Title: Kash Patel’s Crusade Against the Media

Loewinger Owinger: Hey, you're listening to the On the Media podcast Extra. I'm Micah Loewinger Owinger. Before we get into the interview, we're working on a forthcoming episode all about the state of public radio and we want to feature your voice. What's an example of something that you heard on your local station that benefited you or your community? Maybe a local reporter held your mayor accountable, or you found out about a bunch of road closures that changed your commute, or you heard a story about your neighborhood that wasn't reported anywhere else.

Big or small, we want to hear about it. Record yourself with your voice memo app on your phone and email us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. We can't wait to hear from you. Now here's the podcast.

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Over the weekend, President-elect Donald Trump nominated a little-known, largely inexperienced civil servant to an enormous role in his upcoming administration.

Speaker 2: Controversial pick to head the FBI, Trump tapping loyalist Kash Patel to lead the FBI. Patel has promised vengeance against Trump's enemies.

Micah Loewinger: Many of the headlines referred to Patel as a Trump loyalist or ally or firebrand, while failing to emphasize just how unqualified he is. Firing current FBI Director Christopher Wray, who has two years left in his 10-year term would itself be an alarming break in norms. According to Elaina Plott Calabro, a staff writer with The Atlantic who profiled Kash Patel in August, some of the weak coverage may stem from the fact that many journalists simply haven't followed him very closely.

Elaina Plott Calabro: As he started his professional career, he served as a public defender in the State Defender's office in Miami-Dade County. He moved to the Federal Defender's office in Miami. Then after about a decade of doing that work, he became a prosecutor with the Department of Justice. Then being in DC is essentially how he came to meet Devin Nunes, who of course was the congressman who led the counter investigation into Mueller's Russia investigation.

From there he essentially scales the ranks within a year and eight months, I think it is. He is becoming a deputy at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Then he ends his time in the administration as chief of staff to the acting Secretary of Defense, which of course is a quite senior role.

Micah Loewinger: In your profile of Patel, you spoke to some 40 associates who met him during this very accelerated rise. What did you hear from people about what he was like to work with?

Elaina Plott Calabro: So many people I talked to time and again they would say, "I don't recognize the Kash Patel I see today on my TV." What I was told by several people who knew him was that this was a person who was a capable and competent attorney, who was quite charming, good on his feet in front of judges, and same thing with his colleagues in Washington in the National Security Division of the Justice Department. Most intriguingly, he was not political, certainly not overtly political in any way.

I spoke to several people who said while they had a sense that he may have been generally conservative, he was a supporter of Jeb Bush actually, while Kash Patel was living in Florida, but beyond that, there was absolutely nothing to suggest that he would take the path that he has ultimately taken.

Micah Loewinger: Then what exactly was the turning point where he became this mega pro-Trump guy?

Elaina Plott Calabro: There is an interesting thing that happens in Kash Patel's life in the year 2016, while he is a prosecutor with the Justice Department. He is in Tajikistan on a trip to interview witnesses for a terrorism case. He has only brought slacks and a shirt on that trip and he gets a call from his supervisor back in Washington that a federal judge in Houston has scheduled a surprise hearing for one of the other terrorism cases he's working on.

As he's en route to Texas, he reaches out to the US attorney's office there and says, "Hey, guys, I wasn't expecting this, obviously. Could you please bring a tie for me? " For reasons that remain in dispute, and I did try quite hard to get to the bottom of this, there was no tie when Kash Patel arrives to the court house.

Micah Loewinger: Where was the tie?

Elaina Plott Calabro: Some people say that he never, in fact, asked for the tie. Others insist that he did, but at any rate, he gets there, there's no tie, so he goes into the courtroom wearing, again, slacks and a button down. The judge berates him. Pulls him into chambers and says, "If you come into my court, you better be dressed properly." It snowballs from there into, "What value do you bring to this case anyway?" Even US attorneys who are watching it take place are quite taken aback by the whole thing.

As Kash Patel gets back to Washington, a reporter at the Washington Post picks up on what has happened and writes a relatively short-ish piece about the whole thing. This was in part prompted by the fact that Kash Patel's supervisors wanting to learn more about what happened, they commissioned a rank and file staffer to try to get in touch with the court there to get a transcript of the back and forth. The judge is so infuriated by this request that he issues an order of ineptitude against this Justice Department staffer.

The Washington Post does a rundown of this in which Kash Patel really is rendered a sympathetic figure. Just the unwitting victim of this judge who was in maybe a very bad mood that day.

Micah Loewinger: The piece also detailed the history of this judge making maybe similar outbursts. A history of questionable racist remarks.

Elaina Plott Calabro: Correct. In fact, there was an Indian American plaintiff in one of this judge's cases who sought to have him dismissed from the case because of a history of making potentially racist remarks. Anyway, what Kash Patel is upset about, however, is that the reporter reaches out obviously to the Department of Justice for comment and they decline, which is to say they do not defend Kash Patel on the record.

Micah Loewinger: Even though behind the scenes his bosses were disturbed by the way he had been treated.

Elaina Plott Calabro: Exactly. The fact that they did not defend him on the record was what counted to him. He just simply could not let the incident go. For the next several months, he was constantly cycling in and out of his supervisor's offices saying, "What are you going to do about this? How essentially are you going to punish this US attorney?" Finally, one of his bosses says, "I don't know what you want me to do. The US attorney is a presidentially appointed position. I can't get this person fired."

The understanding of people around him was this was the catalyst for him looking for other jobs and also deciding that the system was rigged, basically, that you could devote your life to it, but if they needed to, they would hang you out to dry and not have your back.

Micah Loewinger: That's an illuminating story, but it's a little hard for me to believe that it would be the sole catalyst in a person's complete political reinvention.

Elaina Plott Calabro: I don't think that event alone was the catalyst for the Kash Patel we see today, but I think it certainly got him interested in the theme of "The system is out to get me." It is the impetus for him seeking out what he calls leaders who are not "cowards". Congressman Devin Nunes, he adjudges, is not a coward. As he starts working with him on this counter-investigation of the Russia investigation, he finds his name coming up more and more in the press as he's identified as one of the key authors of the so-called Nunes Memo that comes out. As he is reading that coverage, he writes in his book that to him, it was the Houston incident all over again.

Micah Loewinger: In your profile, you drew a lot on his 2023 book, Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy, but you'd found examples where his recounting of events differed from those of the people who worked around him.

Elaina Plott Calabro: When you read the story of his life in his words, you realize that however innocuous an event may seem, he has cast himself in it as either the ultimate hero or the ultimate victim. One recollection he has that is utterly unlike anybody else who was around for the actual event was his saying that he was the lead prosecutor for main justice on the Benghazi case, leading the trial team. I spoke to several people who were involved in that case. It is absolutely not true.

I remember putting it to one person who was, in fact, one of the lead prosecutors, and when I recounted this event, they just said, "Good God."

Micah Loewinger: When does Donald Trump enter the picture, and what exactly do you think Trump came to see in Patel?

Elaina Plott Calabro: Part of his deal with Devin Nunes when he came to work with him was, "If I do this and complete my job, I would like you to promise that you'll recommend me for a job on the National Security Council in the White House." Devin Nunes stays true to that. He does recommend him and essentially pedals to Trump this line that Kash Patel has now developed, "I am the only thing standing between you and the deep state. I've uncovered their lies. I will continue to uncover their lies."

To Donald Trump, this sounds great. Actually, Kash Patel getting on the National Security Council was not that easy, though, because you had people like National Security Adviser John Bolton, who really did not want someone with as little experience as Kash Patel on his team. It did take a lot of push and pull before he was actually installed. Once he was in, I was told by colleagues of his on the National Security Council that he was really phenomenal at angling to get in front of Trump, making sure he was crossing paths with him at all times, and perpetuating this line that he was his guardian within the White House against the deep state.

Micah Loewinger: Fast forward to the nomination this past weekend, which has led to unearthing many comments that Patel has made about the FBI and the media. Here he is talking with Steve Bannon on the War Room podcast last December.

Kash Patel: We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig president presidential elections. We're going to come after you. Whether it's criminally or civilly, we'll figure that out.

Micah Loewinger: What do you make of this very alarming threat that he's issued?

Elaina Plott Calabro: I think Kash Patel is somebody who you have to take Deadly seriously when it comes to statements like that. A really instructive anecdote to keep in mind is that toward the end of the Trump administration, Kash Patel in his position as a Chief of Staff to the Acting Secretary of Defense became really enthralled by the so-called Italygate conspiracy, which is related to Trump's election fraud conspiracy theory.

Micah Loewinger: This is an extremely convoluted subplot of the larger conspiracy theory that satellites and military technology were used to rig the election for Joe Biden in 2020.

Elaina Plott Calabro: It's not for the casual election fraud conspiracy theorists. In his position, he is able to get it up to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to say, "We need to send people to Europe to talk with these men and try to investigate," the two men who were behind, theoretically, the Italygate conspiracy. The fact that he was able to get that far and was stopped only because some of his own colleagues in DOD and other agencies said, "No, I don't think we should do this and I'm not going to do this."

He has not been shy in roles far less powerful than that of FBI Director of using his whim-driven theories or QAnon-related fringe conspiracies to put them at the centerpiece essentially of the work that he is doing.

Micah Loewinger: What would it even mean to act on these threats of the FBI coming after members of the press?

Elaina Plott Calabro: The end goal is always the same, that Kash Patel will use his power to collate all the supposedly incriminating documents, emails, memos that they are convinced will bury the deep state essentially and show to the American public just how corrupt they are. I don't know on a procedural level how that works when you are director of the FBI. Whether Kash Patel would see himself as basically an intelligence gatherer, an evidence gatherer, and then present them to the Attorney General, which may well be Pam Bondi, and ask her to initiate a case.

Micah Loewinger: I've seen many people recently quoting from his book Government Gangsters, the one that you studied so closely for your piece. There's this grudge list at the end of the book, I believe, where he lists off all the "corrupt people" that are in his crosshairs. It includes Anthony Fauci, it includes former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr. It's a fairly broad tent of people that have wronged him or upset him in one way or another. What names on there stood out to you?

Elaina Plott Calabro: Names actually, like Loretta Lynch and Eric Holder stood out to me because I think they go to show how deep his grievances run from his time in the Obama administration working as a prosecutor at DOJ. He frames his book in that way to say that that was his first major exposure to the deep state, the corruption of high-level bureaucrats in the federal government. I think names from a past administration or people who never worked directly in contact with Donald Trump just show again how deeply he has kept these resentments, how long he has nursed them, and when he does have power, the deep well that he has to pull from in terms of grievances.

Micah Loewinger: You found through speaking to people who know him and had worked with him, that he had a lot of trouble finding work after the first Trump administration. This might explain why he's leaned so hard in the intervening years into commodifying his association with Trump. Can you tell us a little bit about his side hustles and what he's been doing with his time?

Elaina Plott Calabro: Sure. He starts cobbling together various other income streams in large part through the selling of Kash-branded merchandise, a lot of the proceeds of which he says goes to a foundation he started called the Kash Foundation, the mission of which is really vague and details of which are very hard to come by, even in filings with the IRS. The merch, I should say, really runs the gamut. You have your Kash crew, polo tees, you have your Kash scarves, Rhino tanks, basically anything that can be branded with K, A, dollar sign, H. There's Kash wine.

Micah Loewinger: That felt very Trumpian to me.

Elaina Plott Calabro: Yes.

Micah Loewinger: Six bottles of official Kash wine for $233.99.

Elaina Plott Calabro: As of this recording, I believe it's sold out. There was a market for it, it would seem. Another thing he does is he writes books. Two of them are children's books, actually. The first one, The Plot Against the King, is a really vividly illustrated rendition of the Russiagate conspiracy, wherein you have King Donald, for Donald Trump, you have Kash the Wizard, and you have Duke Devin, Devin Nunes, and the Shifty Knight, Adam Schiff.

Micah Loewinger: Don't forget Hillary Queenton.

Elaina Plott Calabro: I could not forget Hillary Queenton. Never. It's quite a wild ride. Again, Kash, the distinguished discoverer, the wizard is, in the end, the hero. He is the one that uncovers just all that the Shifty Knight and others have done to try to ensure that Hillary Queenton is chosen on Choosing Day and not King Donald.

Micah Loewinger: He also produced a remarkably creepy song called Justice for All, which is a version of the national anthem sung by the jailled January 6th defendants, which has been played by Trump at a number of his 2024 campaign rallies.

[MUSIC - January 6th defendants: Justice for All ]

That song, believe it or not, actually reached number one on the Billboard's digital song sales list, but as you said, Patel claims that he doesn't make money from it or any of his other merch. It definitely tells us something about his orientation towards the January 6th insurrection and what his attitude would be towards it as FBI director.

Elaina Plott Calabro: Yes, absolutely. Another thing he did that I think is useful to mention, he did a lot of endorsement deals with conservative branded companies, but also really these QAnon-friendly, fringe-friendly companies. He would pedal on his truth social profile these pills that claim to, if you've gotten the COVID vaccination, maybe flush the spike proteins out of your system. There's no evidence that these do what they say they do, but he has marketed them quite extensively.

There's also a conservative Christian cell phone carrier that I think he has advocated for before. It's also following a model set by Donald Trump himself. Even since he's been elected, I've gotten emails from Team Trump about a limited edition Donald Trump guitar that he is promoting as a great holiday gift for loved ones. It's not at all surprising that you have people below him trying to emulate that.

Micah Loewinger: We still don't know whether he's going to make it through the Senate confirmation hearings for the FBI director position, but you think that even if he doesn't end up taking the role, there may still be a part for him within Trump's inner circle?

Elaina Plott Calabro: I don't think there may be. I think there absolutely will be. I think that at the very end of Trump's first term, he was trying to promote him to deputy FBI director. He was trying to promote him to deputy CIA director. The plan for the latter of which was to have Gina Haspel resign and then promote Kash Patel to acting director of the CIA, thereby ducking the whole confirmation process. Donald Trump will absolutely find a way, no matter what happens with Kash Patel's confirmation hearing, to install him at the upper echelons of our intelligence community, law enforcement apparatus, what have you. This is a person who will have power in Donald Trump's second term.

Micah Loewinger: Elaina, thank you very much.

Elaina Plott Calabro: Thank you.

Micah Loewinger: Elaina Plott Calabro is a staff writer at the Atlantic. Her profile about Kash Patel is titled The Man Who Will Do Anything for Trump.

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Thanks for listening to the midweek podcast. Tune into the big show this weekend to hear the first installment of an original investigative series that we're really excited about. It's called The Harvard Plan. I'm Micah Loewinger.

Ilya Marritz: Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. [chants] Yet when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection.

Speaker 5: The answer is yes, that calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard code of conduct, correct?

Speaker 6: It depends on the context.

Speaker 5: It does not depend on the context. The answer is yes.

Speaker 7: I wanted her to be fired because of failures of leadership.

Speaker 8: She stood for Harvard, but who stood with her?

Ilya Marritz: It wasn't just about one woman or one school. All colleges and universities have been put on notice.

Donald Trump: The time has come to reclaim our once-great educational institutions from the radical left.

Speaker 9: We have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.

Ilya Marritz: We've exposed the DEI regime and there's much more to come. I'm Ilya Marritz and this is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media.

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