WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI brokers who searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property discovered packing containers of categorized paperwork in his workplace and storage room and retrieved delicate authorities secrets and techniques about nuclear methods and weapons capabilities.
One individual unmoved by the gravity of the allegations: Kash Patel.
Days after Trump’s June 2023 indictment on costs of hoarding the paperwork, Patel insisted to listeners of his “Kash’s Corner” podcast that Trump was permitted underneath a legislation often known as the Presidential Information Act to take categorized data with him when he left the White Home.
“When you’re president and you leave, you can take whatever you want,” Patel mentioned, advancing an argument later adopted by Trump’s attorneys however dismissed as meritless by the Justice Division. “And when you take it, whether it’s classified or not, it’s yours.”
It’s however one instance of how Patel positioned himself as a steadfast Trump loyalist nicely earlier than the president picked him to run the FBI. An Related Press overview of greater than 100 podcasts that Patel hosted or on which he was interviewed over the past 4 years reveals how Patel has habitually denigrated the investigations into Trump, sowed doubt within the prison justice system, criticized the decision-making of the establishment he’s been requested to guide and professed sympathy for jailed Jan 6. rioters.
The huge catalog of provocative public statements, generally made within the firm of like-minded FBI antagonists, supplies an unusually intensive file of a nominee’s unvarnished and controversial worldviews. At his Senate affirmation listening to Thursday, Democrats are more likely to seize on Patel’s typically explosive — and conspiracy-riddled — commentary, which is unprecedented in quantity, tone and substance for a possible FBI chief. Whereas these critics say his views make him unfit for the job, his supporters argue the FBI wants somebody as brash as Patel to shake up the company.
Requested to answer his feedback, Patel spokeswoman Erica Knight mentioned the nominee “looks forward to his upcoming hearing as an opportunity to highlight his extensive experience and present the truth to the American people in a comprehensive and meaningful way.”
The AP’s overview discovered that Patel incessantly expressed the identical views — or iterations of them — on numerous podcasts:
‘Gangsters’
“Those same criminal gangsters at the FBI and DOJ are running this Mar-a-Lago raid investigation,” Patel mentioned in August 2022 on his present, “Kash’s Corner,” for The Epoch Occasions, a pro-Trump media firm that has been a key on-line supporter of the president and spreader of conspiracy theories.
“Gangsters” is a popular Patel time period for federal investigators he perceives as tainted by anti-Trump bias. It’s even a part of the title of his 2023 guide, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth and the Battle for Our Democracy.”
Patel has sought to differentiate his dim view of the FBI’s management, course and decision-making from what he says is his help for the rank-and-file. However his harsh rhetoric concerning the bureau may nonetheless create a clumsy dynamic if he’s confirmed to guide the 38,000-person premier federal legislation enforcement company.
The name-calling on this occasion — he’s additionally referred to as intelligence officers “bozos” and “Muppets” — is in step with Patel’s scathingly vital perspective of the investigations into Trump’s interference within the 2020 election and his retention of categorized paperwork at his Florida resort after he left workplace.
Trump confronted felony costs within the two circumstances, however the indictments had been deserted by prosecutors after he gained the November election due to Justice Division coverage prohibiting the federal prosecution of a sitting president.
Patel’s reference to investigators because the “same criminal gangsters” is a part of a persistent effort to attract a straight line between the paperwork probe and a 2016 investigation into Trump and Russian election interference, however vital variations in FBI and Justice Division personnel within the two inquiries.
Patel rocketed to prominence as a Home staffer by way of his criticism of the Russia investigation, which he’s dubbed “one of the biggest conspiracies ever perpetuated against a presidential candidate and then president.” He’s made a reputation for himself in MAGA circles by in search of to reveal what he has described as misconduct in how the probe was pursued. Later evaluations by the Justice Division inspector normal and a specifically appointed prosecutor recognized vital flaws with that investigation, although neither introduced proof that partisan bias had guided particular choices.
‘Baseless prosecutions’
“We need to really educate the world on the weaponization of justice that occurred on January 6th,” Patel mentioned in January 2024 on “The Alec Lace Show,” as he referred to as the prosecutions of U.S. Capitol rioters “baseless.”
The FBI arrested greater than 1,500 individuals arising from the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and plenty of of them pleaded responsible to critical crimes. The lately departed FBI director, Christopher Wray, bluntly labeled the violence as “domestic terrorism” and has referred to as the assault emblematic of a quickly rising risk of homegrown extremism.
Patel, like Trump, has taken a unique view, saying the rioters have been mistreated by the prison justice system. A former federal public defender and prosecutor, he has referred to as them “political prisoners” and supplied on no less than one event to characterize them totally free.
Patel will nearly definitely be requested if he helps Trump’s sweeping grant of clemency to all Jan. 6 defendants. The pardons, sentence commutations and indictment dismissals upended the most important investigation in Justice Division historical past, benefiting even these discovered responsible of violent assaults on police, together with leaders of far-right extremist teams who plotted to maintain Trump in energy.
Patel’s help for the defendants has included extra than simply rhetoric. He’s boasted about having helped produce a tune, “Justice for All,” that was recorded over a jail telephone line, sung by a gaggle of Jan. 6 defendants and overlaid with Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
“The powerful thing about it,” he mentioned in a 2023 podcast, “is the people who have been impacted most are the ones raising awareness.”
He’s additionally talked up a right-wing conspiracy principle that Ray Epps, an Arizona man arrested in reference to Jan. 6, was really an undercover operative for the FBI — one thing Epps has adamantly denied and prosecutors have described as false.
And he’s been brazenly skeptical concerning the FBI’s use of confidential informants associated to Jan. 6 at a time when conspiracy theorists have urged, inaccurately, that the bureau helped instigate the violence.
The division’s inside watchdog mentioned in a report final month that no undercover FBI brokers had been within the crowd on Jan. 6, and that although greater than two dozen FBI informants had been in Washington that day, none was tasked by the FBI with getting into the constructing or breaking the legislation.
‘Hold him in contempt in a jail cell’
“It’s up to Congress, who has law enforcement capabilities, to go out there, arrest Chris Wray and hold him in contempt in a jail cell until the document’s produced,” Patel mentioned on “Kash’s Corner” in June 2023.
Patel lately has mused concerning the concept of Wray, who stepped down as FBI director on Jan. 19, being arrested for the FBI’s failure to promptly flip over data subpoenaed by Congress — an final result he’s acknowledged as excessive however one he contends would befall much less distinguished individuals who ignored lawmaker calls for for paperwork.
That place may come again to hang-out Patel, notably if Democrats take again a chamber of Congress in 2026.
He’s additionally urged that Congress may withhold or limit “pockets of money” to induce cooperation with its doc calls for.
“You ground Chris Wray’s private jet that he pays for with taxpayer dollars to hop around the country. You take away the fancy new fleet of cars from DOJ that they’re going to use to shuffle around executives,” he mentioned in 2023 on “Kash’s Corner.” “You stop the construction of new buildings.”
What’s going to a Director Patel say if Democrats push to restrict funding for his flights on FBI jets?
‘There’ll be an investigation into members of Congress’
“Once President Trump hopefully gets back in power, there’ll be an investigation into members of Congress who destroyed and withheld evidence from law enforcement agencies,” Patel mentioned in March 2024 on “In the Litter Box w/ Jewels and Catturd.”
Patel’s acknowledged want to rid the federal government of “conspirators” has raised alarms he may direct the FBI to focus on Trump’s adversaries, despite the fact that long-established FBI tips are supposed to defend towards investigative abuses and require that prison inquiries be rooted in a professional goal.
Like Trump, Patel has channeled specific ire towards the Home committee that investigated the assault on the Capitol. He advised Catturd, a right-wing social media persona whose actual title is Phillip Buchanan, {that a} Trump victory may end in investigations of lawmakers who’ve dedicated “federal felonies” and “covered up the truth from the American people.”
When Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, requested Bondi if she would have employed somebody who had an “enemies list” into her workplace when she was Florida lawyer normal, she replied: “Senator, to cut to the chase, you’re clearly talking about Kash Patel. I don’t believe he has an enemies list.”
‘Toilet rag disinformation animal’
“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel advised Steve Bannon, a Trump ally who served 4 months in jail for defying a congressional subpoena and who has additionally warned about retribution towards Trump adversaries, in December 2023.
However he’ll face strain from his celebration to go after journalists, in addition to election officers and activists that Republicans have accused of crimes.