FBI Director Kash Patel has accused the FBI of misleading a secret surveillance court in order to obtain warrants used to monitor President Donald Trump and members of his circle during the and the years that followed.
speaking to Fox News alleged that political actors used unverified intelligence to trigger federal surveillance.
“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,” said.
He continued: “And then take 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 president of the United States.”
References long-running Trump allegations
Trump has repeatedly claimed that his 2016 Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama were involved in orchestrating politically motivated surveillance against his campaign. Both Clinton and Obama have denied those allegations.
Patel’s remarks revive long-standing disputes over the origins of the and the use of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants.
Patel says FISA warrants were later ruled invalid
Patel reportedly told Fox News that warrants approved by the FBI and signed by were eventually rescinded by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
“The FISA court themselves came back and said these warrants were illegal,” Patel said.
He added: “The FBI did not provide evidence of exculpatory evidence and innocence and that the FBI essentially lied in those applications and all the information was unverified.”
Patel described the situation as unprecedented, saying: “I don’t think that’s ever happened before… Hollywood couldn’t come up with this.”
Claims he was personally surveilled
Patel also alleged that he himself was targeted during the investigations.
“I was illegally spied on by the likes of Rod Rosenstein and Chris Wray and 10 other staffers on the Hill and people who were elected to serve this country in the halls of Congress,” he said.
He accused former officials of continuing what he described as the “weaponization” of federal law enforcement institutions.
Background on Patel and the ‘Nunes Memo’
Patel served on the National Security Council during Trump’s first term and later became deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism.
He was also a key figure behind the 2018 “Nunes Memo,” a Republican-authored document alleging FBI bias and misconduct in the Trump-Russia investigation.
Patel vows further investigation
Patel argued that alleged abuses within federal institutions continued after Trump left office in 2021 and intensified under President Joe Biden.
“I knew in the four years that we were out of office, that they continued to regenerate that institution of weaponization,” Patel said.
He added: “So when I walked in the door, I said, ‘We only got a bit of it. We only got maybe half of it.’”
