Kash’s Corner: Connecting the Dots on the Origins of the Steele Dossier

“Just let that sit for a second. The guy who wrote the Steele dossier and was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to do it—Christopher Steele—by the DNC and Hillary campaign was introduced to a sub-source by Fiona Hill, the very lady who went into the Trump White House and then conjured up the Ukraine impeachment fiasco.”

In the Season 2 finale of Kash’s Corner, Kash Patel and Jan Jekielek discuss John Durham’s recent indictment of Russian analyst Igor Danchenko, and they connect the dots on the origins of the Steele dossier and the Russia collusion narrative, including the roles of Fiona Hill and Clinton operative Charles Dolan.

“I’m the lead Russia guy, and I had never heard of [Charles Dolan],” says Kash Patel. “It means to me, the FBI, DOJ under Rod Rosenstein withheld information that was critical to the Russiagate investigation that we were running in 2017, 2018. And who knows what else they’ve left out?”

 

Kash Patel: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Kash’s Corner. If you can believe it, this is the season two finale. Jan, we have shot 20 plus episodes of Kash’s Corner. I’m excited to get into the Danchenko stuff today. We’ll be back after Thanksgiving with season three of Kash’s Corner, but before we do, we have one more episode, All Things Russiagate: Durham and Mr. Danchenko.

Jan Jekielek: Well, it really is kind of crazy that we’re 20 plus episodes into this. How does that happen? And, wow, the Igor Danchenko indictment. It’s one of the biggest things that’s happened in a very long time in terms of new information. Why don’t you break down the indictment. Let’s just start there. There’s a cajillion questions I have for you here.

Mr. Patel: Yes. So let’s … really quick 60 second recap. We do the Russiagate investigation under Chairman Nunes. I was the lead investigator. We put out the Nunes memo, the House Intelligence report where we find all the FISA abuse, all the fraud, all the misapplication of law by the FBI, and the DOJ to get a warrant that’s validated by the Inspector General’s report. The Inspector General goes on to do two separate reports, and finds over 100 abuses in FISA applications in the last one or two years. That’s a big problem, so we’re addressing those issues.

Then comes John Durham, Special Counsel, appointed in the Trump administration to investigate the investigators, as Devin used to say. He now has three indictments. First indictment, FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, is now a convicted felon for lying to the FISA court. He literally took a document, John Durham indicted him for it, took an email and doctored the contents of the email to mean the opposite of what it said. So now you have a proven FBI agent abusing the FISA court, and breaking the law.

Two, Michael Sussmann was indicted about one to two months ago. Who’s Sussmann? As you know, we did a whole show on him. He is the DNC, Hillary campaign lawyer whose law firm was paid tens of millions of dollars. They hired Fusion GPS, and Christopher Steele that led us to the dossier. Why is Sussmann important? He’s been indicted for lying to the FBI about who his client was, his client being the DNC, and the Hillary campaign. So that case is ongoing.

So now you have the FBI, they’re in unlawful actions. You have Michael Sussmann, the DNC who represents the Hillary Clinton campaign, and their unlawful actions, and their distribution of false information to the media.

Now we get Igor Danchenko. Who is he? And why does anyone care? Long story short, Christopher Steele, as everyone now knows whose credibility has been completely destroyed by actual facts, had to get his information, or so-called made up information from somewhere. Christopher Steele’s main source for the Steele Dossier is Igor Danchenko, or at least that’s what Christopher Steele told the world.

Mr. Jekielek: Durham gives us an incredible amount of new information here. I want to get your perspective on this. We have Sergei Millian being apparently exonerated. We have the appearance of someone who I frankly knew nothing about. I was trying to figure out, what did I miss here? A guy named Dolan.

Mr. Patel: Yes. What did you miss? What did I miss? I’m the lead Russia guy, and I had never heard of this guy. It’s tragic in how comical it is because, we, under Chairman Nunes when we were running Russiagate, we sent letters, and subpoenas, congressional subpoenas used properly to the FBI, and DOJ for all documentation relating to Christopher Steele’s Dossier, the underlying reporting, and all the connections that he and the FBI had through the whole Russiagate scandal.

Charles Dolan never came up once. Me, not one member of my team, nor any of the Republicans on House Intel had ever heard of Charles Dolan until John Durham’s indictment. Why is that so stark? Why is that such a surprise? It means to me, the FBI and DOJ under Rod Rosenstein withheld information that was critical to the Russiagate investigation that we were running in 2017, 2018.

Who knows what else they’ve left out, they omitted from providing us? We knew they weren’t giving us everything, but Charles Dolan—and we can talk about why he’s so important—is an example that gives me more faith in John Durham because he’s getting that information that was hidden, and kept from us in Congress.

Mr. Jekielek: Well, why don’t you flesh out exactly why you’re so sure that there’s something that the FBI knew that’s being explicitly hidden from you as opposed to missed, for example?

Mr. Patel: Sure. We’ll get into the Danchenko indictment, but in the pages of the indictment, it’s clear the FBI interviewed not just Steele, but also interviewed Danchenko, if not once, twice, thrice, four times, five times. They did not admit that to us when we were investigating the Russiagate investigation. I think we added at most two or three instances of an interview, and we never got the full contents anyway. Now there’s five. Where did that come from?

Charles Dolan. Who is Charles Dolan? Why is he important? Charles Dolan, a career Democrat, longtime Clinton ally, worked on Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, worked on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and has given tens of thousands of dollars to only Democratic candidates for national office. He is affiliated with Danchenko and Steele. How does that happen? Fiona Hill. If you remember, Fiona Hill, and we’ll talk about her later, introduces the three of them. Then why is it important? Who cares who Charlie Dolan is, right?

Well, John Durham’s indictment tells us why he is such a critical figure in all this, because Charlie Dolan—Danchenko indictment—is the one that was feeding information to Danchenko for the Steele Dossier. Here we have on full display for the world to see, Danchenko is shown to have not provided any credible information to Christopher Steele for his dossier.

So if the reporting that Steele got was not credible, and Danchenko his main source is saying on the record now, I didn’t give you any credible information, why are you citing me as a source in your investigation? What did Christopher Steele rely on to support his recent interview with George Stephanopoulos saying he still believes in his work? He can’t. His credibility has been shattered. You asked me a couple of weeks ago, why did they do that interview? They did that interview because they knew the Danchenko indictment was coming, and we said it back then.

Mr. Jekielek: Fascinating. No, and just a little bit about Fiona Hill. Of course, she came into the public eye in the impeachment hearings. Now, she clearly knew both Dolan and Danchenko, but not necessarily introduced the two, or how does that …? This is an interesting question.

Mr. Patel: Fiona Hill, a think tanker who ended up in the Trump White House on the National Security Council covering European affairs. She was the one who conjured up the Ukraine fiasco that led to the impeachment of President Trump. So her, and Alexander Vindman, was the other one who said Trump had this phone call where there was this quid pro quo.

Well, now we know since the contents of that actual call were released, and the transcript released, America can read for themselves that’s not what happened. We wasted months of our time impeaching a U.S. president when that should never have been done. That was started by Fiona Hill in large part. And why is she important? Igor Danchenko used to be Fiona Hill’s research assistant. He used to work for her here in America before she went to the White House.

Fiona Hill introduces Danchenko to Christopher Steele. Just let that sit for a second. The guy who wrote the Steele Dossier, and was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to do it, Christopher Steele, by the DNC and Hillary campaign, was introduced to a subsource by Fiona Hill. The very lady who went into the Trump White House, and then conjured up the Ukraine impeachment fiasco. And that’s why people should be asking questions about her.

Not only did she know Danchenko, but Fiona Hill also knew Charlie Dolan from their days together previously at the State Department. So how is it possible that Fiona Hill introduces Steele to a subsource for purposes of Russiagate, is friends with Charlie Dolan, and introduces Charlie Dolan to Danchenko? What did she testify … Fiona Hill testify to the world during the Ukraine impeachment trial of President Trump?

Mr. Jekielek: Here’s the exact quote. She says, “I have no knowledge whatsoever of how he developed,” that’s Steele, “of how he developed that dossier. None. I just want to state that.”

Mr. Patel: That’s literally unbelievable. Fiona Hill introduces Christopher Steele to Danchenko, his main source, the guy that used to work for her, and Mr. Dolan introduced to Danchenko by Fiona Hill. And she has no idea. She testified under oath she has no idea what Steele was doing, or how that dossier got made. I think if I were John Durham, I would have already placed her in a grand jury, and questioned her under oath, again, because she testified there under oath to Congress, and she may have a problem about lying to Congress.

Mr. Jekielek: Let’s go back for a moment. Let’s actually break down the indictment from the top.

Mr. Patel: Yes. Sorry. I got so excited. This is years of my life coming around full circle that I skipped over what we’re actually supposed to be talking about, the contents of the indictment. Okay. So the indictment basically says that Danchenko, the defendant in this case, lied to the FBI on five separate occasions. That’s a crime so long as the FBI has it properly documented, which I believe they do, otherwise, John Durham would never have brought it.

And another component of lying to the FBI, it has to be material to something, material to your investigation. So what John Durham is alleging, and we can go through the counts, but he’s basically saying on multiple occasions, Igor Danchenko was interviewed by the FBI about the Russiagate investigation, the Steele Dossier, his involvement with folks like Sergei Millian, and what John Durham is saying on multiple occasions he lied.

He lied to the FBI about his involvement, quote unquote, with the Steele Dossier, about who he was talking to, about meetings he had, and about other individuals who he said he got information from. Durham is saying Danchenko lied about those things in this indictment.

Like the Sussmann indictment, which was 29 pages if I recall correctly, this is another. He was also charged with lying to the FBI. Danchenko’s indictment is 39 pages long. Again, as a former federal prosecutor, we talked about this before, those indictments are two, three, four pages max. So people are probably asking, well, why do you take 39 pages to talk about lying to the FBI? I think it speaks to what we were talking about in the last episode with Sussmann.

He, John Durham, is using the only means he has to communicate to the public an indictment, because indictments have to be public, by telling the narrative, his investigation. He has pieced together a 39 page indictment, naming individuals not by name because he can’t, but by title, which is how we found out who PR executive one in the indictment was, Mr. Dolan, and things like that.

So he is telling the world, I believe Igor Danchenko lied. And these are the cast of characters that are involved in this entire process. I think the biggest name to stand out either from the Sussmann indictment, or the Danchenko indictment was Jake Sullivan, the current National Security advisor.

Mr. Jekielek: Well, okay, so something interesting … You said the only way that Durham has to communicate is through these indictments. Now I’m still incredibly fascinated by what a tight ship Durham has been running. There’s been one minor league, let’s call it that, right? Recently, or at least reported as such, and that’s one of the reasons why a lot of people, including you and me, weren’t really expecting much to come of it.

Mr. Patel: Yes. Since President Trump got elected in 2016, I think we’ve talked about this, the landscape sort of shifted. The media blew up. Leaks of classified information were doled out by people in the deep state if it felt they could advance a political narrative that they wanted, and accurate reporting was just a thing of the past for most journalists. That’s why in the Durham indictment, everybody expected some form of leaks during his entire investigation. He’s been at it for over two years now, and you’re right. He has kept a tight ship, and that’s the one thing that gave me faith in him so far back.

Now, look, I’ll be the first to admit my faith in him has gone up and down, and now we’re back up again. But he did the rendition special investigation, remember? When the CIA was charged with using what we call rendition techniques, or quote, unquote, torture techniques, during the war on terror. It’s one of the most serious investigations ever, and he was charged with running that investigation, and interviewing attorneys generals, and the like.

So he knows how to handle high-level investigations. He kept that one under wraps until it was ready to go, so it’s no surprise to me that he’s able to do this. But in this environment, it should be extra hats off to John Durham for not leaking anything.

Mr. Jekielek: Speaking of this one leak, it turns out that he wasn’t planning on doing one of these midnight raids with guns trained, and all this. It’s a little bit of a different approach, isn’t it?

Mr. Patel: Yes. With Danchenko, what was reported is, and I think the same with Sussmann, and probably the same with Clinesmith, there’s a professional way to do things with certain types of defendants. If you know your defendant is not a threat, he’s not armed, he’s not going to flee, he’s not going to run away, or leave the country, or put anyone in danger, you call that person’s lawyer, and you tell them, hey, we now have an indictment coming.

We’d like you to bring your client in so he can be processed because per the law, he has to be your judge within 24 hours for arraignment, as we call it. Most of the time in these high profile cases, that’s what happens. They call the lawyer. They bring him in. They don’t do the whole perp walk as we call it, like they did with Roger Stone in the midnight raid. But they just do a very professional—please come in, get your fingerprints, get booked, have an arraignment, and then you’ll be released on bond.

I think that was supposed to happen in Danchenko, but there was actually a report of a leak. The only leak I could find in the John Durham investigation to, or a media outlet reported that this individual was going to be arrested in the appropriate fashion through the lawyers. Since that happened, that wrecked the timetable, which is why they had to go arrest him, I think, at his home, or some location in Virginia the normal way.

Mr. Jekielek: Yes,that is really interesting—sort of the thought process behind the difference between, as you call it the professional version versus the midnight raid when it’s not necessary.

Mr. Patel: Right.

Mr. Jekielek: Let’s jump back to these five areas of material lying that Danchenko has been indicted under. Specifically, I want to talk about Sergei Millian right here, because, of course, Sergei Millian has always said, always maintained that he had no communication with Danchenko, right? That this was a fabrication. It seems like this indictment actually exonerates him. Tell me your thoughts.

Mr. Patel: Okay. So, Sergei Millian was someone we spent a lot of time on during the Russiagate investigation. We discovered [out] his identity, and who he was, but because of our position in Congress, and us wanting to protect people’s personal identifiable information, we didn’t disclose it to the public for some time.

Mr. Jekielek: Roughly when did you figure this out?

Mr. Patel: Probably late 2017, going into the winter of 2017, and it was attributed in the Steele Dossier. Obviously, the Steele Dossier didn’t have the names of its sources. It just said, “Source one, source two.” I think we attributed it at the time, Sergei Millian as source two, I believe. I might have the number wrong, but a big source, according to Christopher Steele.

In the Steele Dossier he made it look like he had a vast source network throughout Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Russia. It sounded like a spy novel thriller when you read the Steele Dossier, which is why I think people were so fantasized by how it read, but winding the clock back about how we approached the Russiagate investigation that I ran, we did two things.

One, follow the money. We’ve talked about that. And, two, source credibility. Not just Steele, but I told Devin Nunes at the time, look, we’ve got to start figuring out who these subsources are, and we have to evaluate their credibility, and more importantly, what the FBI did to verify their credibility. I think this is where the FBI gets in a lot of problems with Sergei Millian, and we’ll get to that in a second, but here’s what’s happened. Fast forward since the Russiagate investigation, and House Intel, Sergei Millian has now come out.

I think there’s a recent tweet saying he’s been totally vindicated, and he has been, because not only has Sergei Millian now said, “I didn’t give you any credible information for your dossier.” Danchenko has also come out and said, “I didn’t give you any credible information for your dossier.” There were three to four affidavits filed in U.S. federal court last week, by the other subsources in Steele’s Dossier saying they provided almost no credible information to Christopher Steele for his dossier. In fact, most of the information was provided, and I’m paraphrasing, in jest.

They filed that in a federal court of law in the United States, they being the Steele subsource network. So all of Christopher Steele’s sources have now been totally annihilated by their own account, and people are starting to get indicted. Christopher Steele still has the audacity to get up on national TV, not for an actual question and answer, but just so he can get his fairytale out, that he continues to be a credible investigator for the biggest political scandal in U.S. history.

Mr. Jekielek: In the indictment, it looks like Millian never communicated with Danchenko.

Mr. Patel: Isn’t that shocking? I think you’re right. One of the major subsources for the Steele Dossier, and I’m glad you brought this up, is saying, “Sergei Millian, I never talked to Christopher Steele.” So where did he get that information from? Why did he get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for that information? And who else was that information pedaled to? It was pedaled to the mainstream media who ran with it, and helped destroy yet another life.

Sergei Millian is another individual who I believe was wrongfully attacked by the media once his name eventually got out there, and his day of reckoning has also come. So I don’t know what Christopher Steele is going to do next.

Maybe he’ll go on the mainstream news again, and try to give a soliloquy on how him not being in Russia for the last 20 years makes him the appropriate figure to create a Russian dossier, but I just don’t think the American public has the attention span anymore to give him.

Mr. Jekielek: I want to touch on not being in Russia in a moment, but here’s the recent tweet. We’re filming here on Wednesday. Sergei Millian put this up two hours ago. He says, “Igor Danchenko, the whole world is now aware that you’ve framed me, and U.S. president. Please speak up now ASAP and tell your whole story, and who is behind you.” Then he says, “You have very little time left because your own friends will take care of you. You know that very well, don’t you?” Wow.

Mr. Patel: That’s pretty powerful. I can only speculate as to how Sergei Millian feels having been attacked myself. Maybe we have some crossover there, falsely attacked, but it’s a powerful statement for one of the subsources, or sources in the Steele Dossier.

Mr. Jekielek: Do you think Igor Danchenko should be fearing for his life?

Mr. Patel: I don’t think so, but he might be, given everything he’s been through. But I don’t think so because he’s a charged defendant in a U.S. federal prosecution. Even though he is out on bond, he’s still being monitored by law enforcement authorities, and in touch with his lawyers, and in touch with the Justice Department, and the FBI. So if something does happen, or some serious threat is seen by them, they will act appropriately, I believe. At least John Durham’s people will because they don’t want to see a defendant get killed prior, or ever, but especially prior to trial.

Mr. Jekielek: Here’s the thing when you talked about Steele not being in Russia for 20 odd years, right? It made me think of Dolan.

Mr. Patel: Yes.

Mr. Jekielek: We got to talk about Dolan because it sounds like if you didn’t know who Dolan was, nobody knew who Dolan was.

Mr. Patel: Yes.

Mr. Jekielek: It looks like Dolan was communicating with very high-level Russians around the time when he was accusing the Trump campaign of communicating with very high-level Russians, which they weren’t doing. Isn’t that just bizarre? Is that right? And isn’t that just completely bizarre?

Mr. Patel: I think your summary is right per John Durham’s indictment. I think what’s stunning is—just to remind our audience—Carter Page was the individual targeted by the FBI, and the FISA process to surveil President Trump’s campaign. Carter Page, per the now declassified FISAs, thanks to our work on the Intel Committee, was—they alleged, the FBI, that Carter Page was having these high-level meetings in Russia with two of President Putin’s biggest supporters who happened to just own one of the world’s largest natural gas companies.

What the FBI alleged in the FISA was that Carter Page was bartering his access to President, or then candidate Trump, with these Russians on behalf of Putin. That would have been a quid pro quo, which would have made him a foreign agent, right? And a rightful target of a FISA.

The only problem is those meetings never happened. It’s very curious now that we find out Charles Dolan—the Hillary Clinton operative who was paid money by the Clinton campaign, and supported Democrats—happened to be in Russia in 2016, talking about meetings that then candidate Trump’s advisors were supposedly, also in Russia, having these high-level treasonous meetings.

I think it’s more than curious, and as I’ve said before, there isn’t a coincidence in these types of FBI investigations, especially, not the one John Durham is running. In my opinion, if Dolan is putting himself in Russia at the time, supposedly, the FBI is falsely relying on Carter Page having these meetings, I think Charlie Dolan is part of the reason why you have those meetings, and that’s where it came from. From Dolan to Danchenko to Steele. And, once again, what did Fiona Hill know about all of it back then?

Mr. Jekielek: Well, fascinating. Just to remind everybody that Carter Page was, actually, a CIA source all along, right?

Mr. Patel: What I’ll say is Carter Page assisted various government agencies over the years. The one I can talk about publicly is the FBI. Here’s one of those things that we don’t touch upon often, but now it’s been declassified. It took us a long time to do it.

The FBI had been working with Carter Page at the time of his FISA application, FISA warrant target, for almost 10 years. They never told the FISA judge that Carter Page was someone who provided them useful information, and the Russians that Carter Page was around at the time that he was working with the FBI were caught saying, Carter Page is, I quote, an idiot, and someone who can’t be relied on.

That information would have changed the landscape of that FISA just in and of itself. That was something that we found that the FBI buried and the Inspector General validated, was one of those 17 errors of omissions in the FISA warrant application for Carter Page that would have invalidated that warrant. Later the Justice Department did invalidate those FISAs.

Mr. Jekielek: Let’s flesh out Dolan a little bit here because there’s probably people that are watching right now who are wondering who is this guy?

Mr. Patel: Yes.

Mr. Jekielek: What is he all about? Clearly, he’s someone who did have access to very high-level Russians, so a plausible source for something like the Steele Dossier now. We’ve talked a little bit about why this might be a problem inherently, but flesh him out—who is he?

Mr. Patel: Well, again, I’m only learning of Charlie Dolan now with the rest of the world. This isn’t one of those scenarios where I knew it back then in my investigation, and wasn’t able to speak of it because we were doing an investigation, or it was classified, or anything like that. It’s totally different for me. I’m in the same boat as everybody else is. So to me, he’s a political operative who’s connected directly to Fiona Hill, who has been connected directly to Christopher Steele, and Steele’s main subsource.

That Russia collusion narrative, if you rewind the clock, was Trump is conspiring with Putin, and his cronies to rig a presidential election, or do favors once he’s elected president. The reality now is we know the only people that actually colluded with the Russian government, or Russians, are the Hillary Clinton campaign, the DNC, corrupt bureaucrats at the FBI, and DOJ.

It seems that this Charlie Dolan is the perfect example of an outsider who was not in government at the time, who was helping the Clinton campaign connect the dots, the dots being the individuals who pieced together the dossier, the dossier being the one document that—as Andy McCabe said under oath— we were finally able to declassify. If there is no Steele Dossier, there is no FISA warrant on Carter Page. That was the deputy director of the FBI, he said it to us in the winter of 2017, if I believe, and that deposition is now available, also, online. It’s pretty shocking stuff that someone who is so integral in putting together the Steele Dossier is only now coming to light.

Mr. Jekielek: Just as a quick reminder, Dolan was an active campaigner during Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

Mr. Patel: Right. Not only do you have an individual who is not in government working at the behest of the Hillary Clinton campaign, he’s advising that campaign. While talking to Steele, and Danchenko about the Steele Dossier, what else did he know? Did he provide more information to Christopher Steele than Danchenko is alleging? Did he provide false information? Did the FBI interview him in 2017 and 2018? I don’t know the answer to that. Maybe John Durham does.

And who paid Dolan? I’m sure he didn’t do it for free. Did the Hillary campaign pay Dolan like they paid Perkins Coie, their law firm, $10 million, Michael Sussmann, and Marc Elias? Did they pay him what they paid Christopher Steele, six figures? Did they pay him what they paid Nellie Ohr, $50,000 to dig up Russian dirt? What did he get paid? I think following the money has always been my theme, and I’ll be interested to see where John Durham’s money trail goes to Charles Dolan.

Mr. Jekielek: Going back to what we were talking about before, Sergei Millian was source six. I understand why you don’t remember because I keep thinking of him as Chamber president one, because that’s what he is in this indictment that we’re looking at.

Mr. Patel: Right.

Mr. Jekielek: Speaking of the Russian Chamber of Commerce, what are your thoughts here?

Mr. Patel: I think that’s one of the critical components of this indictment of Danchenko. I know there’s five counts, but let’s talk about the main one, I think is important, Sergei Millian. What John Durham is saying in this indictment is that Danchenko lied to the FBI about contacts he, Danchenko, had with the Russian American Chamber of Commerce, who at the time was headed up by Sergei Millian.

What Durham is saying is that Danchenko told the FBI, he, Danchenko, got information from the Russian American Chamber of Commerce via Sergei Millian. What Sergei Millian is saying, and as you pointed out earlier, is that he never spoke to Danchenko, so John Durham has caught Danchenko lying.

I think that’s the most critical component not just because he’s caught him in a federal offense, but because the perpetrators of the Russia hoax, as we call it in the media, is they relied on that as a major connection to Trump’s universe and Russia. The Russian American Chamber of Commerce was embedded via Danchenko, and supposedly, falsely, Sergei Millian in the Steele Dossier. Sergei Millian was a source in the Steele Dossier that we’ve now disproven.

It gave yet another tie on top of the whole Alpha Bank server stuff that we talked about previously, that Trump and his associates are talking to Russians. That’s why I think it’s critically important that John Durham proves that the exact opposite was true.

There was no connection to the Russian American Chamber of Commerce. Sergei Millian provided no dirt on Donald Trump to Danchenko for Christopher Steele for Steele’s Dossier. To me, that’s one of the more stunning disclosures of John Durham’s indictment of Danchenko. What I would want to know as being the lead investigator back then is why didn’t the FBI tell us this? They interviewed Igor Danchenko five times. They didn’t give us those reports.

We asked for them. Why did Rod Rosenstein withhold these documents, and this information, even though Congress sent him subpoenas and the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee at the time, Devin Nunes, sent him a letter requesting all the information surrounding Steele, what we call the FISA court application, and the Woods File. All of that information should have been turned over.

Now I’m proven right that they only turned over part of it, and what they did turn over—a lot of it was redacted. And that’s why we were fighting such an uphill battle to disclose it to the American public, the full story.

Mr. Jekielek: To think that your opposition described what you and Chairman Nunes, as you like to call him, were running a Mickey Mouse operation.

Mr. Patel: Yes. So, it’s true. When you’re running this sort of investigation, which turned out to be the biggest investigation in modern congressional history, I think it’s much larger than Watergate, and we’re only halfway through it. So our opponents would mock us.

They would personalize their attacks against us, execute their vendettas against us in the media by making up stories. Then they labeled our investigation—when we exposed the money line to Hillary Clinton, Steele, Fusion GPS, and Glenn Simpson, they did—they called us the Mickey Mouse operation.

So what did I do? I turned around and gave that a big bear hug. I jumped on the interwebs. I found the brightest, loudest, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse rug I could find online, and I bought it. I took it into the SCIF in the House Intelligence Committee space. That was our floor mat for myself and my partner who was running the Russiagate investigation for the entire time.

So, yes, we ran a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse operation that exposed the biggest political scandal in U.S. history, and has now proven Adam Schiff to be the biggest hack in congressional history.

Mr. Jekielek: Congressman Schiff was on “The View” recently talking about it, and you issued a statement about this because we covered this just a couple of days ago.

Mr. Patel: Yes. Look, the job and the mission isn’t to go out and get personal vengeance, or your personal … What it is, though, part of it is because they impugned my name and my character so much that I spent so much of my time clearing my name. I’m in court battles clearing my name with defamation lawsuits against the mainstream media.

It’s in no small part due to Adam Schiff’s continuous churning of intentional false information to the media, to the public, and they still give him a platform. I’m glad my friend, Morgan Ortagus, who I served with in the Trump administration, called him out on The View, and he stumbled over his words because he knew he was called out.

I’ll say this one as an example. Remember, Adam Schiff, the guy who not only read the Steele Dossier into congressional record as fact, now he’s calling it an allegation that should have been investigated on “The View,” but back then it was the Bible. He also held up a manila folder to the world and said, “I have seen evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. I can’t talk about it, but I’ve seen it.”

I’ll let the public decide if Adam Schiff has ever shared that evidence. He hasn’t, because it doesn’t exist, and then you can judge his own credibility. That’s why it’s important that the people on Capitol Hill are supposed to represent American citizens. When they fail they need to be called out.

Mr. Jekielek: Speaking of Devin Nunes, he has been the one person that I’m aware of that I’ve spoken with who’s been constantly believing that Durham is going to get somewhere. Neither you nor I, nor many other people that I’ve spoken to over the last months, and frankly years, expected that it would get this far.

Mr. Patel: You’re right. Devin’s instincts on this, he’s probably the only person I know that has been 100 percent the whole time. I started off at 100 with Durham. I probably dipped down to 70, and now I’m back up to 100. So I’ll admit it.

I was in a lull there for a while because I wanted actual accountability, but Devin’s instincts on this have been spot-on. I would say to folks listening, please listen to me and our show, but maybe see what Devin Nunes is also saying about John Durham, and where it’s going.

Mr. Jekielek: Well, okay, but before we check in with Congressman Nunes, where do you think it’s going?

Mr. Patel: We’ve sort of hinted at it over the last couple of episodes with Sussmann, and Clinesmith, and now we’re talking about the Danchenko indictment. I still believe, as I’ve said in the past, that John Durham is building a larger conspiracy style case against all these individuals that he’s outlined, and identified in his indictments by titles.

Now we’ve got the Dolans of the world, Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Christopher Steele, Danchenko, Sussmann, Elias, Hillary campaign, DNC. The list goes on, and Jake Sullivan was identified in one of the indictments, the current National Security advisor. And he’s got problems, I think, as well.

I think the reason John Durham puts all this out there is not to muddy people’s reputations. That’s not the purpose of an indictment that’s this length for this style of charge. The purpose, I believe, for that kind of indictment—is a speaking indictment as we call it—is because he’s building a larger case. He wants to educate the folks that are following this as to his findings.

At least what he can share now because, remember—behind each of these cases as he’s filed in federal court—are hundreds of thousands of pages of discovery, of evidence that the prosecution has to turn over to the defense. A lot of that is classified, so it has to be declassified, finally. I’m excited for that because then we, the American public will see a whole host of new information that was never previously put out because it’s still classified, but it has to be.

In a federal prosecution, a criminal prosecution, you cannot use classified intelligence. It has to be declassified. I used to go through that process all the time when we were prosecuting terrorists. It’s an extensive process that you have to work with DOJ, and the intelligence community on, and that’s what John Durham is doing. So I think a lot more to come, and a lot more conversations to be had on our show.

Mr. Jekielek: Then that may take time as you’ve said repeatedly in past episodes.

Mr. Patel: It takes time building those starts. Just doing these cases … Now I know the public, I hope, has an idea of why it took John Durham so long. These 29 page, 39 page indictments, he’s getting bank records going back years, phone records going back years.

He’s getting documentation from the FBI going back years. He’s putting people in grand jury. He’s getting them under oath. He’s getting grand jury testimony. He’s looking through reams of classified information from across the intelligence community to include the CIA and the FBI.

He’s trying to figure out how the corrupt actors like Strozk, Lisa Page, Andy McCabe, and James Comey were involved, what their culpability might be. This is something that takes time. I spent two, three, four years working up some prosecutions I worked on. So for the biggest political scandal in U.S. history—two years is a long time. But I think maybe he’s only two-thirds of the way done.

Mr. Jekielek: Well, I think this is a great place to end season two. Frankly, I still can’t believe it.

Mr. Patel: I can’t believe it.

Mr. Jekielek: I guess it’s time for our shout-out.

Mr. Patel: Yes. I guess I have a little bit of a unique shout-out. First of all, happy Thanksgiving to everybody, and we will see you after the Thanksgiving holiday. But this week’s shout-out goes to John Durham, and his team of investigators. Thanks for restoring faith in the accountability of the Justice Department and the FBI, at least in some small measure. And we’ll see you on the other side of the holiday break to hopefully talk about more indictments.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

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