In a jaw-dropping media appearance, FBI Director Kash Patel ripped into his own agency’s past conduct, accusing it of bending — if not outright breaking — the rules to spy on Donald Trump.
Speaking on a conservative talk show circuit, Patel laid out what he says was a yearslong scheme involving political operatives, dubious foreign sources, and a rubber-stamp surveillance process that targeted a presidential campaign.
“It took me two years of my life to prove the following: that a political party in the United States of America in the 21st century would go overseas and hire some bogus intelligence asset to manufacture fraudulent, fake, unverified information, funnel that to not just the intelligence community, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
If that sounds like the long-debated Steele dossier saga — that’s because it is. Opposition research tied to Hillary Clinton’s campaign was dressed up as intelligence and laundered through federal channels.
Patel’s claim goes even further: “And then take those packaged lies that they had paid for with campaign finance funds and go into a secret surveillance court and illegally spy on your opponent to be the president of the United States.”
That “secret court” is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, better known as FISA — a body that operates behind closed doors and signs off on warrants tied to national security. Critics have long warned it’s ripe for abuse. Patel is now saying those warnings weren’t loud enough.
Congress just kicked the can down the road on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, renewing it temporarily despite bipartisan unease. Section 702 allows U.S. intelligence agencies to collect communications of foreign targets — but it can also sweep up Americans in the process. Trump has been a vocal critic, calling it a backdoor for domestic surveillance.
Patel is now putting a face to that concern — his own. “I was illegally spied on by the likes of Rod Rosenstein… and Chris Wray and 10 other staffers on the Hill and people who were elected to serve this country in the halls of Congress.”
That’s a serious accusation, aimed squarely at former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and former FBI Director Chris Wray — names that were central during the Russia investigation years.
Patel says the FISA court itself eventually backed away. “The FISA court themselves came back and said these warrants were illegal. The FBI did not provide evidence of exculpatory evidence and innocence and that the FBI essentially lied in those applications and all the information was unverified.” The watchdog admitted the guard dogs may have been asleep — or worse.
The warrants in question were reportedly approved during the tenure of former FBI Director James Comey, a central figure in the Trump-Russia drama who has long defended the bureau’s actions.
Patel’s verdict is blunt: “I don’t think that’s ever happened before… Hollywood couldn’t come up with this.”
If you thought this was ancient history, Patel says think again. According to him, the so-called “weaponization” of federal agencies didn’t end when Trump left office — it just regrouped. “I knew in the four years that we were out of office, that they continued to regenerate that institution of weaponization… We only got maybe half of it.”
