Kash Patel and the Russia Hoax Reckoning
Drew Allen /
FBI Director Kash Patel delivered a promise about the Trump-Russia collusion hoax on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo” that Americans have waited nearly a decade to hear.
“We’ve got all the evidence,” Patel declared. “We’re working with our prosecutors at the [Justice Department] under acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, and we are going to be making arrests—and it’s coming soon.”
I believe it will soon become clear to Americans that Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI investigation into alleged collusion between then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russia, was a fabricated smear to subvert the 2016 election. After years of books, congressional hearings, and the Durham report, the man now leading the FBI insists he finally possesses the goods to deliver justice.
In my new book “Clinton Hoax, Obama Coup: The Declassified Story of the Trump-Russia Delusion,” I connect the dots using newly declassified documents, Russian intelligence memos, and previously buried timelines unavailable to earlier chroniclers.
What distinguishes this account is its revelation of how the Obama administration systematically covered up Hillary Clinton’s scandals while manufacturing pretexts to target Trump. From the White House-directed scrubbing of Benghazi talking points on 12 separate occasions, to the burial of Clinton Foundation investigations, to the post-election commissioning of the Intelligence Community Assessment, the pattern is one of calculated self-preservation and political warfare.
Patel knows this terrain intimately. As a congressional staffer, he helped expose the abuses. He has warned about them for years. Now, he helms the very agency corrupted at its core during the saga. The investigator who once battled institutional stonewalling now commands the institution. It is a poetic closing of the circle. If anyone can cut through the entrenched resistance and deliver accountability, it is Patel.
Yet skepticism is not only warranted but essential. Americans have heard similar vows before. The Nunes memo. The Durham report. Waves of declassification that yielded many headlines but scant handcuffs.
Durham’s probe produced a single low-level guilty plea from FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who altered an email to secure a FISA warrant on Carter Page, and two acquittals. Even James Comey’s later indictment on charges of lying and obstruction was dismissed on procedural grounds. The Department of Justice has appealed the dismissal to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the case remains pending.
The familiar Washington script gets played over and over again: outrage followed by elite impunity.
The enablers who kept the machinery of deception operational have largely escaped consequences. Bruce Ohr, a senior DOJ official, served as a back channel for Christopher Steele long after the FBI severed ties with him for leaking.
Ohr’s wife, Nellie, conducted opposition research for Fusion GPS while her husband funneled Steele’s unverified memos into the bureau. She accessed sensitive databases using her government clearance, failed to disclose her Fusion employment on ethics forms, and committed what appear to be multiple ethical and potentially criminal violations.
Bruce Ohr neglected to report these glaring conflicts. Neither faced charges.
Marc Elias, the Clinton campaign’s legal operative, orchestrated the hiring of Fusion GPS through Perkins Coie. He laundered opposition research into the FBI, coordinated media leaks, and shielded the operation behind attorney-client privilege. His efforts transformed a partisan dirty trick into the predicate for government spying on the opposition party.
But responsibility for the effort to manufacture, legitimize, and weaponize the Trump-Russia collusion narrative does not stop with midlevel functionaries. True justice demands accountability for the architects.
In my view, Clinton stands at the apex. Intercepted Russian intelligence in the form of memos reported that she personally approved the plan to tie Trump to Russia in order to distract from her own vulnerabilities: the private email server and the Clinton Foundation’s pay-to-play entanglements. These Russian reports have been overwhelmingly corroborated by actual events, as I demonstrate repeatedly in my book.
The greatest irony of the Trump-Russia saga is that the most reliable intelligence about its origins came from the Russians themselves.
Through Elias and Perkins Coie, her campaign and the DNC funded the Steele dossier—a collection of unverified allegations peddled to the FBI to justify surveillance on the Trump campaign.
This could not have succeeded without the complicity of the sitting administration. President Barack Obama held ultimate authority over the FBI, DOJ, and intelligence apparatus.
Declassified records show that on Aug. 3, 2016, CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Barack Obama—and senior officials, including then-Vice President Joe Biden—on Russian intelligence about Clinton. It alleged that Clinton had approved a plan to vilify Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming Russian election interference, aimed at distracting from the scandal of her private email server.
The administration dismissed it as raw intelligence and took no public action to disclose or halt the alleged plan. Meanwhile, the FBI took seriously and acted on other raw, uncorroborated intelligence from the Steele dossier to advance the Russia collusion investigation.
Then, after Trump’s victory, Obama directed the Intelligence Community Assessment to lend institutional credence to the collusion narrative. The same officials who scrubbed Benghazi talking points—Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes—surfaced in both scandals. Obama did not merely know; he enabled and institutionalized the weaponization of government against domestic political opponents.
This precedent proved toxic. It metastasized under subsequent administrations into the full-blown lawfare we witnessed: selective prosecutions, novel legal theories, and relentless indictments aimed at crippling a former—and future—president.
If Obama’s actions crossed into criminality, then pursuing accountability is not vengeance but the necessary restoration of equal justice under law. The alternative is the normalization of two-tiered justice that erodes the republic’s foundations.
Institutional leaders bear heavy responsibility.
James Comey and Andrew McCabe politicized the FBI, signing FISA applications reliant on the discredited dossier while concealing its partisan origins. Comey leaked memos to spawn the Mueller probe. McCabe authorized leaks amid his own conflicts.
John Brennan pushed the ICA’s flawed conclusions and later orchestrated the infamous “51 intelligence officials” letter dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation—an act of election interference now under Patel’s scrutiny.
Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates, and others helped suppress inconvenient inquiries.
These were not isolated missteps but a coordinated assault on the people’s right to choose their leaders. Patel possesses both the files and the authority. The nation watches closely. The legacy media that amplified the hoax will cry “revenge politics,” but Americans, scarred by repeated broken promises, demand results.
The republic cannot endure another decade of impunity for the powerful. The Russia hoax struck at the heart of self-government. Patel now holds the gavel. The question is not whether the case can be made, but whether this generation possesses the moral courage to see it through.
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