A Nevada judge has dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought by FBI Director Kash Patel because the California blogger he sued didn’t have enough of a connection with the Silver State to establish jurisdiction there.

Patel, a Nevada resident, sued Jim Stewartson in 2023, accusing him of spreading “pernicious lies,” including that Patel “attempted to overthrow the government,” “planned 1/6,” is “guilty of sedition,” is a “Kremlin asset” and that he and his foundation paid people to “lie” to Congress.

The FBI director said those claims were “lies,” and “self-serving and self-promoting” ones at that, because Stewartson “has a financial interest in gaining publicity for his podcast and Substack, for which he sells paid subscriptions.”

Patel won a default judgment last year after Stewartson did not defend against the suit. Nevada’s chief federal trial judge, Andrew Gordon, awarded damages of $200,000 to Patel and $50,000 to his foundation.

But then Stewartson moved to set aside the judgment and dismiss the case, arguing that Patel never properly notified him and that the Nevada courts lack jurisdiction. Stewartson said he learned about the judgment from a CNBC article rather than any official court process.

“The Constitution’s guarantee of due process prevents Plaintiffs from availing themselves of Nevada’s courts for claims against Mr. Stewartson,” he said, referring to Patel and his foundation.

Gordon agreed with Stewartson in a July 25 order.

“I grant Stewartson’s motions because he did not have minimum contacts with Nevada sufficient to establish personal jurisdiction,” the Obama appointee wrote.

“Tagging Patel, who happens to be a Nevadan resident, in posts that have nothing to do with Nevada activities or entities does not target a Nevadan audience, and therefore does not create a contact between Stewartson and Nevada,” Gordon wrote, adding that Stewartson’s statements were “aimed at the American body politic writ large, which includes Nevada, but the plaintiffs do not allege facts showing that he directed his allegedly defamatory posts to a Nevadan audience in particular, so he did not aim at Nevada.”

One of Patel’s arguments was that Stewartson knew he was liable in Nevada because he wrote on X last year: “Googly-eyed Kremlin bitch @FBIDirectorKash will have to come back to Nevada for the trial where I explain in full detail to the judge why I was dead serious when I said he’s a ‘chud.’”

Yet Stewartson said the post, made after the default judgment, showed his intent to fight that judgment, not to litigate the underlying case on its merits.

“Regardless,” Gordon wrote in his order, “Stewartson anticipating the possibility of a trial in Nevada does not create a connection between Stewartson and Nevada and does not constitute consent to jurisdiction in Nevada.”

Stewartson said that before the defamation case, he was last in Nevada in 2016 for a UFC event in Las Vegas.

Patel’s lawyers did not immediately respond to an MS NOW inquiry regarding their next steps, if any.

President Donald Trump’s FBI director has filed several defamation suits. In another filed against The Atlantic and one of its journalists over coverage about his reported “excessive drinking,” the outlet moved to dismiss Patel’s case this week, calling his suit “an assault, by a man who swore to uphold it, on the core Constitutional value” of robust public debate even when it is critical of government officials. The judge presiding over that case in Washington will rule on how that case will proceed.

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