(Article by Lee Smith republished from TheEpochTimes.com)
On Friday, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius reported that former Trump administration official Kash Patel is “facing Justice Department investigation for possible improper disclosure of classified information.” The 40-year-old lawyer from Queens, New York served in several senior posts under Trump, including National Security Council senior director for counterterrorism, senior advisor to the Director of National Intelligence, and Pentagon chief of staff.
Patel was first forced into the spotlight in 2017 after he joined Congressman Devin Nunes’ investigation of crimes and abuses committed during the FBI’s operation targeting the Trump campaign. An aggressive former federal prosecutor, Patel knew where to look for evidence of FBI and Department of Justice wrongdoing at the top levels. As he began to document their illegal activities, Democratic Party operatives leaked his name to the press in an effort to intimidate him. Friday’s story is a continuation of a four-year offensive against a patriot who helped uncover the scandal underlying Russiagate, the Third-World-style combined media and intelligence operation smearing Trump and his aides as Russian agents in order to spy on them.
The Washington Post served as the chief platform for the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy theory, and Ignatius was one of its chief promoters. He helped get Russiagate rolling in January 2017 by publishing a leak of a phone call between Trump’s national security advisor (ret.) Gen. Michael Flynn and the Russian ambassador to Washington. Ignatius then was the face of a wide operation designed to destroy a combat veteran who had served his country for more than three decades. It led to Flynn’s departure from the White House and a long court battle that ended when Trump pardoned him in December. The Biden DOJ closed the investigation of the leak—it is a felony to leak foreign intelligence intercepts—without bringing charges. It appears that Ignatius’ anonymous sources are repurposing the tactics used against Flynn to go after Patel.
I interviewed Patel for two books dealing with the Nunes’ team’s investigation into the FBI’s illegal espionage and propaganda operation. He and Nunes found that the Bureau had used classified information as its sword and shield against Trump. Leadership and senior agents obscured the illegal nature of their activities by hiding them behind a wall of classified programs. This not only ensured that the agents and other senior U.S. officials involved in the operation would be free from oversight, but also gave their actions an air of legitimacy.
For instance, the FBI re-defined spying on Trump’s presidential campaign, transition team, and White House as a counterintelligence investigation, which it named Crossfire Hurricane. To get a court’s permission for its illegal spying, the FBI cloaked a political opposition research project funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign in the guise of a foreign intelligence surveillance act warrant. To collect information on Trump aides, they re-categorized political operatives as confidential human sources. Crossfire Hurricane used classifications as an offensive weapon as well. To drive the anti-Trump operation, they repeatedly leaked classified information to the press that was edited to implicate Trump aides as Russian spies. The FBI then used its own leaks as pretexts to further investigate the Trump circle.
Even after Patel and Nunes showed that Crossfire Hurricane was nothing but political warfare, U.S. spies used classifications to hide the facts. Patel asked the dozens of former Obama officials—including Susan Rice, Loretta Lynch, James Comey, and so on—who testified before Nunes’ committee if they had any evidence of collusion, and all affirmed they did not. Although the transcripts conclusively cleared Trump and his aides, then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats refused to release them. It was only when Patel went to DNI with acting director Richard Grenell that the transcripts were finally declassified and the American public could read the truth for themselves.
U.S. officials are zeroing in on Patel because he exposed their rot. Now they’re employing the same tactics with which they prosecuted the Crossfire Hurricane operation—leak to the press to kick off a politicized investigation during which they will manufacture evidence to vilify, or even prosecute, an adversary. And so American intelligence and federal law enforcement continue their tragic spiral downwards, through corruption and toward irrelevance.
Maybe it’s just a coincidence that the allegations against Patel that Ignatius cites echo those made against Hillary Clinton in the summer of 2015. After news of her private server broke, the FBI opened an investigation to see whether the former secretary of state had improperly handled classified intelligence. The Bureau acknowledged that Clinton’s private server had been compromised by foreign powers, but rather than fulfilling its law enforcement mission, it cleared the Democratic candidate and began to spy on her opponent.
To date, no one has been held accountable for the crimes Patel helped uncover. That he’s instead been targeted is further evidence that the American justice system has been weaponized by an oligarchy that may come to regret testing the patience and liberality of the American public.
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