
This Episode Contains No Administrative Procedure Act Coverage
From Serious Trouble by Josh Barro and Ken White
April 24, 2026 · 21 min
About this episode
Ken and Josh discuss several significant defamation lawsuits involving Kash Patel and Shauni Kerkhoff.
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.serioustrouble.show This week Ken and Josh discuss several big defamation suits. The Atlantic has reported that Kash Patel is often drunk and derelict in his duties as FBI Director. But Patel says he’s only guilty of working really hard, and he’s suing the Atlantic . He’s got a theory he says is a “slam dunk” — The Atlantic defamed him with actual malice because he denied the accusations against him but they printed him anyway. That theory didn’t work for Trump against The Wall Street Journal and it didn’t work for Patel against Frank Figliuzzi Jr. , who accused him of being a nightclub rat on Morning Joe, but maybe it will work this time? (It won’t). Also, his lawyer did something incompetent — shocker. And more formidably, former Capitol Police officer Shauni Kerkhoff is suing The Blaze and two of its “journalists” for accusing her of being the Capitol Hill pipe bomber, on the basis of a shoddy “gait analysis” alleging that her limp matched the way the bomber walked on surveillance video. Proving actual malice is hard — as a police officer, Kerkhoff is treated as a public figure in the coverage of her work — but…
People in this episode
Hosts: Josh Barro, Ken White
Topics covered
- defamation
- lawsuits
- media coverage
- public figures
- malice
- journalism
Keywords
- defamation
- Kash Patel
- Shauni Kerkhoff
- The Atlantic
- The Blaze
- malice
- lawsuits
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: The Atlantic, The Blaze, Clare Locke, Fox, Dominion Voting Systems
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