Kash Patel: Suspicious Hunter Biden Laptop Docs Reveal True Origins of Biden Classified Docs Investigation

“The information—and the bulleted information specifically in that email—is information, in my opinion, that could only have come from a classified source and a classified document …Where did this email come from? Hunter Biden’s laptop. This document has been known to the FBI for years,” said Kash Patel.

Was there classified information on Hunter Biden’s laptop? Was this the true origin of the investigation into Joe Biden’s classified documents?

Kash’s Corner looks at recent reporting by New York Post journalist Miranda Devine. And discusses the recent indictment of ex-FBI official Charles McGonigal, a key player in the Russiagate scandal. He was indicted for aiding sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Notably, Deripaska had previously hired Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous, discredited “Steele dossier.” Tonight, Patel connects the dots and breaks down what he sees going on.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Kash Patel:

Welcome back to Kash’s Corner. There’s so much to cover this week. I’m just going to let Jan take it.

Jan Jekielek:

There’s a curious figure that we’re familiar with from the time of the Russiagate investigation, a certain Russian oligarch named Oleg Deripaska, who’s suddenly back in the news. He has been having a financial relationship with a quite important FBI official. The other thing that is on my mind is more of these classified documents coming to the fore and Miranda Devine finding a very curious email that she remembered from her deep work on the Hunter Biden laptop that looked unlike any other. We should talk about that. For starters, let’s remind everybody. Who is Oleg Deripaska?

Mr. Patel:

Yes, that’s a good place to start. Oleg Deripaska. A Russian aluminum magnate, which means he is a multi, multi, multi-billionaire in American dollars. As it last stood when I checked, he was the third or fourth richest person in Russia. He’s a very close confidant and ally to Vladimir Putin. We know how that circle works. You’re a close ally of Putin. You’re worth billions of dollars. You are basically doing Putin’s bidding at a certain point around the world stage.

During the Russiagate investigation, we came across Oleg Deripaska’s name for a number of reasons, but the main one was that Oleg Deripaska was in communication with Christopher Steele.

Not only was he in communication with Christopher Steele, in our reports and findings, we showed how he did, in fact, pay Christopher Steele for all of the Russia work that Christopher Steele was doing. Why was Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate, who was not, by the way, in the continental United States of America, paying this random former MI6 British intelligence guy? When we talk about pay, when a billionaire pays, it’s quite a large sum of money. What was their interest? Who told him to do that?

A lot of these questions we tried to answer. Unfortunately, because we could not get Oleg Deripaska to sit down for a deposition or even a phone call with our committee at the time, we couldn’t directly ask them. Now, he had a lawyer in the United States of America. For the purposes of our show, Adam Waldman, in 2009, registered as the American foreign agent for Oleg Deripaska.

Based on our investigation, the best we could conclude was that he was also acting under an attorney-client relationship with Oleg Deripaska. I remember off the top of my head, we had a couple back-and-forths with him. We just never could get a sit-down because Deripaska was in Russia. It’s not like he was coming over here soon. His attorney wanted a bunch of assurances as to not just his safety, but more importantly, that he wouldn’t be prosecuted or investigated. We found that interesting.

Oleg Deripaska would later go on, in 2018, to be sanctioned by the Trump administration. What that means is, when you sanction an individual on behalf of the United States government, you are saying, “This person is essentially a criminal and cannot do business with any enterprise in the United States of America, nor can they use the United States banking system,” which, as you know, is the global banking  system. That’s a pretty heavy strike against any individual, especially a Russian magnate in the aluminum industry who probably wants to sell his aluminum here and everywhere else that American banks are used.

If that weren’t bad enough, I’ll fast forward, and then I’ll jump back. In 2022, Oleg Deripaska was criminally charged for violating the sanctions that were placed on him. The United States federal government took it one step further and said, “You’re such a bad character that we are preventing you from doing business.” What did he do? He circumvented that and tried to do business criminally. They caught him, and he got charged for that. That’s Oleg Deripaska. But let’s take the tape back a little bit.

Mr. Jekielek:

Just really quickly, what were the initial sanctions about? What was the reason?

Mr. Patel:

The reasoning was that he was associated with criminal activity and nefarious activity. Basically, in order to sanction an individual, and we’re just talking generically here, you have to run through a number of wickets. The State Department has theirs, the Treasury has theirs, and at the White House, we quarterback the whole operation. We basically say, “This person is committing unlawful acts, or about to commit unlawful acts, and we don’t want him to use the United States banking system or the United States of America and United States companies or our citizens to advance that criminal enterprise.”

It’s a very high burden. It’s not like you can sanction just anyone. When we or the United States government, on behalf of anyone, sanctions someone, a lot of work has gone into that. It took a lot to get this guy to the threshold of being sanctioned. I’m guessing that’s what his attorney was trying to fight against when we, back in 2017 and 2018, were doing the Russiagate investigation.

Let’s go back to that time. Who else was Oleg Deripaska in touch with? We already talked about Christopher Steele, who, as we all know, is the author of the infamous dossier that has been totally discredited. Let’s put those questions aside because that’s old history. Our audience knows it well. The other matter that probably no one knows about, or very few people, is that Oleg Deripaska’s attorney, the gentleman I named earlier, was in direct communication with Senator Mark Warner in 2017.

We have the text messages. Oleg Deripaska’s attorney was in direct communication with one of the highest-ranking members of the United States Senate and the highest Democrat on the Senate Intel Committee at the time, because Warner wanted to talk to and have conversations about Christopher Steele, the guy Oleg Deripaska was paying to help perpetuate the Russiagate scandal.

If that weren’t enough, in March of 2017, Oleg Deripaska was texting his “pal.” That’s not my verbiage. You can see him in the text messages, how they’re bandying about, being such good friends and whatnot. They are talking very specifically about Warner setting up a meeting with Oleg Deripaska himself. The rest of the text message talks about the material that Christopher Steele can bring to the table, how it’s going to be bad for the Democratic Party. These are text messages that are just explosive, in my opinion. The Senate Intel Committee put out a statement saying, “Senator Warner disclosed this to us, these text messages. We basically know they are there,” to borrow some verbiage that’s in the parlance right now.

My opinion is that these questions need to be revisited. We haven’t even gotten to Charles McGonigal. We’ll get there. We now have these text messages that show unequivocally that a sitting senator was texting the attorney of a Russian aluminum magnate who would become criminally sanctioned and later charged for violating those sanctions. That same attorney was trying to set up a conversation with Christopher Steele himself back in 2018. So, those questions need to be answered again.

Mr. Jekielek:

Why were these attempts being made? What were these conversations about? That’s what he was saying?

Mr. Patel: 

Why was he entertaining them in the political nature that these text messages were fashioned, talking about how this is going to harm the Democratic Party and the DNC, and how this attorney literally said, “Mister Warner, you’re still my favorite senator,” in one of the text messages. How can we just let that go? We can’t. But we haven’t even gotten to Charles McGonigal yet. That’s the crazy part.

Mr. Jekielek:

Charles McGonigal, let’s just briefly mention him. He was the head of counterintelligence in New York for the FBI.

Mr. Patel:

Yes. Let’s bolt this back on, and it will make more sense as to why the text messages involving Senator Warner are so important. Charles McGonigal was the head of the counterintelligence program at the largest FBI field office in the world. He was literally the number one counter intel guy outside of Washington DC headquarters for the FBI. That’s a pretty senior post, Jan. This guy, it’s been publicly reported, had worked on the East Africa embassy bombings, had worked on World Trade, had worked on other massive, massive national security cases, had worked on a lot of matters inside and outside of Russia related to Russian activities. What most people don’t know is that he and Peter Strzok were buddies. They were running bits of the Russiagate investigation together.

Now we have the entry of Charles McGonigal, circa 2017-2018, who we now know was actively working on the Carter Page investigation and the Carter Page FISA. Why is this guy important? It turns out Oleg Deripaska would go on to pay Charles McGonigal a quarter-million-dollars to basically launder money and continue his sanctions violation program. They have now charged Charles McGonigal with a felony. I think at least one count, if not two counts; a conspiracy, a money laundering count, and another substantive count. I can’t recall.

But we can put the indictment up, which has finally been unsealed, for our audience. The indictment says, “We are charging this individual with criminal activity that began in 2017,” Jan, when Charles McGonigal was still the highest-ranking CI employee of the FBI in the New York City field office, who was working on the Russiagate investigation, who was then getting courted by Oleg Deripaska, and whose attorney was in touch with Mark Warner about Christopher Steele and Oleg Deripaska.

These aren’t coincidences, Jan. The timing of the release of this indictment, as I said, as a former federal prosecutor, and most of our audience knows this, but when they say, “Unseal an indictment,” all that means is they had charged this individual some time ago. But they seal it because, normally, what happens is there’s an investigatory purpose behind that—say you don’t want someone to flee the jurisdiction, say you have a conspiracy case you’re building, say there’s other co-defendants. Once you make an indictment public, everybody finds out about it.

When I used to run these types of large terrorism prosecutions, we would sometimes seal them. Sometimes you seal them for six, seven, eight months, up to a year. Sometimes longer. Why did the DOJ wait so long to unseal this indictment literally until this week in 2023, for criminal activity that began in 2017? That’s a question that Merrick Garland has to answer for the American people. He cannot hide behind, “This is an ongoing criminal investigation.” As I’ve always said, there are no coincidences in the United States government when it comes to this type of activity.

Mr. Jekielek:

I have to ask you about this sealing. Was this actually sealed from John Durham as well?

Mr. Patel:   

This is a great point that literally no one has ever brought up. Why didn’t John Durham bring this prosecution? Every time I do media, Jan, people keep asking me, “Where’s John Durham?” John Durham was supposed to have been the special counsel to investigate all matters associated with and including the inception of the Russiagate investigation, the FBI and DOJ personnel involved with fraudulently obtaining a FISA document, a FISA warrant at the court, lying to federal officers, and hiding information. This guy, Charles McGonigal, falls right into that outlined parameter for John Durham, but he didn’t bring this case.

Mr. Jekielek:

My question is, is it possible that somehow it was hidden from him?

Mr. Patel: 

It’s possible it was. It’s possible, of course, especially with this DOJ, that it was hidden from him. It’s also possible, knowing John Durham, he picked up on it and referred it out for some unknown reason. Maybe the crimes that they’re going offshoot from this indictment go too far for John Durham to follow. That’s also a reason. But I’m really interested to see if this was on John Durham’s radar, because if it was, that would answer the question that people have been trying to answer for the last six months, what’s John Durham doing? If he’s the reason that this FBI agent was charged, then that is a massive victory in terms of holding people accountable for the corrupt activities that date back to Russiagate.

Those questions are only going to be answered by the new Congress, as we’ve talked about. Maybe when John Durham is finally finished with whatever he’s doing, he can answer those questions for us, either in his report or his testimony. But to me, my gut draw is that it was John Durham. He probably referred it out and, for reasons I can’t think of right now, said, “The DOJ can actually handle this. Why don’t you bring this prosecution?” But it still doesn’t answer the question as to the unsealing of the indictment and its timeliness, right in the middle of the Biden document scandal.

Mr. Jekielek: 

Why do you think it’s now?

Mr. Patel: 

The DOJ and the FBI are under such heat for the two-tiered system of justice that they have manufactured. If we just look at only two things, the Mar-a-Lago investigation and the Biden classified document investigation, not even getting to Hunter Biden, just those two things, the American public, a large portion of which were lied to by the fake news media, are finally saying, “Wait a second, you guys aren’t acting like cops and lawyers. You guys are acting like you’re rigging the system.”

The FBI and DOJ wanted a narrative out there that they could put to the American public and say, “Look, we’re going after our own. We charged this guy, Charles McGonigal, who is at the heart of the Russiagate probe. We took him down.” They want to be able to have that narrative out there. They needed a headline to level the playing field and the accusations that I have been well-founded against them—they are operating a system of justice based on who the target is, and not based on what the law and the facts are.

Mr. Jekielek:

As we finish up this part, what a curious character Deripaska is. He’s been on all sides of things, almost, at different times.

Mr. Patel:

This is something that is just my hunch, from my time in intel and my time running sources and my time doing these types of prosecutions. Was Oleg Deripaska ever on the FBI payroll? Was he a confidential human source? I’m thinking yes. People are going to be like, “You’re a conspiracy theorist.” But look who the FBI put on their payroll so far that we found out about; Christopher Steele and the likes of Joffe.

I’ve always been the first to say, “Confidential sources provide an invaluable tool to investigations.” I used to run a lot of them. But lately they’ve been used, it seems, to cover up the FBI’s corruption; Christopher Steele, case in point. We know a slew of other individuals that the FBI used, I would say shadily, during the Russiagate investigation to advance a political agenda, which is what you’re never supposed to use the FBI and confidential human sources for.

We’ve talked about what we think about January 6th and how they probably used confidential human sources there. Actually, we know they did. We just don’t know who they were yet because that information hasn’t come out. Now, I’m thinking Oleg Deripaska, at some time, whether it was the FBI or another agency, was working with the United States government. He got sideways with this agreement, and they ended up coming out and criminally sanctioning him and then charging him.

That is a question that must be answered, especially if we have high-ranking senators and other individuals wanting to talk to Oleg Deripaska in the middle of the biggest oversight investigation in modern U.S. history as it relates to Russiagate. These are questions we are owed answers to, and we have a right to ask them, not because we’re conspiratorial, but because of the track record laid down by the FBI and DOJ when it comes to use and application of confidential human sources.

Mr. Jekielek:

It seems unlikely, though, that you’re going to get a debriefing with Oleg Deripaska.

Mr. Patel:

I probably won’t get a debriefing with Oleg Deripaska, but all I want is the documents that show us who Oleg Deripaska is. Did he have any engagement with U.S. law enforcement authorities, ever? And, if so, what was the depth of that engagement? Was he paid? Was he given beneficial treatment? Did he violate that agreement? Because people would be like, “If he’s a confidential human source, he’s never going to violate that agreement.”

You know who was a confidential human source that violated the FBI terms agreement? Christopher Steele. That was after they paid him a ton of money. It happens a lot, unfortunately. With this FBI, it’s happened far too much. That’s why these questions have to be asked and answered. Again, I go back to this—the only place we can get that answer from is not the DOJ and FBI, but from the new committee in Congress on the weaponization of the federal government.

Mr. Jekielek:

The membership of that committee was officially announced last night. It seems like a lot of people that are into doing some serious investigations.

Mr. Patel:

Yes. We’re not going to get into the names, but I personally know a lot of those people, if not all of them. I’ve worked with them. They are serious-minded folks who are tired of the DOJ and FBI and IC abuse and corruption. They are well-versed in it, which, in my opinion, makes them the ideal choices to run it, because it’s not something they’re going to see for the first time and say, “Okay, this was a one-off.” They were involved in uncovering the biggest scandal in modern FBI, DOJ history, a criminal enterprise. Those folks are well-suited and situated to be asking these questions. I’m going to be reaching out to some of them to say, “Hey, maybe you want to take a look at this.”

On this show, we have a habit of trying to put things in perspective, so people can see them for what they are. I know we just talked extensively about Senator Warner, Oleg Deripaska, his attorney, Christopher Steele, and Charles McGonigal. What if this happened? What if Devin Nunes, as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, running the Russiagate investigation, texted the attorney for Oleg Deripaska, asking him to meet with Christopher Steele, who Oleg Deripaska was paying a lot of money for, at the same time while Oleg Deripaska was recruiting Charles McGonigal to essentially be a Russian asset and conduct criminal activity in violation of the United States Code? What would the media do with that fact pattern?

In my opinion, and I believe you share this, the investigation and the analysis of the corruption or the activities or the lawfulness or unlawfulness should not change based on who the people are and who the targets are. We’ve always done a good job of keeping it a level playing field and calling people out when they don’t. The mainstream media is as liable on this one as anyone else for giving everyone a hall pass, but hopefully it gets a closer look now.

Mr. Jekielek:

Let’s look at these classified documents that keep on giving, it seems. More were found in Joe Biden’s possession. There were even some found in former Vice President Pence’s possession. But the thing that I want to draw attention to is this find by Miranda Divine, someone who had combed through the depths of the Hunter Biden laptop. It was this very curious email where Hunter Biden, all of a sudden, has this in-depth understanding of the realities of U.S. foreign policy. He’s writing to his friend Devon Archer. Okay. You’re laughing.

Mr. Patel:

I know.

Mr. Jekielek:

What’s your reaction to this?

Mr. Patel:

You’re right. I’m laughing only because we’ve gone so far beyond absurd and criminal, the only place to set your mind at some point is to laugh at it, because our government won’t even take it seriously. In the last episode, you and I did a great job covering the document scandal itself and the two-tiered system of justice and how we have been saying all along that more and more and more documents at more and more locations are going to be found. And this happens to be the case.

There’s going to be even more found, and not just at Pence’s house. Probably, you’re going to hear at some point soon, President Obama’s saying, “Hey, there’s an inadvertent filing of a classified document.” It will be in some warehouse of papers he took with him when he left. Everybody’s doing their due diligence right now because it’s spreading like wildfire. But the focal point of this conversation is that document that you cited. It wasn’t an actual government document, with the traditional classified markings from the FBI or CIA or DOD saying X, Y, and Z about Ukraine and Russia or the CCP.

Mr. Jekielek:

Just a casual email.

Mr. Patel:

Just a casual email. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a theft of classified information. All someone has to do is look at classified information and write a summary of it, and that is a theft of classified information. It’s a mishandling of classified information. It’s a crime.

Mr. Jekielek:

But just to be clear, we don’t know what has happened here.

Mr. Patel: 

I don’t know because I haven’t had access to the underlying documents. But what I will tell you is, from my experience in classified information, from being the Deputy Director of National Intelligence, the information and the bulleted information specifically in that email is information, in my opinion, that could only have come from a classified source and classified document. It’s not like Hunter Biden had access to that style and depth and detail of information as it relates to Ukraine. There’s no way Hunter Biden, who has never worked in government as far as I can tell. After he got discharged from the Navy, he didn’t have a security clearance. He had no, as far as I know, agreement or arrangement with the United States government to go do this work on their behalf.

We now know, of course, that there was the pay-for-play over there, there was the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor, and that Joe Biden, when he was vice president, went over there and said, “If this guy is not fired, I’m going to take our U.S. money and leave.” He was fired within hours. So, the questions that have to be asked are not just what we talked about as a document, but does that document relate to the pay-for-play? Does it relate to the advisory contracts that Hunter Biden engaged with Ukraine and their companies and their subsidiaries, to get paid upwards of $50,000 to $100,000 a month? That’s another separate issue.

The underlying crime is the mishandling and theft of classified information. But if you used it to commit a conspiracy or crime and an illegality, that’s another crime. So, for me, you and I both know Miranda. She does great work. This find is really one that allows us to take a document and hold it up to the world and say, “Look, we can point to this.” While we can’t tell you with certainty that everything in this document is, or at one time was, classified, a lot of professionals like myself are commenting on the specificity in that document to say, “There’s no way it wasn’t.”

Mr. Jekielek:

Miranda’s point was basically that this email was just really out of character. This was not in Hunter’s normal style, which she had become incredibly familiar with. It just looks like something very out of place, something that was copying information that came from somewhere else.

Mr. Patel:

Jan, where did this email come from? Hunter Biden’s laptop. This document has been known to the FBI for years. So, what do they do? That, in my opinion, and it will come out later. I’ve said this repeatedly, that’s the origin of the President Biden document scandal investigation involving classified information. Because when an investigator sees that type of information, what you’re supposed to do, and what you must do, is say, “What are the origination documents that this information was based on, and how did he get it?”

With Hunter Biden, you immediately think “His dad, a former United States senator, a former vice president, and a sitting president.” Of course, he had access to classified information. What do you do? You start going around and pulling threads. You say, “Where was that document? Where’s that memo that Hunter found specifically? What was the date and time? Where was Hunter living at that time? Let’s go check out that location.” You issue search warrants. If we were doing this in the normal course, not this DOJ, not this FBI, not these government gangsters, but in the normal course of a uniform system of justice, that’s what you would do. One question they just can’t answer: Where did Hunter Biden get that information?

Mr. Jekielek:

Just to be 100 per cent clear here, we don’t know for sure that what’s in that document is classified information. We just don’t know. Maybe it was declassified. Maybe it came from some other source, and it just happens to look a lot like it. We don’t know that for sure. But my thought is here that it would probably be pretty easy to figure that out at this point.

Mr. Patel: 

No. I think they’ve figured it out. They’ve had that document for the entire time they’ve had the laptop. The investigators that looked at it figured it out and said, “We have hunt this thing down. Where did it come from?” I’m sure our audience is saying, “Why doesn’t Kash comment on the specific bullet points in the document?” Because I don’t want the FBI showing up at my door saying, “You were talking about classified information.” I’m talking about it from a macro level, from a setback standpoint saying, “In my experience, in my 16 years in government doing intelligence work, running the intelligence community, being a federal prosecutor, running counter-terrorism, and being chief of staff of DOD, that information is classified, or it came from a classified source specifically, or a classified document.”

Mr. Jekielek: 

Basically, what you’re saying here, and it’s pretty significant, is that in all likelihood, this was identified as classified information, and that was actually the origination of this whole classified piece. This is our working theory here. Let’s see what happens.

Mr. Patel:

Yes, it’s our working theory. The other thing I’ll just say, Jan, is it’s not like this is the only memo. There is no way. You are right. I don’t know for sure because I haven’t exploited Hunter Biden’s laptop, but somebody did. That content and information is out there. So, wait for the next round of memos to be released. Now you know that the online sleuths are going to get their hands on whatever’s out there about the Hunter Biden laptop, because the Hunter Biden laptop information is out there in the public realm, so they can go through it. We’re going to see more memos and more questions. We are learning of it now. The question is, when did the FBI and DOJ find out about it, and what did they do when they found out about it?

That goes to the origination document that I was talking about on the last show, the electronic communication, the EC that became famous during Russiagate. You remember the EC, the electronic communication that we finally subpoenaed from DOJ that Peter Strzok had authored himself, that was partially redacted, that showed the origination of the Russiagate investigation and blew open the case. Because it shattered their narrative that they were looking into portraying Donald Trump as a Russian asset. We need that document in this case. It exists somewhere in the FBI and DOJ. The one thing these government gangsters, as I call them, always do is write down by the book how they started an investigation. Where they get caught is when they try to do a coverup and reverse-engineer, which is what they’re now doing with Hunter Biden.

So now, you have Hunter Biden front and center again. Why he hasn’t been in a grand jury or subpoenaed is beyond me. Why haven’t his associates been impaneled, or maybe they have. I just don’t know. But you would think, the way that this media cycle operates, we would at least have an idea of that. We do know this investigation of Hunter Biden has been going on for almost two years, if not longer, by the U.S. Attorney in Delaware.

The other question I have is for former Attorney General Bill Barr, “You had this information. You had Hunter Biden’s laptop. You had the ability to put FBI personnel on this specifically and investigate this matter.” But he didn’t do it. He left the DOJ having this matter totally unresolved. He’s out there on his book tour. It’s an abject failure of the number one law enforcement officer in the country, who did not go in and investigate this matter, especially when it involved classified information.

This question dates back to Bill Barr’s tenureship. Because if we can prove that it does, then it shows that the coverup goes back years. Unfortunately, I’m not taking a victory lap on this one. I’m saying, “It’s tragic that the DOJ has operated in this fashion since and before Russiagate. Comey and Rosenstein and Wray and Barr and all these people that have followed protected the institution.” That’s where my problem is. That’s what we’ve been working to expose, that corruption. Let’s see if this subcommittee gets this origination document, so we have a date as to when the first piece of classified information was found on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Mr. Jekielek: 

Let’s see. Kash, it’s time for our shout-out.

Mr. Patel: 

This week’s shout-out goes to Nancy Brenner. Thanks so much for your kind words on our comments board for Kash’s Corner. Thank you to everybody who leaves messages for us and participates in the live chat. We truly appreciate your support. The audience is growing by the week. We can’t wait to keep going with our program. For now, we’ll see you next week on Kash’s Corner.