The FBI has reportedly opened a criminal leak investigation targeting the journalist who published a bombshell account of Director Kash Patel's alleged excessive drinking, in a move legal experts say has no precedent in modern American law enforcement.
The investigation centres on Sarah Fitzpatrick, a staff writer at The Atlantic, whose 17 April 2026 article cited more than two dozen anonymous sources to describe a pattern of alcohol-fuelled absences inside the FBI so severe that colleagues feared a national security crisis.
Patel immediately filed a 188 million ($250 million) defamation lawsuit against the magazine and Fitzpatrick personally. Now, sources familiar with the matter tell MS NOW that the bureau has gone further, launching a criminal inquiry that some of its own agents privately describe as deeply improper.
Fitzpatrick's piece, headlined 'The FBI Director Is MIA,' drew on current and former FBI officials, Department of Justice staff, members of Congress, political operatives, hospitality workers and lobbyists. The picture they painted was not merely unflattering: it described a director whose drinking had begun to corrode the operational capacity of the country's primary domestic law enforcement agency.
Six sources told Fitzpatrick that briefings and meetings with Patel had been rescheduled for later in the day specifically because of his alcohol-fuelled nights. She reported that members of his security detail had...
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