Lawyers defending a former FBI special agent against defamation claims lodged by the girlfriend of the federal agency’s current director told a judge Tuesday the lawsuit must be dismissed because the statements in question do not constitute defamation.
Alexis Wilkins, a country music artist and girlfriend of FBI Director Kash Patel, filed her eight-page defamation lawsuit against Kyle M. Seraphin in federal court in Austin on Aug. 27, alleging Seraphin “maliciously lied” about her on his podcast, calling her a “honeypot” and “a former Mossad agent.”
“He is accusing Ms. Wilkins of being a spy for a foreign government, conducting espionage to undermine our national security and/or to manipulate federal law enforcement at the highest level, and even committing treason,” Wilkins told the court. “These accusations are all categorically false, and defendant knows it.”
She is seeking $5 million in damages.
Seraphin, who describes himself in the lawsuit as a “well-known conservative Catholic journalist and podcaster,” has hired Edward Loya Jr. of Dorsey & Whitney, who is a former prosecutor in the Department of Justice’s public integrity section, and Chris Kratovil and Daniel Hall of Dykema to defend against the claims.
“Ms. Wilkins is attempting to use Mr. Seraphin’s humorous, sarcastic, and hyperbolic reference to news stories about Ms. Wilkins and her boyfriend, FBI Director Kash Patel, as a means of punishing and stifling Mr. Seraphin’s free speech and criticism of Director Patel in Mr. Seraphin’s podcast,” the 21-page motion to dismiss reads.
Wilkins told the court in her lawsuit she “is not even Jewish, much less Israeli, and has never set foot in Israel.”
“She is not now and never has been an agent for any intelligence agency,” the lawsuit reads. “The notion that her relationship with Dir. Patel is part of some plot against her country is vile and ridiculous, and defendant knows this.”
Seraphin’s status as a former FBI special agent in the counterterrorism division, and his persona as a “whistleblower” who tells “uncomfortable truth[s],” means that the average person would take his statements as “not mere hyperbole,” Wilkins alleges.
But Seraphin told the court that Wilkins’ own lawsuit refers to his statements as “ridiculous” and “ludicrous, which alone demonstrates they cannot constitute defamation because a reasonable person would not have believed them to be fact.”
Seraphin argues in the motion that his statements “clearly constituted imaginative expression, satire, humor, and rhetorical hyperbole.”
“The statements intended to convey that there may be an ulterior motive for Ms. Wilkins’ relationship with Director Patel through purposefully over-the-top representations that a reasonable listener would not believe were assertions of fact,” the motion reads “This reading of the statements is bolstered by the fact that, in interviews, Ms. Wilkins has joked about the ‘honeypot’ and ‘Mossad agent’ references made by other commentators. She herself finds them ‘truly hilarious’— but she sued Mr. Seraphin for repeating them in his humorous, tongue-in-cheek style.”
In a statement issued to The Lawbook, Seraphin’s lawyer, Loya, called the lawsuit against his client “retaliatory” and “a transparent attempt to intimidate and silence a leading critic.” Kratovil, who also represents Seraphin, said in a statement that Wilkins and Patel “are both public figures who are visible and active at the highest levels of politics.”
“Kyle M. Seraphin is entirely within his rights to offer his opinions of them and their conduct on his podcast, and all the more so when his comments are in his signature hyperbolic, tongue-in-cheek style and manifestly lack malice,” he said.
The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge David A. Ezra.
Wilkins is represented by Jared Roberts and Jason C. Greaves of Binnall Law Group in Alexandria, Virginia.
In June, those attorneys filed a separate defamation lawsuit on behalf of Patel against Cesare Frank Figliuzzi Jr., in the Southern District of Texas. In that six-page lawsuit, Patel accuses Figliuzzi, the former assistant director of counterintelligence for the FBI, of defaming him during a May 2 appearance on MSNBC where he said “Reportedly, [Patel] has been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of the Hoover building.”
“This statement is entirely false,” the lawsuit reads. “Since becoming director of the FBI, Director Patel has not spent a single minute inside of a nightclub. There was no basis for defendant’s fabrication, and defendant’s use of the weasel word, ‘reportedly,’ is itself a fabrication, as defendant did not rely on reporting by any other person.”
“Defendant made up the story out of whole cloth, and by using the word ‘reportedly,’ attempts to distance himself from what is a maliciously false and defamatory statement.”
The lawsuit, seeking more than $75,000 in damages, notes that on May 5, MSNBC called the comment a “misstatement” that wasn’t “verified.”
To defend against the claims, Figliuzzi, who resides in Texas according to the lawsuit, has hired Marc A. Fuller, Maggie I. Burreson and Abbby Lahvis of Jackson Walker, N. Scott Fletcher and Kenneth P. Held of Fletcher Held, and Thomas S. Leatherbury and Peter B. Steffensen of the SMU Dedman School of Law.
Figliuzzi filed a motion to dismiss Sept. 5, calling Patel’s defamation lawsuit “performative,” and told the court it was only filed “after media reports on his jet-setting social life raised questions about whether he was at work enough.” The motion notes there have been reports of Patel attending UFC fights in Las Vegas and Miami with Mel Gibson and Joe Rogan, and that he’s been to hockey games in Washington and New York with Wayne Gretzky.
“Filing suit might be a savvy public relations move for Director Patel — an opportunity to generate news articles and online posts repeating his assurances that he is working very hard,” the motion reads. “Director Patel might also see the case as an opportunity to drag a longstanding, vocal critic through expensive and burdensome litigation. Or he might hope to exploit the civil discovery process to root out critics inside the Bureau.”
“But Director Patel’s suit has no legal merit. His defamation claim is premised on an unreasonably literal interpretation of Figliuzzi’s remark, which is not supported by its text or context. No reasonable viewer would have understood Figliuzzi to be asserting as literal fact that Director Patel is spending more — indeed, ‘far more’ — time in nightclubs than in the office. Even Patel concedes this proposition is ‘inherently improbable’ and obviously untrue.”
Patel’s case is tentatively set for a 10-day trial to take place in Spring 2027 before U.S. District Judge George C. Hanks Jr. Wilkins’ case has not been set for trial.
The cases are Wilkins v. Seraphin, case number 1:25-cv-01375, in the Western District of Texas and Patel v. Figliuzzi, case number 4:25-cv-02548, in the Southern District of Texas.