Kash Patel said he and John Solomon are “on a mission” to show Mar-A-Lago documents were declassified “as the president's representatives to the National Archives”
Written by Madeline Peltz
Published
During an August 11 conversation on Trump sycophant and serial misinformer John Solomon’s podcast, former Trump Department of Defense official Kash Patel said that he and Solomon both have “been on a mission” as “the president’s representatives to the National Archives” to prove Trump had declassified the documents seized by the FBI during its search of his residence at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Both Solomon and Patel were named as Trump’s representatives to the National Archives in June, after the former president was subpoenaed by the FBI regarding documents allegedly taken from the Trump White House and kept at Mar-a-Lago.
Kash Patel on John Solomon Reports, August 11
Citation From the August 11, 2022, edition of Just the News' John Solomon Reports
JOHN SOLOMON (HOST): Now let's get into some of the issues that most average Americans probably don't even think about. But the president probably did have classified documents in his possession, if you believe what's been said publicly, what the National Archives said. But the president also could have declassified those documents verbally, right, and took possession [of] them after a declassification order. It doesn't have to be done on paper, my understanding is, under the law. Has anyone explored whether the documents that got turned over to the Archives or that, you know, been turned over the subpoena and the search, that those could have been declassified by virtue of the president's being the ultimate declassifying authority for his own documents?
KASH PATEL: I mean, I don't even know that anyone needs to explore it. I know that, John, you and I have been on a mission as the president's representative to the National Archives to try to get information out that the president did declassify it.
What actions Solomon and Patel have taken as a part of this “mission” through their roles as representatives to the National Archives is unclear.
Solomon has recently claimed he was granted access to the archives “in my capacity as a reporter in an effort to resolve the question of what happened to the Russia probe documents that former President Trump declassified but which were never released.” In the same statement, he said:
My authorization as a representative to the National Archives with access to the Trump collection has nothing to do with the grand jury investigation, the dispute over documents at Mar-a-Lago, or the FBI search. It was granted solely in my capacity as a reporter. I did not access the documents in Florida, seek to access them, or have anything to do with them or the dispute surrounding them.
Patel’s comments seemingly contradict Solomon’s claim he has nothing to do with the records seized at Mar-A-Lago. They also shed further light on previous reporting from ABC News on Patel’s promise to publish classified documents from the National Archives shortly after he was named representative by Trump.
Patel, who under Trump had been the chief of staff for the acting defense secretary, claimed in a string of interviews that Trump had declassified a trove of "Russiagate documents" in the final days of his administration. But Patel claimed Trump's White House counsel had blocked the release of those documents, and instead had them delivered to the National Archives.
"I've never told anyone this because it just happened," Patel said in an interview on a pro-Trump podcast on June 22. "I'm going to identify every single document that they blocked from being declassified at the National Archives, and we're going to start putting that information out next week."
Patel did not provide a clear explanation of how he would legally or practically obtain the documents.
Five days after his initial appearance, Patel again went on the John Solomon Reports podcast. While discussing a piece from The Washington Post exploring the “curious timing” of his and Solomon’s sudden special access to the archives in June, Patel told Solomon he “never had access to these documents at Mar-a-Lago.”
Kash Patel on John Solomon Reports, August 16
Citation From the August 16, 2022 edition of Just the News' John Solomon Reports
JOHN SOLOMON (HOST): You and I have been branded together in a story by Philip Bump at The Washington Post. And I want to tell you this. I want to tell this part of the story. I just sent a note to his bosses about this because it's so outrageous. He called me 20 minutes before the story was posted, and I worked at The Washington Post; there's an editing process. That means he already wrote the story and sent it to his editors before he even asked about my side of the story and -- or your side of the story. I don't know what he said to your request for comment, but he already had the story and his headline and everything made up, and I was an afterthought.
But you know, the insinuation of the story that somehow you and I are involved in the secreting of the documents, the withholding of the information, having access to the documents that there. I mean, that's what he basically insinuates.
I know why I'm on there. I'm not, as a journalist, trying to find the missing Russia-collusion documents. And as a result of the narrow access that the president gave me at my request as a journalist, we were able to solve what happened to the Russia-collusion documents that were declassified. But when you look at that, I just want to ask you, because he didn't give you a chance to obviously get comment before he wrote the story and send it to his editors, do you have anything to do with the documents at Mar-a-Lago? Were you involved in the raid? The insinuation is that somehow you've had access to these documents at Mar-a-Lago.
KASH PATEL: No, I have never had access to these documents at Mar-a-Lago. I didn't even know they were there. And, you know, this is what these people living in this gray world of insinuation, it's their massive disinformation campaign that they want the American public to read and be like “Yep, there's something going on here.” And then they want the left-wing media to make up for the radical headlines that are false. You know, “John Solomon and Kash Patel conspired to break into the National Archives and steal documentation and plant it in Mar-a-Lago, the biggest crime of the century.”
And then it all turns out to be, of course, as it is false. But they have their headline and they have their insinuation and that's why The Washington Post and their subscription is at the lowest levels in modern history, and it's still going down. And they haven't figured out the media angle of it, that this raid has made President Trump more popular than he's ever been since he left the White House
This begs the question: How does Patel know his “mission” with Solomon, to prove the allegedly stolen documents seized at Mar-a-Lago were indeed declassified, was on solid ground when he claims he hasn’t seen any of them?