Nevada Judge Dismisses Kash Patel's Defamation Lawsuit

Kash Patel’s defamation lawsuit was dismissed by a Nevada judge on forum power, not on whether Jim Stewartson’s posts were true, false, opinion, hyperbole, or defamatory. Chief Judge Andrew P. Gordon of the District of Nevada granted Stewartson’s motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, set aside the earlier $250,000 default judgment as void under Rule 60(b)(4), and dismissed the case without prejudice in an order signed July 25 and entered July 28, 2026. [1]

That distinction controls the status of the case. The court did not say Patel lost a defamation merits fight. It did not say Stewartson’s posts were legally protected. It said Nevada federal court lacked power over this California-based defendant on this record.

How the case reached a default judgment before losing its footing

The procedural path matters because the dismissal did not arrive at the start of the case. Patel and The Kash Foundation filed in June 2023. Service problems followed. A clerk’s default was entered in late 2023. The case then sat long enough for the court to issue an order to show cause in 2025 before the plaintiffs obtained a default judgment. Only after that judgment did Stewartson appear and attack the court’s power to bind him.

One docket trap is worth flagging. CourtListener lists “Date Terminated: Aug. 5, 2025,” but that corresponds to the earlier closure after default judgment, not the later jurisdictional dismissal entered in July 2026. [2] For anyone reconstructing the case from docket metadata alone, that is exactly the sort of entry that can make the procedural status look cleaner than it was.

The personal-jurisdiction ruling

Judge Gordon’s ruling turned on minimum contacts. Stewartson was a California-based commentator who published on Substack and X. Patel was alleged to be a Nevada resident. But the court held that posts aimed at a national audience did not become Nevada-directed conduct merely because they discussed or tagged a Nevada resident. The order described the relevant audience as “the American body politic writ large,” not a Nevada forum. [1]

The supplemental-briefing issue could have mattered in another case: who bears the burden when a defendant asks to set aside a default judgment as void for lack of personal jurisdiction? Judge Gordon noted the uncertainty, then made it immaterial. “Regardless of who bears the burden of proof,” the court found Stewartson did not have minimum contacts with Nevada. [1]

That is a narrower holding than many public summaries can tolerate. The court did not hold that internet posts can never support personal jurisdiction outside the poster’s home state. It held that these posts, on this record, were not directed at Nevada in a way that satisfied due process. National political speech about a person who happens to reside in Nevada was not enough.

The tagging point is especially important for online-defamation risk. The order treated tagging Patel as part of the publication mechanics, not as a substitute for forum-directed conduct. The plaintiff’s residence supplied an injury location; it did not supply the defendant’s Nevada contacts.

What the alleged posts were, and why they were not the ruling

Patel’s complaint challenged posts from June 2021 through May 2023. The order identifies statements accusing or labeling Patel as a “Kremlin asset,” a “traitor,” and someone who “planned January 6,” along with crude insults including “blatantly incompetent chud” and another profane phrase the court quoted. [1]

Those allegations explain why the suit was filed. They do not explain why it was dismissed. The order did not test falsity, defamatory meaning, actual malice, opinion, rhetorical hyperbole, or damages. It stopped at the court’s power to exercise jurisdiction over Stewartson.

That means “dismissed” is doing less work than it may appear to do. It is a jurisdictional dismissal without prejudice, not a merits adjudication clearing the posts.

Why the $250,000 judgment was vacated

The default judgment was not reduced, reconsidered, or reweighed. It was vacated because a judgment entered without personal jurisdiction is void. Rule 60(b)(4) is the mechanism for that result, and Judge Gordon used it to set aside the August 2025 judgment in full. [1]

Practically, that erased the $250,000 award: $200,000 that had been awarded to Patel personally and $50,000 that had been awarded to The Kash Foundation. [3] The amount did not disappear because the court found the injury overstated. It disappeared because the court concluded the forum never had authority to enter judgment against Stewartson.

Stewartson’s late appearance did not earn praise from the court. Judge Gordon wrote that Stewartson had “wasted the plaintiffs’ and the court’s time” and added, “I do not commend his actions.” [1] That criticism sits alongside the jurisdictional ruling rather than against it. A defendant can behave badly in litigation and still be outside the court’s personal jurisdiction.

The court also did not convert that criticism into fee-shifting. Because the judgment was void, the order left the parties where the jurisdictional defect required them to be: no enforceable Nevada default judgment, and no merits determination to anchor the rest of the dispute. [1]

The present status

As of the July 2026 order, Patel v. Stewartson is dismissed without prejudice in the District of Nevada. The prior $250,000 default judgment is vacated as void. The court made no merits ruling on truth, falsity, defamatory meaning, opinion, actual malice, or damages. [1]

A new filing in a forum with personal jurisdiction remains possible. That is not a prediction that Patel will refile, or that Stewartson would lose if he did. It is simply the consequence of a dismissal without prejudice on a threshold jurisdictional ground.

So the record answer is limited and important: a Nevada federal judge dismissed Kash Patel’s defamation lawsuit against Jim Stewartson because Nevada lacked personal jurisdiction over the defendant, and the court vacated the default judgment for the same reason. Nothing in the order supplies a clean merits vindication for either side.

References

1. Order granting motion to set aside default judgment and motion to dismiss, CourtListener RECAP, link
2. Patel v. Stewartson, CourtListener docket, link
3. Default Judgment, Patel v. Stewartson, CourtListener, link