In the August 19th episode of the Countdown with Keith Olbermann podcast, Olbermann discussed how top Trump aide Kash Patel has repeatedly stated, in public, that he planned to take classified documents about “Russiagate,” Trump’s Ukraine impeachment and “major national security matters” that Trump thinks “the American people should see.”
Olbermann based much of his commentary on reporting by Ryan Goodman for Just Security. In his article, Goodman notes that in June, Trump sent a letter to the National Archives designating Patel as representative “for access to Presidential records of my administration.”
Just Security catalogs numerous instances of Patel talking about classified material Trump planned to publicly release, probably because he thought it would bolster his claims of innocence regarding the Mueller investigation, the Ukraine impeachment and who knows what else.
When news of the Mar-a-Lago documents began heating up in May 2022, Patel spoke with right-wing media outlets about Trump’s objectives in retaining these documents. He began laying out the defense that the documents had been “declassified,” and specifically identified Trump’s goal to release the information publicly. He described the content of the documents to include matters related to the FBI’s Russia investigation (Crossfire Hurricane), but also a much broader range of issues.
“It’s information that Trump felt spoke to matters regarding everything from Russiagate to the Ukraine impeachment fiasco to major national security matters of great public importance — anything the president felt the American people had a right to know is in there and more,” Patel told Breitbart on May 5. He also said, “Trump declassified whole sets of materials in anticipation of leaving government that he thought the American public should have the right to read themselves.”
It's not clear what Patel actually accomplished. In a June 21, 2022 interview, he said he was “going to march down” to the National Archives and “identify every single document that they blocked from being declassified” and “we are going to start putting that information out next week.”
Patel seemed to contradict himself as to whether the material had been declassified or not.
In a July 4 interview for another far-right media show, Patel referred to pressing the National Archives for documents on the Russia investigation to “be released because they are already declassified.” Referring to the Russia investigation, he said “the American public has only seen sixty percent of what we’ve been able to see;” “Why won’t they release the other forty percent? … So I am going to continue that work at the National Archives, I apologize I can’t get it declassified overnight, but I’m on it.” At varying points in the interview, Patel appeared to maintain the line that the information was already declassified and at other times admit it was not.
Just how involved Patel has been with the stolen classified documents the FBI seized at Mar-a-Lago, via its legal search warrant, remains to be seen. But while some in Trump’s inner circle are reportedly pointing fingers at the family for ratting out Trump to the FBI, Olbermann points out, “This moron Kash Patel kept talking about it for four months to everybody who would stop long enough to listen to him.”
