Kash Patel Emerges as a Key Defender of former U.S. President Trump
August 23, 2022
Since August 8, after agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) recovered official documents from former United States President Donald Trump’s Florida home, Kash Patel has been a very vocal critic of the action. Patel, who was an official in the Trump Administration, has been telling the media that the documents were declassified by Trump while he was President, and hence should be made public.
A total of more than 300 documents, marked top secret and with classification markings, including Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency and FBI materials, were recovered by FBI agents according to The New York Times. So far, the content of the documents, which are to be accessed only in special government facilities, has not been disclosed.
The website for Mar-a- Lago, Trump’s home in Florida, describes it as “the crown jewel of Palm Beach,” with “luxurious amenities” and “incomparable lifestyle.” It is also a private club, with guest rooms for overnight stay, a golf resort and host for weddings and other events.
Officials sought to recover the documents to protect national-security secrets held by a private citizen at a resort with foreign guests, according to media reports. Earlier in June, Trump handed over some materials from his home to the government to be stored in the National Archives.
Since that month Patel has been acting as a representative of former “President Trump to work with the National Archives to get them to disclose information" about the delivery of presidential papers and other materials, a spokesperson for Patel told ABC News.
“In October of 2020,…president (Trump) wrote a statement that’s now publicly available that said, I declassify every Russiagate document and every Hillary Clinton email investigation document,” Patel, 42 years old, told Clay Travis and Buck Sexton hosts of a pro-Trump radio show, earlier this month. “And then out as he was leaving the presidency in December (2020) or January (2021), he issued further sweeping declassification orders at the White House over a whole sets of documents. So those documents should have been immediately declassified.”
Earlier in May, Patel told the Travis and Buck show that “deep-staters…in government go in there and get their hands on and classify ’cause they don’t want the truth to get out ’cause it’s gonna make Trump look good ’cause he always supported the truth and the facts.” Earlier this week, In an interview with Newsmax, another pro-Trump media outlet, Patel said that “the "deep state" is fighting back through personal attacks and warnings that releasing the documents will destroy national security and relationships overseas.” The deep state refers to organizations such as the government bureaucracy, police, military or political groups that are said to work secretly in order to protect particular interests and to rule a country without being elected.
While in the Trump administration, Patel “appeared so frequently, in so many incarnations,” that he was almost a “Zelig” figure and “an increasingly visible advocate for Trump’s arguments that he had been throttled and forced from office by a Deep State conspiracy,” notes David Ignatius, a columnist for The Washington Post.
Kashyap (Kash) Pramod Patel served as the Chief of Staff of Defense Secretary Chris Miller in the Trump Administration. Trump considered naming Patel as the deputy director of the FBI and the director of the CIA, which decisions Trump abandoned after strong opposition from his senior officials.
Previously, Patel served as the Deputy Assistant to President Trump and Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council. He also served as Principal Deputy to the Acting Director of National Intelligence. In 2020, in this capacity, he helped “lead efforts to remove senior career intelligence officers whom Mr. Trump felt didn’t support his efforts to pursue adversaries,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
Before joining the Trump Administration, Patel was the National Security Advisor and Senior Counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. In 2017, while in this role, Patel was reported to be the main author of “The Nunes Memo,” a document alleging that top officials of the Justice Department allegedly carried out surveillance of Trump’s team members, during the transition from President Barack Obama’s administration.
Earlier Patel was a terrorism prosecutor at the Department of Justice and its Liaison Officer to Joint Special Operations Command. He began his career as a public defender, trying cases ranging from murder, to narco-trafficking and financial crimes in jury trials in state and federal courts.
A native of New York, Patel completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Richmond, in Virginia, before earning his law degree from Pace University, New York. His official biography states he got a Certificate in International Law from University College, London. It also states that he is an ice hockey player and coach.
He was born and raised in Garden City, Long Island, New York. His parents have family ties in Gujarat, India. Patel’s mother is from Tanzania and father from Uganda, NDTV reported. In 1970, his parents immigrated to the U.S. via Canada.
Earlier this year, Patel published a children’s tale titled The Plot Against the King. His publisher Brave Books describes it as “A fantastical retelling of the terrible true story. Hillary Queenton and her shifty knight had spread lies that King Donald had cheated to become King. They claimed he was working with the Russionians! But how could that be? Join Kash, the Distinguished Discoverer as he uncovers the plot against the King, and who was really behind all the lies.” The book sells for $20 - $60 for a copy signed by Patel.
The Congressional Committee, investigating the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol bulding by a mob of Trump supporters, “has produced compelling evidence that Trump and his supporters engaged in an orchestrated six-step plan to prevent the peaceful transfer of power,” note William S. Cohen and William H. Webster, in an opinion piece in The Washington Post this week. Cohen is a former U.S. Secretary of Defense and former Republican senator from Maine and Webster is a former director of the FBI and the CIA. They add that they share the valid concerns of a political scientist “about the United States slipping into…a breeding ground for political violence, where the grievances and resentments of a large White underclass have greatly increased the potential for civil war.”
Patel has about 28,000 followers on Twitter. He has 673,000 followers on Truth Social, the new social media site backed by Trump. On the site, Patel describes himself as one who is “Pounding the fake news media one lawsuit at a time.”
In December 2020, Patel filed a $50 million defamation suit against CNN, over its reports that he was a source of conspiracy theories against Biden, Fox News reported. CNN, his lawyer wrote, “harbored extreme professional and personal animus, bias, spite and ill-will” towards Patel. Earlier in 2019, Patel sued Politico over a story that he had given President Trump information that corruption was widely prevalent in Ukraine. He is seeking $25.4 million in damages from the online publication.
Patel declined to answer questions, about the documents recovered from Trump’s home, from David Ignatius of The Washington Post. Through his spokesperson, Patel said that Ignatius was “acting as an unthinking, loyal mouthpiece for deep-state goons and the Democratic Party.” Patel calls the FBI “government gangsters” and “corrupt cops.”
This week, Patel told The Wall Street Journal he didn’t know what was in the boxes seized by the FBI but “believed prosecutors would have a hard time proving that the documents weren’t covered by Mr. Trump’s declassification orders.”
On August 26, the Department of Justice (DOJ) released a redacted affidavit about recovering the documents from Trump’s Florida home. It mentions Kash Patel’s statement that the documents were de-classified. “Redact everything that matters, but my name- politicization by DOJ at its finest,” stated Patel on Truth Social. In a separate post on the platform, he stated, that releasing his name was “another vicious attack from DOJ/FBI who intentionally jeopardized my safety." Apparently referring to his Indian roots, Patel concluded his post by declaring "Brown Lives Matter."
He has set up the Kash Patel Legal Offense Trust with the goal of raising $250,000 “to fund a top-notch legal team.” The funds, the site notes, “can be allocated for purposes including (but not necessarily limited to) valid legal expenses.” He also runs the FightwithKash.shop which sells items “designed and embroidered here in the USA, with designs by Kash himself.” The items include a t-shirt for $35 and a hoodie for $55.
Updated 8.27.2022
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