Masters of Deceit

Kash Patel and Devin Nunes are poised to infect US Intelligence with ‘Deep State’ Paranoia

President Trump is moving aggressively to install his choices to lead the FBI and the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, the White House espionage oversight panel. Seeking to start taming what he regards as untrustworthy U.S. spy—and counterspy—agencies, his nominee to head the FBI, Kash Patel, is a controversial lawyer and pro-Trump enthusiast who claims that the Bureau under Biden corruptly targeted Trump and his entourage.

Patel was a Federal public defender who went on to become a counterterrorism prosecutor for the Justice Department and, according to his official biography, “oversaw the successful prosecution” of Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other groups.

But it wasn’t until he signed on as a top aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, the fervently pro-Trump Republican who chaired the House Intelligence Committee, that Patel truly came into his own. His bio claims that he not only “spearheaded” the committee’s investigation into Russian attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election, but also supervised“ sensitive” spy and military operations and worked to push legislation to fund multi-billion dollar budgets for worldwide intelligence and counterterrorism operations.

As if to give a middle finger to critics who would argue Patel’s record shows that his loyalty to Trump could outshine his devotion to running what is supposed to be a politically neutral law enforcement agency, Trump announced only a few days later that he was appointing Nunes himself to head the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB), a White House oversight panel whose chair does not need a congressional approval vote.

The public record shows Patel and Nunes used their congressional positions to promote and enforce Trump’s ideology and routinely spun facts to back up their claims. They were essentially partners in producing and promoting a once-classified congressional document that sought to lay a factual foundation for Trump false claims that investigations into his alleged links to Russia were just a “deep state” disinformation campaign. With Nunes leading the Intelligence panel and Patel as top investigator, the panel declassified and released a four-page memo claiming to outline abuses involving the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that the FBI allegedly committed during the 2016 election cycle.