Judge tosses Kash Patel’s defamation suit against former MSNBC contributor
A federal judge in Texas has dismissed a defamation suit filed by FBI Director Kash Patel against Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI deputy director turned MSNBC contributor.
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Patel had sued Figliuzzi over his comments on “Morning Joe” about the FBI director’s nocturnal activities.
“Yes, apparently he’s been much more visible in nightclubs than on the seventh floor of the Hoover Building,” Figliuzzi said on the show last year. (MSNBC is now known as MS NOW, which continues to air “Morning Joe.”)
Figliuzzi’s lawyers argued that “this comment was a sarcastic and hyperbolic remark that is protected from liability for defamation.”
U.S. District Judge George Hanks Jr. agreed, writing: “Figliuzzi’s statement, taken in context, cannot have been perceived by a person of ordinary intelligence as stating actual facts about Patel.” »
“A reasonably intelligent and educated person would not have taken his statement at face value: that Director Patel actually physically spent more hours in a nightclub than he did physically in his office building,” the judge added.
The judge said that since he believes the statement constitutes “rhetorical hyperbole,” it cannot be defamation.
Marc Fuller, Figliuzzi’s lawyer, hailed the ruling as a “victory for press freedom and the First Amendment.”
The judge, however, denied Figliuzzi’s request for attorney fees and other costs.
The ruling came two days after Patel filed a separate defamation suit against The Atlantic magazine over an article published last week that said he drank to excess and had unexplained absences from the office.
The lawsuit, which seeks $250 million from the magazine, alleges that the article is a “hit piece, malicious and defamatory.”
The Atlantic defended the story from Sarah Fitzpatrick, a former senior investigative producer for NBC News.
“We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel and will vigorously defend The Atlantic and our journalists against this baseless lawsuit,” said Anna Bross, senior vice president of communications at The Atlantic.
