Who Is Sarah Fitzpatrick? The Journalist FBI Is Investigating After Reporting on Kash Patel's Alleged Excessive Drinking

Until last month, Sarah Fitzpatrick was known mainly within Washington's press corps as a veteran investigative producer who had spent years behind the camera at CBS and NBC.

That changed on 17 April 2026, when she published an explosive story in The Atlantic alleging that FBI Director Kash Patel's excessive drinking and erratic behaviour had become a national security concern inside the bureau.

Three weeks and one £188 million ($250 million) defamation lawsuit later, the FBI opened a criminal leak investigation focused on her, an MSNBC exclusive revealed. The probe is being handled by an insider-threats unit in Huntsville, Alabama. FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson denied the investigation exists.

Fitzpatrick's article, headlined 'The FBI Director Is MIA,' cited more than two dozen anonymous sources, including current and former FBI officials, Justice Department staff, and members of Congress. They described morning meetings pushed to the afternoon because Patel was reportedly incapacitated, a security detail that struggled to wake him on multiple occasions, and in at least one instance, a request for breaching equipment normally used by SWAT teams to reach the director behind locked doors.

Patel called the story a 'lie' and filed a defamation suit on 20 April in US District Court in Washington, DC, naming both the magazine and Fitzpatrick as defendants, CNBC reported. The Atlantic called the suit 'meritless' and said it would vigorously defend its journalists.

From CBS Fact-Checker to the Centre of a Press Freedom Storm

Fitzpatrick's career traces a path through some of the most rigorous newsrooms in American journalism. She started as a fact-checker at the CBS Evening News before becoming an associate producer at 60 Minutes, working on high-profile investigations and newsmaker interviews.

She spent several years at NBC News as senior investigative producer and story editor, overseeing long-term projects for MSNBC, Dateline, NBC Nightly News, and The Today Show. Her work there included a 2019 investigation into gender discrimination at the FBI's training academy.

Fitzpatrick holds a bachelor's degree in international affairs from George Washington University and a master's from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, where she was a Stabile Fellow in investigative reporting. She teaches investigative documentary techniques at Columbia as an adjunct professor and joined The Atlantic in 2025 as a staff writer covering the Department of Justice and national security.

A Pattern of FBI Pressure on Reporters Under Patel

The reported investigation into Fitzpatrick sits within a broader pattern of confrontations between Patel's FBI and the press. In January 2026, agents conducted a court-authorised search of The Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson's home, seizing computers and a phone as part of a separate classified information probe. The bureau also briefly investigated New York Times reporter Elizabeth Williamson after she reported on Patel allegedly using FBI resources to transport his girlfriend.

Attorney General Pam Bondi repealed Obama and Biden-era protections for journalists in April 2025, lowering the threshold for prosecutors seeking reporters' phone records and testimony.

What makes the Fitzpatrick probe unusual is that no classified material was involved. Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said the investigation appeared designed to 'settle a personal vendetta.' He also noted a logical gap in Patel's position. 'Patel's lawsuit over the same reporting called them sham sources,' Stern said. 'Fake sources can't leak.'

On the same day the investigation became public, Fitzpatrick published a follow-up in The Atlantic revealing that Patel routinely travels with custom-engraved bottles of Woodford Reserve bourbon bearing the words 'Kash Patel FBI Director' and an FBI shield, which he distributes to staff and civilians. The FBI confirmed the practice, describing it as a long-standing commemorative tradition.

The Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, said that if confirmed, the probe 'would be an outrageous, illegal, and dangerous attack on the free press.' Fitzpatrick has said she stands by every word and that she has been 'inundated' with government officials reaffirming her reporting since the original piece went live.