Podcaster Joe Rogan couldn't believe his ears when Kash Patel accused former FBI Director James Comey of hoarding a trove of unvetted information in a secret room at the Hoover Building.
Last month, Patel told Fox News's Maria Bartiromo that he would be revealing previously hidden documents related to the Trump "Russiagate" investigation alleging that Donald Trump's 2016 campaign was aided by Russian interference. The infamous Mueller Report, released in 2019, concluded that the special counsel had insufficient evidence to bring any charges against Trump for the alleged collusion.
"Just think about this," Patel began. "Me, as director of the FBI, the former 'Russiagate guy,' when I first got to the bureau, found a room that Comey and others hid from the world in the Hoover Building, full of documents and computer hard drives that no one had ever seen or heard of. Locked the key and hid access and just said, 'No one's ever gonna find this place.'"
"What?" an incredulous Rogan exclaimed.
"Yeah. So, my guys are going through that right now," Patel said. When Rogan asked what was in the room, Patel answered, "A lot of stuff."
Patel, long considered a conspiracy theorist by the left, came to prominence in 2018 for his attempts to discredit the FBI's investigation into Trump. In January, after Patel was nominated to become FBI director, The New York Times claimed that Patel's "demonstrably spurious claims, shared in podcasts and in his book, 'Government Gangsters,' served to delegitimize the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, stoke baseless suspicions that the F.B.I. helped instigate the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol and muddy the waters of the inquiry into Mr. Trump’s refusal to return classified documents after leaving office."