As a senior House Intel investigator and Trump administration official, Kash Patel helped unearth critical misconduct by the intelligence officials who carried out the Trump-Russia probe. In his first extended interview since leaving government, Patel tells Aaron Maté that still-classified documents expose more malpractice, as well as major evidentiary holes in the pivotal -- and largely unquestioned -- claims of a sweeping Russian interference campaign to elect Trump in 2016. According to Patel, the release of these critical documents was "continuously impeded." "I think there were people at the heads of certain intelligence agencies who did not want their tradecraft called out, even though it was during a former administration, because it doesn't look good on the agency itself," Patel says.

Among the tradecraft that Patel criticizes is the hastily produced and highly consequential "Intelligence Community Assessment" of January 2017, as well as the FBI's reliance on Crowdstrike -- the DNC contractor that generated the Russian hacking allegations despite later admitting, behind closed doors, that it lacked concrete evidence. Patel also discusses other aspects of his time in the Trump White House: a secret mission to Syria; Trump's record on foreign wars; and the January 6th riot at the Capitol. Guest: Kash Patel. Former senior government official in the Trump administration, where he served as senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council, and chief of staff to the acting Secretary of Defense. Previously, Patel served as a top investigator on the GOP-led House Intelligence Committee, where he was instrumental in exposing US intelligence misconduct in the Trump-Russia investigation.

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