Trump FBI director pick Kash Patel ‘instrumental in unraveling’ Russia collusion hoax, former chair says
Kash Patel, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI director, was the chief investigator in the congressional probe into alleged Trump-Russia collusion, uncovering government surveillance abuse that led to the appointment of two special counsels: one who determined there was no such collusion and another who determined the entire premise of the FBI’s original investigation was bogus.
Patel served as senior counsel and a national security adviser on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) for then-Chair Rep. Devin Nunes.
“Kash was instrumental in unraveling the Russia collusion hoax and finding evidence of government malfeasance despite constant attempts by the FBI and DOJ to stonewall our investigation,” Nunes, who now chiefs Trump’s Truth Social site, told Fox News Digital.
In July 2016, during the 2016 election cycle, the FBI launched an investigation into whether the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia to influence the outcome of the election. That investigation, inside the bureau, was known as “Crossfire Hurricane.”
By January 2017, then-FBI Director James Comey had notified Trump of a dossier, known as the Steele dossier, that contained salacious and unverified allegations about Trump’s purported coordination with the Russian government, a key document prompting the opening of the probe.
The dossier was authored by Christopher Steele, an ex-British intelligence officer, and commissioned by Fusion GPS. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign hired Fusion GPS during the 2016 election cycle.
It eventually was determined that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee funded the dossier through the law firm Perkins Coie.
Trump fired Comey in May 2017. Days later, Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel to take over the “Crossfire Hurricane” probe and investigate whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election cycle.
While Mueller investigated, the HPSCI opened its own investigation into alleged Trump-Russia collusion.
Patel, as chief investigator for Nunes, by February 2018 had discovered widespread government surveillance abuse, including improper surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
“While most members of Congress were ready to ignore the unprecedented civil rights abuses against the Trump campaign and myself, Kash Patel’s training as a top public defender made him the perfect advocate for exposing one of the greatest election interference scandals of all time,” Page told Fox News Digital.
Patel was an integral part of the creation of a memo released by then-Chair Nunes in February 2018, which detailed the DOJ’s and FBI’s surveillance of Page under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Nunes and Patel revealed that the infamous anti-Trump dossier funded by Democrats “formed an essential part” of the application to spy on Page.
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The memo referred to closed-door testimony from former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who said that “no surveillance warrant would have been sought” from the FISA court “without the Steele dossier information.”
But when applying for the FISA warrant, the FBI omitted the origins of the dossier, specifically its funding from Clinton, who was Trump’s 2016 presidential opponent.
The memo also said Steele, who worked as an FBI informant, was eventually cut off from the bureau for what the FBI described as the most serious of violations, “an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI.”
The memo noted that the FBI and DOJ obtained “one initial FISA warrant” targeting Page and three FISA renewals from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The statute required that every 90 days a FISA order on an American citizen “must be reviewed.”
The memo revealed that Comey signed three FISA applications for Page, while McCabe, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and former Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente signed at least one.
The memo was widely criticized by Democrats but was ultimately correct.
The Justice Department inspector general, Michael Horowitz, reviewed the memo and confirmed the dossier served as the basis for the controversial FISA warrants obtained against Page.
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“The feds spied on Kash during the probe and ran information warfare against him, but Kash helped expose them anyway,” Nunes told Fox News Digital.
Nunes was referring to the Justice Department in November 2017 using grand jury subpoenas to secretly obtain the personal email and phone data for Patel and another Nunes staffer on the HPSCI as they were investigating FBI abuse and the Russia probe.
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House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, wrote a letter to now-FBI Director Christopher Wray last year to investigate the improper surveillance of Patel.
Meanwhile, Mueller completed his investigation in April 2019, which yielded no evidence of criminal conspiracy or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the 2016 election.
Weeks later, then-Attorney General Bill Barr tapped then-U.S. Attorney for Connecticut John Durham to serve as special counsel to investigate the origins of the FBI’s original Trump-Russia probe.
Durham in his report said the Justice Department and FBI “failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law” when it launched its original Trump-Russia probe.
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He also said in his report that the FBI “failed to act” on a “clear warning sign” that the bureau was the “target” of a Clinton-led effort to “manipulate or influence the law enforcement process for political purposes” ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Durham was referring to intelligence on a plan stirred up by Clinton’s presidential campaign in July 2016 to tie Trump to Russia in an effort to distract from the investigation into her use of a private email server and mishandling of classified information.
