A White House official filed a libel lawsuit against Politico over reports about unsubstantiated leaks from closed-door impeachment hearings.

Kash Patel, the senior counter-terrorism director for the National Security Council, filed a $25 million libel lawsuit against Politico owner Robert Allbritton and reporter Natasha Bertrand over reporting that claimed Patel was feeding Trump information about Ukraine.

Patel, who worked for Republican California Rep. Devin Nunes, was the subject of two Politico reports, including one titled “Nunes Protege Fed Ukraine Info to Trump.” In the article , Bertrand wrote that Patel “was among those passing negative information about Ukraine to President Donald Trump earlier this year, fueling the president’s belief that Ukraine was brimming with corruption and interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Democrats.”

The reports claimed that Trump “thought [Patel] was in charge of Ukraine policy for the National Security Council” and tried to assert that the NSC was involved in Trump’s effort to get dirt on Joe Biden, implicating many in the White House.

Bertrand claimed she gathered this information from leaks from the closed-door testimony of Fiona Hill and Alexander Vindman. When the transcript from Vindman’s testimony was released, it was clear that he had no knowledge of Patel discussing Ukraine with Trump. Vindman also said Patel was held in “high regard” for his work for the NSC.

In his lawsuit, which was obtained by Fox News, Patel slammed the report, writing, “[If Politico] had bothered to wait for the transcript, they would have learned that Hill completely fabricated the story that Kash had provided ‘materials on Ukraine’ to the president.”

Patel also targeted Rep. Adam Schiff, tying him to the leaks from the closed-door hearings. The lawsuit claims Politico tried to “destroy Kash’s reputation” to perpetuate “Schiff’s baseless Ukrainian quid pro quo hoax.” Patel claimed Schiff forced the hearings to be private “to create click-bait headlines and soundbites to feed to his co-conspirators and media sympathizers.”

The lawsuit lists Patel as a “private individual” rather than a White House official, which will likely be contended as the bar for libel against a public person is much lower than that of a private individual.

Many pushed out Politico’s report on Patel, including the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Politico has yet to issue a statement about the lawsuit.

UPDATE: In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Vice President of Communications and Marketing Brad Dayspring said, "This lawsuit is high on bombast and low on merit. It is unserious and is a public relations tactic designed to intimidate journalists and media organizations from doing their job.”