Alexis Wilkins filed a federal defamation lawsuit in Tennessee on Monday against MS NOW, Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian, accusing them of publishing false claims in a December report about Kash Patel and the use of FBI resources. The complaint puts a fresh legal challenge on a story that said Patel, more than once, ordered his girlfriend’s security detail to drive one of her allegedly inebriated friends home after a night out in Nashville.
The lawsuit lands at a time when Patel himself is already in the middle of his own fight with the press. Earlier this year, he sued The Atlantic and reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick over reporting that said he feared for his job and had reasons to think so, including what witnesses described as bouts of excessive drinking. Wilkins’ case now pushes the dispute one step further, turning a story about Patel’s personal life and FBI resources into a direct attack on the reporters who wrote it.
Wilkins’ lawyers say the December article went further than a disputed narrative about a night in Nashville. They allege it “falsely asserted that Ms. Wilkins demanded, and Director Patel ordered, that federal agents assigned to her security detail — which did not even exist at the time — escort an intoxicated friend home after a ‘night of partying.’” The complaint says the defendants published falsehoods knowing they were false or with reckless disregard for the truth.
That matters because the suit tries to lower the bar Wilkins must clear in court. Her lawyers say she is not a public figure and does not become one simply because she is in a relationship with Patel, a claim that would matter to any judge deciding what standard applies. They also argue that accusations she benefited from misappropriated FBI resources should not let journalists avoid ordinary care, even when the reporting relies on unnamed sources.
MS NOW said it would not back away from the story. Rebecca Kutler, the network’s president, said, “We stand firmly behind MS NOW’s reporting. As a general matter of practice, we don’t comment on ongoing legal matters.” That leaves the defendants with a public defense of the December piece and, in court, the task of showing what supported the allegations they published.
Wilkins has sued before. In an earlier case, she went after a failed U.S. Senate candidate in Utah over claims that she was a secret Israeli agent sent to manipulate and compromise Patel. This new lawsuit, filed in federal court in Tennessee, now asks a judge to decide whether a story built on unnamed sources and accusations about FBI resources crossed the line into defamation — and whether the evidence behind it will hold up once the complaint is answered.
