Kash Patel LAWSUIT DOOMED with SERIAL LOSER LAWYER?!?!

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]FBI Director Kash Patel has followed through on his threatened lawsuit against The Atlantic and its reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick, who reached out to dozens of sources in service of her explosive reporting into Patel's drinking, which has alarmed, according to The Atlantic, not only Patel's colleagues inside the Bureau, but also Donald Trump himself. We're going to explain why that reporting could threaten Patel's tenure at the FBI and what the allegations of his lawsuit are today on All Rise News and Legal AF, but we're also going to take a look at the man behind the curtain, Patel's lawyer, Jesse Binnall.

[00:00:45]Jesse Binnall has become, through his law firm, a kind of one-stop shop for MAGA litigants who want to sue the news media for accurate reporting. He's behind the failed lawsuit by Michael Flynn. He's behind a failed lawsuit by Devin Nunes. And he was also behind a recently failed lawsuit by former Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson against CNN.

[00:01:10]And that one is important because very recently, Robinson admitted in a podcast that he was lying when he denied the CNN reporting that he had made racist and inflammatory remarks on a pornography website.

[00:01:29]in that had tanked his run for governor of North Carolina. And why did he do it?

[00:01:35]Robinson said it was to protect Trump.

[00:01:39]Here's the clip. The most expedient thing to do for the people around me was to just continue to continue to fight.

[00:01:47]And uh if I had to ignore the truth at that moment for their expediency, I felt like it was the right thing to do. Yeah. I felt like it was the right thing to do.

[00:01:57]We can deal with this on the back end.

[00:01:59]But I certainly don't want to be the person that caused uh the president of the United States the election.

[00:02:05]Uh didn't want to cause uh uh cause anyone else their election.

[00:02:10]Uh I guess there may be some people that feel like that I did. But I did everything within my power to ensure that I kept the fight focused on the governor's race. And I tried to draw as much fire away from them as possible by focusing on that instead of focusing on uh the accusations that have been made against me. I wanted to show that clip because it could speak to this pattern in this these lawsuits that we've been seeing from Jesse Binnall and his clients in the MAGA world, that even when the lawsuits fail, they can serve a different purpose.

[00:02:50]Today on All Rise News and Legal AF, our guest is a frequent guest of this show, Mitchell Epner, a media lawyer and a former federal prosecutor. Take a moment to subscribe right now and we'll get right into it. Thanks for coming on the show once again. Thank you for having me.

[00:03:08]So, what do you think is the strategic purpose of uh Kash Patel bringing this lawsuit against The Atlantic and hiring this counsel to do it?

[00:03:21]I think Kash Patel fears that he's about to get fired as FBI Director. He believes that Donald Trump won't fire him if he's seen as bringing a lawsuit against Trump's enemies in the media.

[00:03:34]So, he is trying to start that war and keep it going as long as he can to avoid getting fired. As I said a little bit earlier, Jesse Binnall and his law firm have been behind a lot of MAGA loyalist cases. There's Mark Robinson, the uh failed candidate in North Carolina. There's Devin Nunes and his dismissed lawsuit against Esquire.

[00:03:58]Michael Flynn, his failed lawsuit against Rick Wilson. And he's also represented Patel's girlfriend through his law firm. What do you know about Jesse Binnall's and his law firm's reputation?

[00:04:13]Well, if if you want to bring a frivolous defamation suit, Jesse Binnall is the first name that you should look for.

[00:04:22]Well, expand on that a little bit. Uh you know, he has he has this record.

[00:04:28]What is his goal if all and there aren't too many successes in the ones that I'm uh site rattling off? What's the point of these lawsuits? So, this goes back to the Roy Cohn theory of litigation.

[00:04:41]Doesn't have to be true. Just keep the ball in the air for long enough so that they can't come after you. It it it's a very simple and very cynical strategy.

[00:04:51]And there is a type of statute known as anti-SLAPP laws, strategic lawsuits against public participation, that are meant to deter lawsuits that are designed to chill free speech. Why aren't these laws seeming to have that effect? Because well, first of all, you you're asking the right question. And the anti-SLAPP laws are a step in the right direction. The problem is that the remedy under the anti-SLAPP law is number one, the case gets dismissed. And number two, the attorney's fees get paid for by the plaintiff. Well, Kash Patel is never going to be reaching into his own pocket to be paying this. There is a There is a vast ocean of MAGA money that is out there that all of these people, including Mark Robinson, know they can tap into and the attorneys who represent them know they can tap into. It it So, if somebody's not paying for dinner and they don't care if it gets taken away from them, then there really is no sanction here.

[00:06:01]Mhm.

[00:06:02]Let's go a little bit into the article that The Atlantic published. It was under the title Kash Patel's erratic behavior could cost him his job. It starts out pretty memorably with him locked out of his computer believing that he was fired, according to The Atlantic sources, and it turns out to be an IT issue. And here's what the magazine reported. Quote, "The IT lockout episode is emblematic of Patel's tumultuous tenure as uh Director of the FBI. He is erratic, suspicious of others, and prone to jumping to conclusions before he has necessary evidence, according to more than two dozen people I interviewed about Patel's conduct, including current and former FBI officials, staff at law enforcement and intelligence agencies, hospital industry workers, members of Congress, political operatives, lobbyists, and former advisers." Now, these sources are anonymous, but there are two dozen of them. They're described here. You, as a media attorney, if you're representing a a client with that kind of sourcing, do you feel comfortable or not comfortable?

[00:07:12]Well, you always feel uncomfortable in that you don't want to end up in a situation where you have to show who your sources were. You can feel comfortable that all of the work has been done correctly, but the process of showing that work will preclude you from being able to do future stories because sources who were who came forward only because they were anonymous are going to make it known, "Hey, I I didn't agree to be named." And future people will not go to The Atlantic if they have to be named. And And frankly, they won't go to the press in general because people don't remember specific details. What they remember is generally, if you cross the Trump administration and they sue the reporter, your name could end up in the middle of the fight.

[00:08:11]I'm glad that you mentioned that point because something that I'm hearing very often in terms of commentary about this lawsuit is the notion of discovery. And that if this lawsuit isn't immediately dismissed, it goes to discovery and you see a lot of people saying, "Oh, discovery is going to be lit." In the sense that we're going to find out all of the skeletons in Patel's closet. But isn't it also the point of discovery here that Patel is trying to unmask the two dozen people who are the source of this reporting?

[00:08:46]So, I'm going to agree with you by disagreeing. And what I mean by that is I think Kash Patel's goal here is to keep his job and he doesn't care about any of the rest of this. I This is my impression of what he's doing. So, he knows that going after the sources is likely to curry favor with Donald Trump.

[00:09:10]And that's what he's trying to do. And once you already had suffered a fatal wound, as I think Kash Patel has, and all you're looking for is additional time, the fact that you might get additional wounds in the course of the fight really doesn't much matter because he's already dead. Mhm.

[00:09:31]And one of the things that this article talks about is his paranoia in the position that he is, uh according to the reporting, making employees at the FBI take polygraph tests about whether they spoke about him. Uh is that another expression of that uh through this lawsuit? One of the ways that Kash Patel keeps showing that he's not fit for the job is by insisting that FBI agents take polygraph tests because any experienced law enforcement person will tell you that the polygraph test does not test whether or not you're lying. It tests whether or not you're nervous. And FBI agents who are prepared to leak are certainly not going to be nervous if they're put on the box.

[00:10:18]>> [snorts] >> Uh the article ends pretty memorably with Kash Patel complaining that the FBI merchandise doesn't look sufficiently tough to his estimation. And one of the sources of the reporting replies something to the effect of well, you know, thank God that he's basically consumed with that kind of trivial stuff because it's less of a threat to the rule of law. But at the same time, he's a the director of the FBI and what if something serious happened? What do you think the episode reveals around him?

[00:10:56]I think it reveals that if there's a problem, he may be too drunk to deal with it. That's the most fundamental thing that's revealed in this article.

[00:11:05]Um the things that and I want to go into just a little bit of detail about the specific allegations that Kash Patel says are defamatory.

[00:11:16]A lot of them are I was not drunk at this place at this time. But he doesn't deny he was drinking at that place at that time. He only denies he was drunk. Well, that's clearly a matter of opinion. Um he doesn't he doesn't deny that the FBI brought breaching equipment in so that it could get to him if he was, you know, non-responsive in a room. He says, "Well, that's standard operating procedure. They always have that sort of breaching equipment and it's not because I was drunk on all these occasions."

[00:11:51]Um He keeps saying, "Well, they shouldn't have published the story because the FBI denied the veracity of it." That does not point in favor of the lawsuit. It points against it because in order to prove actual malice, you have to show that it was a bad procedure that was used in order to determine the veracity of the story. And the courts, as we've discussed previously, have held if you publish the denials, which they did, that goes to show that you didn't act with actual malice. So, from beginning to end, this is an ill-considered lawsuit. Um there are few things that I think fall outside of opinion and are potentially actually verifiable facts.

[00:12:43]And it is possible that a judge would say you survived the motion to dismiss on that basis. But if I were the judge, um and we I do not know which judge it is and shame on me for not figuring that out beforehand.

[00:13:02]But if I were a judge who cared about protecting the First Amendment, I would hold extraordinarily limited discovery on three topics. One, whether or not um uh Kash Patel had to was so drunk that he had to reschedule meetings that were set for early in the morning.

[00:13:22]Um Second, whether or not the FBI had trouble waking Patel because he was so drunk. And number three, whether Patel had unexplained absences. Those are the only three things that seem like they could be defamatory because they're facts that could be true or false as opposed to opinions.

[00:13:41]Um and if I were the judge, those are the three facts and literally nothing else. Right. And in terms of verifiable facts, one of the uh uh reporting that that I found very eye-opening was the one that alluded to Kash Patel's uh antics with the USA hop hockey team. That in the aftermath of that, where he was seen drinking and we can put on the video.

[00:14:20]And right after this video went public, according to the Atlantic, he got a call from Donald Trump. That seems like a verifiable fact. Trump either called him to express concern or he didn't. And that seems like a pretty detailed thing for the Atlantic to unearth. Well, yes, it is. That is not something that Patel alleges is false in his lawsuit. So, if that were false, I'm pretty certain he would have alleged it was false. I'm going to go sideways for one moment. In my much younger years, when I was in college, I was a radio broadcaster for the hockey team of my college. And I was barely tolerated in the locker room. These were authentic tough guys. I was a guy with an a microphone and, you know, I can tell um having been around hockey locker rooms for a long time, I believe I can tell when they are the members of the team are begrudgingly tolerating a foreign presence. Um Kash Patel showing up, you know, 20 some odd years older than anybody on the team um doing this performative masculinity ear tug around them, they gave him the sort of golf clap that you would give to somebody who, you know, finished last at a 5K. Um it it was ugly, it was stupid. It appears Donald Trump thought it was ugly and stupid. Kash Patel really has brought dishonor upon the FBI.

[00:15:57]And of course, according to the reporting, one of the things that they pointed out about Trump is that he had a brother who suffered from alcoholism and that that was one of the things that prompted his call to Kash Patel. I want to go a little bit deeper into the actual malice standard. You brought it up. We discussed it a lot whenever there's a defamation suit. So, doesn't that mean that for Kash Patel to prevail in a lawsuit like this, not only does the reporting have to be false, Kash Patel would need to show that the two dozen sources uh that uh Sara Fitzpatrick of the Atlantic approached for her reporting were so obviously not credible that she recklessly disregarded two dozen people's lack of credibility?

[00:16:49]So, yes, but this is the opposite of the first rule of improv. Mhm. It's "And." Yes, but in or in order to end up there, you have to then make disclosure at least to the court, if not to the public, of who those two dozen sources were in order to be able to assess their credibility. And there's a real if you end up there, there is a real possibility of a trial where a judge would say, "I can't make the decision as a matter of law as to whether or not these people are credible. That's what juries are for."

[00:17:30]And then you really have done great violence to the First Amendment.

[00:17:36]Thank you very much, Mitch, for breaking it down once again. Thank you for having me.

[00:17:41]And for folks who want to find out more about this and other cases that I report on, take a moment to visit www.allrisenews.com or allrisenews on Substack. Also, take a moment to subscribe right now to Legal AF.

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