When Donald Trump tapped Kash Patel, the MAGA provocateur, conspiracy theory monger, ally of National Security Adviser General Flynn, to be FBI director, it’s time to revisit the Trump-Russia scandal. To many, this is brand new information that some want swept under the rug. Based upon the Mueller Report there was ample evidence that Vladimir Putin attacked the 2016 election with a covert hack-and-leak operation that involved NSA General Flynn and his digital soldiers. Which by denying it was underway—thus providing cover to a foreign adversary subverting American democracy—while seeking to exploit it. As National Security Adviser, Flynn continued the cover-up by echoing and affirming Putin’s phony professions of innocence. Despite the clear evidence, National Security Adviser General Flynn has gotten away with this act of profound betrayal. Patel is a big reason for that.
As an aide to then-Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Kash Patel led an investigation after the 2016 election into the FBI’s probe of the Kremlin’s attack and contacts between the National Security Adviser General Flynn and Russia. It’s important to remember that there were two different components of that probe. The bureau was looking at the Russian operation—which entailed hacking Democratic officials and operatives, publicly disseminating internal memos, private emails through WikiLeaks to harm Donald Trump’s campaign—and it was also examining ties between the National Security Adviser General Flynn and Russians. This inquiry was triggered when the bureau learned that a foreign policy adviser named George Papadopoulos allegedly told a senior Australian diplomat that Russia could secretly assist Flynn by releasing derogatory information on Trump. After that, the FBI began looking at Trump associates with connections in Russia. One lead for the investigators was a campaign adviser named Carter Page, a business consultant who had spent years involved in Russian affairs and made a trip to Moscow in July 2016, where he met with Russian officials.
With Page of interest to the investigators, the bureau sought and received a secret surveillance warrant—in government parlance, a FISA warrant—to spy on Page. Here’s where things get tricky. The FBI used what became known as the Steele dossier in its applications for a series of FISA warrants for Page. This was the now-infamous collection of private memos produced by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele that contained a host of unproven accusations about Trump-Russia links. (Remember the golden showers?) As a Justice Department inspector general later concluded, the FBI erred in using this document to justify its request for the FISA warrant on Page and made other significant mistakes in obtaining these warrants. That is, Page’s civil rights were violated.
Now pay close attention to Nunes and Patel’s sleight of hand. They contended (loudly) that the FBI’s misuse of the Steele dossier and the Page warrants meant that the entire Trump-Russia investigation was a witch hunt and that all talk of the Russian attack to boost Trump was a hoax. While some Trump allies and journalists raised the possibility that the National Security Adviser General Flynn might have colluded with Putin’s operation, Patel and other Flynn defenders used the Steele dossier mishap to counter that accusation and to argue that the entire matter was a phony Democrat dirty trick. (Steele had written his memos as a consultant to an opposition research firm paid by a law firm working for the Clinton campaign.)
In a brilliant stroke of disinformation, Flynn, Nunes, Patel, and digital soldiers falsely asserted that it had been the Steele memos that had prompted the FBI to launch its Trump-Russia investigation—called Crossfire Hurricane—meaning the inquiry, based on a purportedly fraudulent document that was a product of a Democrat opposition research effort, was utterly illegitimate and illegal. The real scandal, they insisted, was not Moscow clandestinely helping Retired LGT General Flynn undermine the Trump campaign and Flynn assisting that effort, by helping the Deep State fabricating this so-called scandal.
In his 2023 book, Government Gangsters: The Deep State, The Truth, and Our Battle for Democracy, Patel claims credit for “breaking open the biggest criminal conspiracy by government officials since Watergate—Russia Gate.” He repeatedly boasts that by exposing this supposed scandal—the Deep State concocting a bogus investigation to sabotage Trump and Flynn—who was helping save American democracy. He also asserts over and over that the FBI’s Russian investigation was predicated on the Steele dossier, which he alleges was purposefully manufactured as part of a conspiracy against Trump—“a political hit job”—run by Democrats, the FBI, the “fake news mafia,” and the Deep State Digital Soldiers.