Former Pentagon chief of staff Kash Patel discusses the Durham investigation with Maria Bartiromo.
Retired FBI, Mark Wauck, is kind enough to create a partial rough transcript of what Patel said and then shares a few thoughts:
“Below is a transcript of Patel’s statements to Maria Bartiromo this morning. I’ve paraphrased Maria’s questions, but this is as exact a transcript as I can manage of what Patel had to say about the Russia Hoax and where Durham is headed. I’ll add some of my own remarks, but let’s start with Patel:
MB: When do you think the FBI figured out this was the Clinton Campaign trying to take down Trump?
KP: I think they knew right away, and the documents we put out in the Nunes investigation and the Nunes memo and the HPSCI report on Russian active measures show that the FBI knew right away, because the FISA abuse process, now that declassification is complete. And your viewers can read it, that the FBI knew the evidence was fraudulent, they knew the credibility problems with Christopher Steele and they knew the DNC through Fusion GPS and Perkins Coie were piping in tens of millions of dollars into the machine so that they could get up a FISA warrant into President Trump. I think they knew right away which is why I think the individuals at the FBI need to be held accountable.
MB: Will John Durham reel in any big fish?
KP: I believe so. Let me just put this in perspective. When I was running large scale conspiracy and fraud investigations, they took me three, four, five years to prosecute. John Durham is in only his second year of the most political scandal in US history. So I believe in the next 6 months look out for indictments against the folks like Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson for helping to perpetuate this fraud. And look out for individuals like Lisa Page and Peter Strzok. I believe they’re already helping John Durham and they’re cooperating with him to get the bigger fish, like Andy McCabe who is the biggest fraudster next to James Comey. I think you’re gonna see these indictments come out on these individuals at the top. It’s just gonna take a few more months, but I remind your viewers that it takes a little time to work these matters.
MB: No surprise the MSM gave them all jobs.
In a sense this isn’t big news, because we saw the shape of this in Durham’s indictment of Michael Sussmann. In particular the references in the indictment to Fusion GPS (“investigative firm”) and Perkins Coie left no doubt that Durham saw Fusion GPS as key to the actual implementation of the Russia Hoax conspiracy. However, Patel says two things openly that are of bombshell quality.
First, while we knew that the money for the Fusion GPS operation was laundered through Perkins Coie, Patel openly states that the amounts ran to “tens of millions of dollars”. That’s real money in US political campaigns, even in these days. It’s also real money in the world of major law firms, so you can see why Durham has been so focused on Perkins Coie as well as why Perkins Coie is experiencing real difficulty in persuading Durham that they didn’t know what was going on—remember, this money laundering op was almost certainly a violation of campaign finance laws. Who believes nobody at a major law firm noticed the flow of that amount of money through their accounts? Not me and, it seems, not Durham. If Perkins Coie wants to somehow get through this without indictments they’ll need to be very cooperative with Durham.
Fusion GPS, of course, is no more than an organizational euphemism for Glenn Simpson and, most likely, Nellie Ohr. Nellie has, quite likely, been cooperating with regard to Simpson. Simpson, in his turn, will have a lot to offer Durham with regard to the Clinton legal operatives—Sussmann and Elias. Both. This is another reason why I want to wait before jumping to any conclusions about Sussmann cooperating against Elias. Both of these guys are very major players, and Durham won’t be over quick to offer them deals unless he has to.
Second, I was gratified to see Patel confirm my assessment, which I offered quite recently. I stated that, while Page and Strzok may have been big fish within the FBI, in the big scheme of this conspiracy they weren’t truly major players. At the FBI the major players—people who controlled the switches—were: Comey (Director), McCabe (Deputy Director), and James Baker (General Counsel). We’re pretty certain that Baker is cooperating. I doubt that Durham has even sought cooperation from Comey and McCabe. I think they’re major targets—they either go down or they get away with what they did, but their responsibility was too great for them to get a plea deal. Page and Strzok may be able to get some sort of a deal, but in my view they’ll also have to pay a price.
Now, extrapolating a bit from what Patel said …