A watchdog report released this week revealed the “chilling” snooping the FBI was conducting throughout the president-elect’s first term, including on the agency’s intended next leader.
Mere days before FBI Director Christopher Wray announced his intent to end his tenure with President Joe Biden’s administration, the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General released a report on spying dating back to 2017. Included among 43 congressional staffers and two Democratic Party politicians, then-House Intelligence Committee staffer Kash Patel was unknowingly targeted by the FBI for years.
Sources confirmed to CNN that, while unnamed, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the agency was among those spied on according to the report titled, “A Review of the Department of Justice’s Issuance of Compulsory Process to Obtain Records of Members of Congress, Congressional Staffers, and Members of the News Media.”
Dating back to then-acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe’s tenure, and continually reapproved under Wray, the agency had justified the sweeping investigation of Patel, staffers, and then-Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) over Crossfire Hurricane and leaks of classified information to corporate media in 2017 regarding the Russian collusion investigation.
Service providers were prohibited by a court order from notifying customers like Patel of the DOJ’s access to their information as the report detailed:
“Between September 2017 and March 2018, in connection with Washington Post 1 and Washington Post 2, the USAO-DC issued compulsory process to third party electronic communication service providers (such as email providers, telephone companies, cell phone service providers, and Internet-based messaging services) and to remote computing service providers (such [as] cloud based storage providers) to obtain non-content communications records for phone numbers and email addresses the Department had identified as being associated with 2 Members of Congress and 43 individuals who were congressional staffers at the time…”
Additional process had been issued for one of the 43, though no longer a staffer, through June 2020, the report noted.
Writing in an op-ed for the New York Post, reporter and Hoover Institution fellow Paul Sperry explained, “At the time, Patel was demanding to see FBI documents and depose FBI witnesses to find out if the bureau had abused its power in obtaining a FISA warrant to spy on Trump aide Carter Page. But Patel remained in the dark until 2022, when Google finally was cleared to send him a copy of the subpoena. Outraged, he told me at the time: ‘The FBI and DOJ subpoenaed my personal records while I caught them doing this to Page back in 2017.'”
“He said the McCabe FBI didn’t want anybody to find out that it ‘literally copied and pasted’ Democrat opposition research, wholesale, into wiretap-warrant applications,” continued Sperry who went on to cite Patel as having said that under a future Trump administration, “They must be held accountable or they’ll only abuse their power again.”
The report voiced concern over the “chilling” effect the FBI’s actions would have on whistleblowers and suggested the DOJ had created “at a minimum, the appearance of inappropriate interference by the executive branch in legitimate oversight activity by the legislative branch.”
In a statement to the Post on behalf of Patel, a spokeswoman said, “This [IG] report highlights exactly why Kash Patel is the perfect leader to reform and rebuild the FBI.”
“Kash understands the critical balance between national security and protecting civil rights [and] will work hand-in-hand with Congress to restore trust,” she added.
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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