Trump FBI Director Lawsuit Backfires Instantly after Filing

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3:38We'll go over that new demand that just came out in the last few hours. In addition, it's a bad day for Kash 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.

4:31It's already been a terrible 24 hours for Kash 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 and Legal AF. Let's rip it from the headlines. We have a new letter. We'll post it on Legal AF 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 Loftus. directed to Kash Patel, in which it is requiring him to fill out and conduct an audit, an audit about his alleged alcohol use.

5:30In 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 outbursts at support staff, and pass out drunk behind locked doors so that you're unreachable, so that the agents had to fetch a SWAT-level breaching equipment to awaken you.

6:14After 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 impulses 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.

6:56dollars. 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 all everything about you take him taking the test, filling out the test, certifying the test and the like.

7:33And 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 Kash Patel thought during his press conference yesterday that battling it out with the press about allegations that he made 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. 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.

8:21What 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 with anyone? You asked the question. Let me answer it. No, no. Let me ask. No, no. Did you communicate with anyone that you thought you were fired after you were unable to log into the system? The problem with you and your report, don't cut me off. You asked the question. Straightforward question. The problem with you and your baseless reporting is that is an absolute lie. I'm not. It was never said. it never happened and i will serve in this administration as long as the president 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 three million dollar decade-long scheme to fraudulently fleece americans you are off topic It's a simple, straightforward question.

9:12If you talk to anybody about whether you thought you were lying. 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 the opposite, anyone that says the opposite is lying. Thank you. The lawsuit that you filed says that directly. 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. Just a little bit of respect, man. Just a tiny little bit.

9:48Try it sometime. Good. Then we've got the report. This is all the last 24 hours, folks. We've got the reporting. See, Kash 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 Fuglizzi, 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.

10:41Fuglizzi 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 allowing agents to run things, so we don't know where this is going. He 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.

11:28The 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 he's also going to decide whether Fuglizzi 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.

12:22He's already got that defamation case failed. I believe that the Atlantic and its reporting will focus instead on actual malice, which is the protection that media has against its reporting. I'm Michael Popok, and I got some big news for our audience. Most of you know me as the co-founder of Midas Touches Legal AF and the Legal AF YouTube channel, or as a 35-year national trial lawyer. Now building a what we started together on Legal AF, I've launched a new law firm, the Popok Firm, dedicated to obtaining justice through compassionate and zealous legal representation. At the Popok Firm, we are focused on obtaining justice for those who have been injured or damaged by a life-altering event, by securing the highest dollar recoveries.

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14:11And if we determine that you have a case and you sign with us, we don't get paid unless you do. The Popoc Firm, fighting for your justice every step of the way. Look, this was good, solid reporting. You can see it from the Atlantic's review. The Atlantic's article itself, at least two insiders within the FBI testified and gave information against Cash Mattel 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 Kash 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.

14:58It'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 opened now against Kash Patel. We also have Democracy Forward, our friends who bring frequent Freedom of Information Act requests demanding information.

15:41They 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 Kash 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.

16:29So 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 Kash 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 Kash Patel as a client, which I never would, I would have him sign it under 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 and my law license, I have the client attest under oath to the veracity and the truthfulness of those statements.

17:18They 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 difference is 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 Kash Patel wants to act tough to try to keep his job. Look, we all have seen Kash 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.

18:00You know, this is what Ted Lieu had to say about Kash Patel 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 of Ted Lieu. Thank you, Chairman Aguilar. February 25th of this year, Transportation 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.

18:42Pam Bondi, Chrissy Noem, and now Laurie Chavez de Reamer. I note that Laurie Chavez de Reamer can now join Chrissy Noem at a fake position at the Shield of the Americas. The reality is that this cabinet's out-of-control incompetence and corruption have made it the worst cabinet since 1776. and Kash Patel is next. Kash 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.

19:28There'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 and on Legal AF. 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 AF podcast.

20:08Until my next report, this is Michael Popak. Can't get your fill of Legal AF? Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF Substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the Substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, Morning AF. What else? All the other contributors from Legal AF are there as well. We got some new reporting. We got interviews. We got ad-free versions of the podcast and hot takes. Where? Legal AF on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe.

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