The FBI's raid at former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate took place because there were "documents in there that need to be made public, that were never released to the public," concerning the investigation into the Russia allegations that were made about him, former Department of Defense chief of staff Kash Patel told Newsmax on Monday.
"I know this from my time running 'Russiagate' for [former Rep.] Devin Nunes, and I know we keep going back to it, but I'm trying to bring people back to it because this is what the Mar-a-Lago raid was about," Patel, who Trump chose as his representative to work with the National Archives concerning documents, said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America."
Patel's comments Monday come after David Ignatius' opinion piece for The Washington Post over the weekend described Patel as Trump's "point man" in his battle against the "deep state" and said he "has emerged as a chief public exponent of Trump's claim that he could declassify information, including highly sensitive Russia-probe material, at will."
Patel on Monday said Ignatius knows the raid at Mar-a-Lago was about documents that need to be released to the public and that was "exactly what President Trump was doing when he was being a transparent president."
Ignatius also mentioned Patel's children's book, "The Plot Against the King," saying that in it, "the evil Hillary Queenton tries to spread lies against King Donald claiming that he's working with the Russionians — until a knight called Kash exposes the plot" and said he fears a sequel is coming but it "won't be a children's book."
"He writes about my children's book, which is hilarious, I think, because I wrote that children's book at a reading level so he could understand Russiagate, and maybe that's why he wrote the hit piece and announced my sequel," said Patel.
Patel said that when he and Nunes were publicizing the documents, "we've always said we got 60% of the Russiagate documents out to the public."
"That means 40% still has not been shown to the world and we are unable to talk about it, because if we do, of course, the FBI will come after us," said Patel. "And what President Trump did, he was courageous enough to say, 'Look, there's no threats to national security here. I'm declassifying these and also everything related to the Hillary Clinton email investigation along with other things because what they do is they show the FBI and DOJ corruption.'"
But the "deep state" is fighting back through personal attacks and warnings that releasing the documents will destroy national security and relationships overseas, said Patel.
"Just like when we released the Nunes memo, nothing happened," said Patel. "The only thing we showed was the extent of government corruption. And here's the crazy thing, as bad as you thought it was for Russiagate, it is 10 times worse. I firmly believe that the FBI went and conducted this raid because now they get to say, 'Oh we have an ongoing investigation. You can't see anything and you won't be seeing anything from that affidavit.' You'll see 98% of black magic marker redaction."
Patel, meanwhile, said the DOJ wants to charge Trump with a crime and will "take it right up to the one-inch line."
"Maybe there's a grand jury in Washington crazy enough to do it," Patel said. "The only matter the Department of Justice actually listens to from time to time is the public, and the public outcry on this has been massively against them."
Patel added that the raid could also "be the biggest boon" Trump receives, should he decide to run for election in the 2024 presidential race, but Patek doesn't think an announcement will come before the November elections.
"But you know, he's pretty fired up about all of this stuff and, you know, maybe this coincides with the way America is trending right now," said Nunes. "We're already gonna get a landslide in the midterms, but you know, every time I think I know what he's going to do, he shocks you and does something different."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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