On Joe Rogan’s podcast, FBI Director Kash Patel revealed the FISA warrant that kicked off Russiagate investigations of President Donald Trump was substantiated by leaks to the media.

FBI DIRECTOR KASH PATEL: Let me give you Russiagate in 90 seconds. Could you imagine a time in the United States of America in the 21st century where a political party would go overseas and acquire fake foreign intelligence from a foreign intelligence officer funded by donations to that political party in the United States of America, then take that material, package it, walk it to the FBI, literally, and say, hey, we need you to surveil the opponent of our political party who happens to be running for the president of the United States, then convince the FBI to go into a secret federal FISA court that I used to use to manhunt terrorists and say, hey, I need you to wiretap, essentially, all the comms in and around Trump camp because of the material we gave you, and then have that FBI lie to the federal court and the judge in that warrant application, which is a felony, and intentionally remove information of innocence from that application just to get it above the threshold so the judge would sign it. That’s Russiagate. That’s what they did. And you remember the years and years of reporting surrounding Russiagate. The FBI would never lie. They would never do that. The leadership there is above reproach. James Comey, Andy McCabe, Peter Strzok. The list goes on. We caught him red-handed. We caught him. You’ve seen the text message. You’ve seen the documentation. You’ve seen the reports. But when I did that, when I exposed that initially as a staffer on the Hill, Adam Schiff comes out and has his cronies leak to the world that I am acting as a genocidal dictator. There was actually an article that called me a genocidal dictator. JOE ROGAN: Genocidal dictator. PATEL: Yeah, no, it gets better. ROGAN: How do you get to be a dictator? PATEL: I don’t know. Genocidal wasn’t that long, right? Like, you know, it’s a twofer. ROGAN: Words don’t even mean anything anymore. PATEL: No, literally there’s an article out there that they called me Torquemada, the guy from the Spanish Inquisition. ROGAN: Jesus Christ. PATEL: And I was a staffer. So the rule was you can ding elected representatives all you want in the media. You don’t touch staffers. They didn’t care because they knew what I had unearthed was the biggest political criminal scheme ever perpetrated by portions of the FBI leadership and other people in the intelligence community. ROGAN: In coordination with the media. PATEL: In coordination. ROGAN: Who could have investigated it. PATEL: But hang on, that’s the kicker. So what people don’t know about Russiagate that weren’t paying attention was that warrant that initially kicked off the FISA surveillance on the Trump campaign writ large was substantiated by FBI leaks to the media. Two of the articles cited in that warrant from, I think, Mother Jones and Yahoo News were leaks of information from the same leadership at the FBI, Peter Strzok, Andy McCabe, James Comey and company. And then they in the application would be like, hey, it’s not just us saying that Trump’s a Russian asset, right? Look at this article, Mr. Judge, on the federal FISA court. And they included it in that application. So this was a coordinated conspiracy to take down your political opponent by weaponizing government. And now I say that now in 2025, when I said that in 2017, whatever it was, people were like, you’re out of your effing mind. And I was like, look, man, I’m just showing you the facts. I’m not making this up. I’m showing you the application. I’m showing you the documentation. And that’s when they came after me. And it hasn’t stopped ever since. But the damage they did, they, the media, and the people that wanted to take out Trump, and I didn’t care what you thought about. And remember, back then, I hadn’t met Trump, never spoken to him, didn’t know him. I took that job at Congress on one condition. I said, whatever we find, we’re putting out. I’d been in for 16 years at that point, Democrats, Republicans. I was a national security guy, intel guy. That’s what I wanted to do. Chase terrorists, chase bad guys, bring hostages home and help protect the homeland. And I said, I didn’t know if Trump did this. I didn’t know if he was colluding with whoever. I didn’t know it would turn out like this, that they would actually manufacture and make it up. But half of America to this day still believes the narrative that the CNNs of the world pushed for five years. And if you look on their shows now, Russiagate keeps coming back up because we keep exposing the documents that showed how bad these guys were. And most Americans like, no, they’re already convinced. So in order to fix that disease temple, it is just that much harder of a lift for me to go back into the FBI. We’re going to get it done, but it takes so much more communication and so much more energy to get after the American people and say, you were lied to. Because that’s the hardest thing I think people can ever admit to themselves. You were lied to. I went out for years and created a life cycle out of this lie of Russiagate. I went on TV, I made money, I wrote books, I sold political advertisements based on it. I educated my children based on it because I thought it was the truth. And some of them have come back and said, yeah, we got it wrong. But most haven’t. And that’s the disinformation seed, in my opinion, that started it all. And then you can talk about things like January 6th or, you know, pick your poison, rescuing a hostage or what have you. The media just never got on board. They kneecapped Trump from the beginning by participating in the Russiagate collusion conspiracy with the FBI. ROGAN: It’s so crazy that someone could do something like that, and a whole enormous group of people could do something like that with no repercussions. And to be able to operate and, you know, say they’re the trusted source in news, and you were a part of something that was one of the biggest scandals in political history. But just because it’s targeted towards Trump, people look the other way. Like, if that was targeted towards Obama, could you imagine how psychotic the response would be? People would be up in arms and furious. But the same people that would be up in arms and furious if somebody tried to do that for Obama are completely silent if it’s happening to Trump. PATEL: Yeah, just think about it. What if me as the FBI director in the Trump administration, right, during a presidential cycle went out there and said, hey, Republican National Committee, do you guys have dirt on whoever’s running for the Democratic nomination to be president of the United States? If you don’t, can you go overseas and pay a foreign national who used to be an MI6 guy, get me some bogus intel? Then I, as the FBI director, will authorize a warrant, a leak to the media while I’m doing it, take their articles, put it in that warrant, and then go surveil the opponent so he doesn’t get elected. I would be in prison, which I should be for doing anything like that.

RealClearPolitics Videos