Citation From the August 16, 2022, edition of Newsmax's Greg Kelly Reports
GREG KELLY (HOST): Eight days ago now, August 8th, 2022, a day that will live in infamy. Although maybe it's just a big joke. I mean, I got to tell you, hey, I want to bring Kash Patel back. Kash, you know, sometimes when we start talking about, well, declassification authority rests with – I feel like we're playing their game. The whole thing is a joke and a fiasco. Are we setting ourselves up if we start debating the little nitnoy details of what's classified and what's not? Or do we have to do that?
KASH PATEL (GUEST): I think part of it is we have to educate the American public because they don't know this stuff, nor should they, right? They rely on their government to get it right. And when a president who has universal declassification authority, once he says those words and issued multiple statements, declassifying sweeping sets of documents for the American public on Russiagate, Hillary-gate, and so many other things so he can be the most transparent president in history, is blocked by the very government with bureaucratic gymnastics from getting this information to the American people. We have to educate him a little bit on the process. But you're right, we shouldn't fall down that rabbit hole too far. This is just a political witch hunt of a political target by a law enforcement agency that was hijacked long ago by Christopher Steele, his dossier, and the Democratic Party.
KELLY: On that declassification authority, which he does have, I've heard in the fake news, well, if he didn't write it down, it doesn't count. John Bolton was on there saying he has to memorialize it, which is swamp talk for writing things down. I don't think that's true, but you're the expert.
PATEL: So, look, as the former deputy director of national intelligence in the Trump administration, that is 100% not true. He can stand over a box and say declassified. That's it. Game over. The DNI, the director of National Intelligence, has to abide by that unilateral classification authority. John Bolton, it's well known, hates the president. You do not ever have to memorialize it. Now, it's good practice for your lawyers to subsequently memorialize it. And if they fail to do so, that's on them. But that doesn't defuze or reverse the declassification. And not to mention Donald Trump also put it in writing. In October of 2020, he issued a tweet.
KELLY: It does seem like a very bureaucratic thing to do. Well, I didn't get a form. I didn't see a form. Let me ask you this about the General Services Administration. You know, the boxes were just sitting there for a while and it is totally conceivable, quite frankly, these boxes are just sitting there that somebody could have stuck something in there that shouldn't have been in there. And let's talk a little bit about the GSA, the General Services Administration, something else the general public knows very little about. But they're very powerful, very big, and in charge of logistics, custodial issues, and they basically make things run. How – are you worried about that, that they stuffed something in there? GSA or not, that shouldn't have been there and they're trying to set them up.
PATEL: I'm worried about the continued corruption at the FBI and DOJ. Maybe GSA is in on it. But we know these guys not only stuff things into Russiagate that were lies, but then went to federal courts and lied about them knowing about it. They did the same for impeachment and January 6th. And these same counterintelligence FBI agents from those cases are involved in this case. So that's what worries me. And here's the counter-argument is all you know, you know, the government is so concerned about these secrets that Donald Trump had in the basement of Mar-a-Lago, that they waited two years to get them. And then when they got the search warrant on a Friday, they gave the FBI the weekend off before they did the raid because the material is so sensitive and classified.
KELLY: That's very fishy. Hey, finally, you know, I heard you on The Mark Levin Show not too long ago, and forgive me for asking, you said it on the radio. You would have paid two hundred thousand dollars in legal fees and you did nothing wrong. You just had to test – is that an accurate figure?
PATEL: Yeah. For my Jan 6 subpoena, I was the first one subpoenaed by that committee. Was that – It's been fun.
KELLY: And so that's kind of the strategy sometimes if they can't accuse you or find you guilty of something, they'll just try to bankrupt you. Somebody came up to me from the Trump administration. It was off the record. So they said, if they can't convict you, they'll try to bankrupt you. Have you heard of that happening before? And you think that's on their minds?
PATEL: That's the scare tactics. The Jan 6 committee has issued, what, hundreds of subpoenas to junior staffers terrifying them and threatening them with an FBI investigation. You know, when you come at guys like me, you're coming after the wrong guy because I got truth on my side and I'm going to figure a way out to serve the American public by giving them the truth – the Jan 6 committee, of course, didn't want to hear it, but a lot of people buckle under that pressure when you don't have the facts, you have the fake news media and you threaten people with fake investigations so they cower to your whims. And we can't do that in this country.
KELLY: You got the truth on your side and you got courage. You got guts.