situation where actual malice is established to sue successfully a media entity. Every target says they're not guilty. Everybody says they didn't do it. That's not enough. if you have several that say with credible evidence that he did, you're allowed to run that story. But this new, this is not, by the way,

the only investigation that has been open now against Cash Patel. We also have democracy forward, our friends who bring frequent Freedom of Information Act requests, demanding information. They have filed a FOIA and ultimately a FOIA lawsuit to try to get from the FBI the travel records, the expense records, the credit card records about whether he's a drinker or not. And I'm going to have Sky Perryman who runs democracy forward on with us on legal AF to brief our audience.

So you've got the Democracy Forward Freedom of Information Act demand for records. You've got the committee on the judiciary going after Cash Patel, not just for testimony under oath, which they're demanding, but also that he fill out an alcohol assessment report immediately because it's a national security issue as they try to pull his national security clearance. So what was the thinking? I always like to sit back when I think about cases like this as a practicing lawyer. What was the strategy or tactics that the Cash Patel's lawyers were employing when they decided to sue first and ask questions later?

I was shocked that the actual complaint was not under oath. If I had Cash Patel as a client, which I never would, I would have him sign it under a verification to verify all those things are true in the complaint. He can't even keep track of what's in his own complaint. You saw it in the clip that I played from yesterday at his press conference. So if I have suspicion that maybe some of these facts may not be true to protect myself in my law license, I have the client a test.

under oath to the veracity and the truthfulness of those statements. They didn't do that. That was the first tell. This is obviously a Donald Trump trying to curry favor with Donald Trump, using former lawyers that Donald Trump has used before to take a page out of Donald Trump's playbook to sue for defamation. But the differences Donald Trump can walk from those cases, and he often does. He just lost his own case against the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch for defamation just in the last three weeks.

but Cash Patel wants to act tough to try to keep his job. Look, we all have seen Cash Patel in action. We know that he is doing terribly and that Donald Trump, according to reports, has been considering replacing him and he should. You know, this is what Ted Liu had to say about Cash Patel in the last 24 hours, the congressman who participated in the letter that I just wrote,

where he basically said that, Remember when people took a picture of the cabinet at the beginning 15 months ago and said it was the greatest cabinets in 1776? Three or four of them are gone already. Play the clip with Ted Lou. Thank you, Chairman Aguilar. February 25th of this year, Transylation Secretary Duffy posted a picture of Trump's cabinet and arrogantly boasted best cabinet since 1776. In less than two months, three of those cabinet secretaries are gone. Pam Bondi, Chrissy Noem, and now Laurie Chavez-Dur-Imer. I note that Lori Chavez-Durreemar can now join Chrissy Noem at a fake position at the shield of the Americas. The reality is that these cabinets out of control incompetence and corruption have made it the worst cabinet since 1776, and Cash Patel is now.

Next. Cash Patel flew on taxpayers' dime to the Olympics, and on taxpayers' dime partied and drank at the Olympics. He's also instilled a culture of fear at the FBI, and he lied about the Epstein investigation when he said that there was no credible evidence that Epstein trafficked any victim to third parties. There's mountains of such evidence. And then this past week, the Atlantic put out an article that shows that Cash Patel appears to be a raging alcoholic. He should not be FBI director. He should go seek help and treatment.

All right, we're going to continue to report on it where on the Midas Touch Network on on Legal A.F. We're continuing to expand our independent reporting and commentary. With your help, we'll do it. We'll hit 1.2 million subscribers on the Legal AF YouTube channel. And thank you for your support that got us not one, not two, but three Webby Awards for the Intersection, my podcast on Tuesday nights, and for the Legal. A.F podcast. Until my next report, this is Michael Popock.

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