Kash Patel, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), during a House Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, March 19, 2026.
Daniel Heuer | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A Houston federal court judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit by FBI Director Kash Patel alleging that former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi defamed him by saying Patel last year had “been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of” the bureau’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
“The Court finds that Figliuzzi’s statement is rhetorical hyperbole that cannot constitute defamation,” U.S. District Court Judge George Hanks Jr. wrote in his decision.
“Accordingly, Dir. Patel has failed to state a claim against Figliuzzi, and his lawsuit must be dismissed,” Hanks wrote.
The dismissal came a day after Patel filed an unrelated $250 million defamation lawsuit in D.C. federal court against The Atlantic magazine over a new article that alleged he has abused alcohol.
CNBC has requested comment from lawyers for Patel and Figliuzzi.
Figliuzzi, former assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI, made the comment about Patel on May 2, 2025, on the MS Now show “Morning Joe.”
“Yeah, well, reportedly, he’s been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of the Hoover building,” said Figliuzzi.
Patel sued him in June, accusing Figliuzzi of “fabricating a specific lie” about the FBI because of Figliuzzi’s “clear animus” to him.
“Since becoming Director of the FBI, Director Patel has not spent a single minute inside of a nightclub,” Patel’s suit had said.
In his decision Tuesday, Hanks wrote that Figliuzzi’s jibe about Patel, “when taken in context, cannot have been perceived by a person of ordinary intelligence as stating actual facts about Patel.”
“A person of reasonable intelligence and learning would not have taken his statement literally: that Dir. Patel has actually spent more hours physically in a nightclub than he has spent physically in his office building,” Hanks wrote.
“By saying that Patel spent ‘far more’ time at nightclubs than his office, Figliuzzi delivered his answer ‘in an exaggerated, provocative and amusing way,’ employing rhetorical hyperbole,” the judge wrote.
