Kash Patel, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), during a House Intelligence Committee hearing on global threats in Washington, DC, US, Thursday, March 19, 2026.
Daniel Heuer Bloomberg | Getty Images
A federal court judge in Houston on Tuesday dismissed the case against FBI Director Kash Patel, saying that former FBI director Frank Figliuzzi defamed him by saying that Patel last year “was seen in nightclubs more than he used to be on the seventh floor” of the office’s headquarters in Washington, DC.
“The Court finds that Figliuzzi’s statement constitutes defamatory speech,” wrote US District Court Judge George Hanks Jr. in his decision. “Accordingly, Dir. Patel has failed to state a claim against Figliuzzi, and his case must be dismissed.”
The dismissal came a day after Patel filed an unrelated $250 million defamation lawsuit in DC federal court against The Atlantic magazine over a new article alleging he abused alcohol.
While ruling on a key defamation question in Figliuzzi’s favor, the judge denied her request for court costs and attorneys’ fees under Texas’ anti-SLAPP statute. SLAPP is an acronym for Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation.
Figluizzi’s attorney, Marc Fuller, in a statement to CNBC, said, “This is a victory for freedom of the press and the First Amendment.”
“Director Patel’s claim against Frank was without merit, and we are pleased that the court dismissed it,” Fuller said.
Attorneys for Patel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Figliuzzi, a former assistant director of counterintelligence at the FBI, made his mistake about Patel on May 2, 2025, on MS Now’s “Morning Joe.”
“Yes, reportedly, he was seen in nightclubs more than he was on the seventh floor of the Hoover building,” Figliuzzi said.
Patel sued him in June, accusing Figliuzzi of “telling certain lies” about the FBI because of Figliuzzi’s “clear animus” toward him.
As evidence of that noise, Patel’s lawsuit referred to the stinging statements about him by Figliuzzi, who doubted his ability and said that “his record does not show dedication to the Constitution, but loyalty to the Constitution. [President Donald] Trump.”
“Since becoming FBI Director, Director Patel has not spent a single minute in a nightclub,” Patel’s suit says.
In his ruling Tuesday, Hanks wrote that Figliuzzi’s nightclub jibe, “taken in context, could not be seen by a person of common sense as stating the true facts about Patel.”
“A person of reasonable intelligence and learning would not take his statement literally: that Dir. Patel has spent more physical hours in the nightclub than he has physically spent in his office building,” Hanks wrote.
“By stating that Patel spent ‘much more’ time in nightclubs than in his office, Figliuzzi gave his response in an ‘exaggerated, provocative and humorous manner,’ using hyperbole,” the judge wrote.
