According to a Friday X post from independent journalist Catherine Herridge, the FBI is denying the existence of a criminal leak investigation into The Atlantic reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick and her reporting on alleged troubling workplace behavior by Director Kash Patel.

The statement, from FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson to Herridge, is in response to a Wednesday exclusive from MS NOW, which reported that the bureau had opened a highly unusual criminal leak investigation focused on Fitzpatrick and aimed at identifying the sources behind her recent article alleging that Patel had “alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences.”

“They know they are not supposed to do this,” one source “familiar with the matter” told MS NOW of the FBI agents allegedly assigned to investigate the sources who fueled Fitzpatrick’s reporting. “But if they don’t go forward, they could lose their jobs. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”

“There is no criminal leak investigation focused on Sarah Fitzpatrick or her reporting,” read Williamson’s Friday statement. “There is no national security investigation focused on @S_Fitzpatrick or her reporting. There are no agents assigned to any such matter because the matter does not exist.”

Notably, in MS NOW’s Wednesday scoop, they included a similar statement from Williamson, which read, “This is completely false. No such investigation like this exists, and the reporter you mention is not being investigated at all… Every time there’s a publication of false claims by anonymous sources that gets called out, the media plays the victim via investigations that do not exist.”

As for Patel, he has vigorously denied the allegations and filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against Fitzpatrick and the magazine, claiming that the allegations in her article were “false,” “obviously fabricated,” and “designed to destroy Director Patel’s reputation and drive him from office.”

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