Kash Patel said the FBI misled a secret court in order to secure surveillance warrants used to monitor Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential race and into his presidency, alleging a wider pattern of misconduct within federal law enforcement.

Speaking Tuesday on “Hang Out with Sean Hannity,” Patel told Sean Hannity that he spent years uncovering what he described as a coordinated effort involving political actors and intelligence channels. “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,” Patel said.

He continued by describing how the material was allegedly used, stating that it was “funnel[ed] … to, not just the intelligence community, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” before being presented in court. According to Patel, authorities then took “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 next President of the United States.”

Recounting the outcome of his investigation, Patel said, “That took two years of my life,” adding, “And what did we find out? The FISA court themselves came back and said these warrants were illegal, that the FBI did not provide evidence of exculpatory evidence and innocence, and that the FBI essentially lied in those applications.”

Patel indicated that the issue extended beyond those initial findings, calling the episode only the beginning. “I knew it didn’t stop there,” he said.

He went on to claim that the practices continued during the years when Trump was out of office. “I knew in the four years that we were out of office that they continued to regenerate that institution of weaponization,” Patel said, asserting that during that time he discovered, “I was illegally spied on by the likes of [former U.S. deputy attorney general] Rod Rosenstein and [former FBI director] Chris Wray.”

According to Patel, others were also affected. He stated that “ten other staffers on the Hill, and people who were elected to serve this country in the halls of Congress” were similarly targeted.

“They were actually continuing the weaponization that Donald Trump and I exposed during Trump One [President Trump’s first term], and we caught them,” Patel said.

He further argued that officials involved documented their own actions. “I knew walking in the door the following: These individuals, these purported leaders of law enforcement and government are so arrogant that they write the stuff down themselves to memorialize how great they are,” Patel said.

Pointing to the origins of the evidence, he added, “That’s how we caught them in RussiaGate. It wasn’t my documents. It was their emails.”

Patel continued by citing specific materials, saying, “It was their FISA application. It was their bogus Steele dossier. It was their unverified reporting that was documented in FBI holdings that we put out and that you covered.”

He concluded by noting that additional information had been uncovered. “I knew there were other places that that information was hidden,” he said. “So, day one I set out to find it and we found it.”

Patel’s remarks come at a time of renewed attention on federal surveillance authorities, following Congress’s recent 45-day extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

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{Matzav.com}