Kash’s Corner: Clinton Campaign Lawyers Now Defending Steele Dossier Source Igor Danchenko; Latest Fauci Email Dump
“What you have, at least optically, is the Clinton campaign nested into the [Igor] Danchenko camp and his representation. So all the information John Durham turns over in discovery, they could conceivably give over to Hillary Clinton.”
According to a recent court filing by John Durham’s team, two Clinton campaign lawyers are representing Steele dossier source Igor Danchenko, the Russian analyst who was indicted by a grand jury in November on five false statement charges.
In this episode, Kash breaks down the potential conflicts of interest this creates. And we also take a look at a batch of newly released emails that show how Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, and his colleague Dr. Anthony Fauci worked to discredit the Great Barrington Declaration, which opposed lockdown policies and promoted focused protection of the vulnerable.
To all our wonderful Kash’s Corner fans, we wish you a joyous Christmas and a Happy New Year! We will be taking a one-week break for the holidays and we’ll be returning with more exciting content in 2022!
Kash Patel: Hey, everybody, and welcome to our holiday special of Kash’s Corner. Thanks for tuning in this entire year, and we hope you enjoy our Christmas special.
Jan Jekielek: Yes. So, to start here, I think we do need to say Merry Christmas to everybody. Happy New Year to your families, to your loved ones, to everybody. This is a very difficult year or has been a very difficult year for everybody, and I really hope that everyone gets a chance to celebrate a little bit. Find those things that perhaps they don’t look at too often, especially if things are looking a little grim and celebrate those.
Mr. Patel: And perhaps watch our episode on Christmas Eve and take it in with your family to brighten your day.
Mr. Jekielek: Absolutely. Well, and so it’s very interesting. It seems like Special Counsel Durham has a Christmas present for many folks.
Mr. Patel: It is for me. I’ll take it.
Mr. Jekielek: Yes. Well, so it’s really interesting. Friday afternoon, low news cycle as is typical of him. No fanfare there. He issues a filing, and in the filing, we learn a number of things, which we’ll talk about here, but one of the things we learn is simply that Igor Danchenko, one of the indicted people that he indicted, is actually being represented by the same lawyers that represent the Hillary Clinton Camp 2016 Campaign. Fascinating, right?
Mr. Patel: It’s a shocking development, and I would say if it was the only one in the last five years saga of everything that was Russiagate, but as obviously we’ve shown to be the largest organized criminal enterprise. It’s no longer shocking, unfortunately. It’s just more tragic application of law, and fact, and bias in the Department of Justice and the FBI, and it just continues.
I thank God that John Durham is on the case to help us keep our law enforcement members in check and also, equally as important, prosecute cases under the law and apply the facts wherever they lead, irrespective of who is possibly involved, i.e. a former senator, a former presidential candidate, a former secretary of state, and so many others.
So I’m glad that he is taking his action in a measured fashion, and he’s not taken to the media as we’ve talked about previously. He just doesn’t do that. I don’t even think he has a spokesperson, and if he does, all they say is, “No comment,” but he does talk where he’s legally and permissively allowed to talk, which is his filings in federal court.
We’ve talked about the indictments in the past of Sussmann and Danchenko, and I urge our viewers to… If you haven’t seen it, go check out those episodes. We did some fantastic deep dives into those indictments, but he did give us another pleading on Friday night.
Mr. Jekielek: Well, and so going back to the Sussmann indictment very briefly, we did learn the identity of Dolan, right?
Mr. Patel: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mr. Jekielek: Somebody who seems like he was the main source for Danchenko, right? What’s very interesting about this is that nobody knew about him, and at the same time, this person was also deeply connected with the 2016 Clinton Campaign and others.
Mr. Patel: Yes. No. You’re absolutely right. Look, and I, as the guy who ran the Russiagate investigation on House Intel, had never heard of Charles Dolan. That’s a little shocking for someone who was supposed to have been given all of the FBI, all of the DOJ, all of the intelligence community information regarding how the FISA was obtained, how the Steele dossier was procured, and everything.
That just goes to show you that the FBI and DOJ failed to comply with congressional, valid congressional subpoenas we issued for documents because had they produced everything, they would’ve produced the documents that John Durham found, but at least thankfully he’s on the case.
Why it’s highlighting is because it seems that the Russiagate investigation and the criminal enterprise that John Durham is unfolding starts, and begins, and ends with Hillary Clinton and her campaign. That becomes more and more true as we reveal more and more information.
Charles Dolan is another example. A former Clinton operative, a former Clinton Campaign advisor, a former ally of hers in the State Department is now been shown to be an individual who… We don’t know if it was at the behest of the Clinton Campaign, but it stretches credulity to say otherwise was feeding information on behalf of the Clinton Campaign to Christopher Steele for their false dossier that was falsely presented by the FBI, and I believe knowingly so to get a FISA warrant on then candidate Trump.
So, yet, another member of the Clinton Campaign or Clinton World was shown to be involved in this corrupt… I don’t know what, even there’s a new word for it or not, but this, I want to say, criminal enterprise and that was a Sussmann indictment. Then, we move on to Danchenko and our latest pleading from John Durham this past Friday night.
Mr. Jekielek: What struck me as I was looking at this, and I want to thank our friend Techno Fog for actually drawing attention to this because I didn’t know it had come down, was how did this actually happen because Danchenko did drop his previous counsel, retain this new counsel. Did this counsel approach him? Did he approach them? The other question is like, is there a possibility that this could facilitate an information flow that… an unexpected information flow?
Mr. Patel: You’re right. We’ll get into the last bit of it later. Basically, what you have at least optically is the Clinton Campaign nested into Danchenko camp and his representation. So all the information John Durham turns over in discovery, they could conceivably give over to Hillary Clinton. We’ll circle back to that in more detail and why it is a problem.
You raised a point that’s very interesting. Danchenko was represented by someone else, and then at some point in time, these folks came along and said, “We’re going to represent you.” Now, what’s the nature of that? Are they doing it pro bono? Is someone else paying that fee? Because as someone who’s been subpoenaed by Congress, I can tell you from my personal experience, it’s expensive to hire lawyers to do that kind of work.
Igor Danchenko is criminally indicted in federal court. It’s even more expensive to do that kind of work. Maybe he’s a wealthy individual and can retain whatever counsel he wants, but the reason I became a public defender, and then later a prosecutor was because of one of the most important rights in our constitution is the right to counsel. It’s not just any counsel, it’s the right to counsel of your choosing if you can so afford, and if you can’t, then the public defenders come in. At least you’re provided great representation that way.
Igor Danchenko has now chosen his counsel, but there are some rules in the constitution and as interpreted by the Supreme Court that talk about conflicts of interest. We’ll get into all that, and that’s what this latest pleading is all about.
Igor Danchenko has this new set of lawyers or a relatively new set of lawyers who have come in, and they have for years, as best as I can tell, represented the Hillary Clinton Campaign, who was at the heart of and instigated the entire Russiagate conspiracy. So it’s problematic for many, many, many reasons, and there are a number of legal hurdles that the court must adjudicate properly in order to satisfy both the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments of the constitution and the Canon of Ethics, which we’ll get into too, which govern how lawyers are to behave before a federal judge.
Mr. Jekielek: You hear about conflict of interest a lot on television, right?
Mr. Patel: Yes.
Mr. Jekielek: But from what I understand, right, we’re not just looking at actual demonstrated conflicts of interest. These are conflicts of interest that may exist that…
Mr. Patel: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mr. Jekielek: Right?
Mr. Patel: Look, and it applies to judges too. The same rules, the ethics apply for conflicts apply to judges as they do to lawyers that are appearing before the judge. For instance, many of these federal judges come from private law firms, deep private law firm backgrounds who represented some big Fortune 500 companies, some high-wealth individuals.
If they later became a judge, that judge has to recuse himself for matters forever relating to that company that his private law firm represented in the past or that he or she himself represented in the past even in peace not because there is an actual conflict of interest, but just because there could be. I’ve appeared before federal judges who have recused themself on situations like that.
Actually, I don’t think we’ve ever talked about this, but when we first subpoenaed the bank records of Fusion GPS, when we were running the Russiagate investigation in the fall of 2017, I believe, we had to go to federal court to get those records. The first judge in that cycle after a month or two recused herself from the proceedings, and that’s because there was a conflict of interest. Now, she doesn’t have to disclose to us what that conflict was.
We’re only left to guess that it might have to do with… and she came from a big law firm in her past, and it might have to do with a client or an institution they represented. So it happens. It happens in major cases. It happens in cases you don’t hear about. It happens to judges, but in this instance, it’s not about the judge. It’s about the lawyer, lawyers.
Mr. Jekielek: So what are these potential conflicts of interest here? It would be bizarre if information were able to flow in this direction as we just mentioned.
Mr. Patel: Yes. There’s many, and the rules are governed by not just the law and the constitutions we talked about, but the Canon of Ethics, and they require that any prosecution and defense attorney have a free set of conflict events or be conflict-free with certain stipulations. What they’re saying is… In this instance, John Durham’s pleading is saying… because there’s a Supreme Court case that governs this.
The prosecution has a duty to affirmatively inform the court of a possible conflict of interest, and that’s what John Durham has done in this case. He, John Durham, is saying through his pleading that we think the individuals that now represent Igor Danchenko, who also represent the Hillary Clinton Campaign could have numerous conflicts of interest, not just the information flow.
So he laid out some of them, and it’s not up to the prosecution to investigate those on their own. They can request assistance, and I think appropriately did so to the judge because the judge has wider latitude to talk to defense counsel and even go what we call ex parte if need be, and that’s just to bring in defense counsel alone. So it’s not to divulge the defense of the defendant, which is to remain private. That’s never to be divulged to the prosecution. So the judge has a little more leeway in how he investigates the potential conflict of interest.
But John Durham has now put these terms on notice that he should take those matters and those inquiries, and see where they lead. Namely, the number one thing that comes to my mind in terms of whether there’s a potential conflict of interest is witnesses, right?
These guys who represent Danchenko, who represent the Hillary Clinton Campaign. How many people in the Hillary Clinton Campaign universe do they represent? Did they represent five years ago, four years ago, three years ago? Is Igor Danchenko going to call one of those people as a witness in his trial? That’s a potential conflict of interest.
I don’t know Igor Danchenko’s defense. Only he and his attorneys do. Are those lawyers going to be shaded by their past representation of some of these said witnesses in their current representation of Danchenko? Are they going to be biased because they previously had a relationship with one of the witnesses that could be called? It’s not necessary that that witness has to be called. Is the government going to call one of those witnesses?
Let’s put the defense aside wholly. Is John Durham saying, “I might call witnesses A, B, and C,” and you represented A and B, and now you represent the defendant? It’s a potential conflict of interest, which basically… What the judge has to safeguard against is a reversible error, and a conflict of interest and a potential conflict of interest is almost… Once it’s established, it’s an automatic reversal.
So if he was convicted and this matter wasn’t adjudicated properly, the appeals court would look at it and say, “Why didn’t anyone look at this conflict of interest?” Which is why it’s so critical at this juncture for him to adjudicate. We can get it, about how you deal with an actual conflict of interest, but the witness thing is just one example for me of the possible conflicts. You brought up information sharing, and we can get into that too.
Mr. Jekielek: Well, okay. So let’s do it.
Mr. Patel: So it sounds pretty nefarious, right? But let’s be real with our audience. The entire Russiagate investigation, the Steele dossier, Hillary Clinton Campaign’s involvement in it, paying Perkins Coie $10 million, hiring Christopher Steele, paying him six figures, getting false information all the while informing the Clinton Campaign of what they were doing through their attorneys as we now know through the Michael Sussmann indictment who represented the Hillary Clinton Campaign.
That’s another possible conflict. Michael Sussmann is indicted by the special counsel. He represented the Hillary Clinton Campaign. Did these lawyers that are representing Danchenko have anything to do with Michael Sussmann in the past? I don’t know the answer to that, but that’s another potential conflict of interest.
But what’s of greater note is that this information has cascaded down from the Hillary Clinton Campaign for four, five years now. Have these lawyers just nested themselves into a defendant that’s been charged so they can funnel information back to the Hillary campaign?
Now, that sounds pretty nefarious, but after everything we’ve proven and shown, I wouldn’t put it past them, and that’s why this judge has to adjudicate this matter now and appropriately. Can you imagine a scenario where lawyers for defendants where they’re not in his best interest, which is what is required by the constitution, but were being paid by someone to do that representation?
Then, all the discovery, all the evidence that John Durham has to turn over so that the defendant’s rights are under the constitution are upheld, they take some of that information and leak it to the press. They go around and give it back to Hillary Clinton or her campaign, and that campaign uses it and puts it in the media.
It’s no surprise, and we’ll get into this as soon as well that Hillary Clinton is all of a sudden back in the news. So it’s raising a lot of questions. I don’t think there is anything… I don’t ever think there’s anything like a coincidence in these types of cases, and I think this judge… We should follow this. This judge has to deal with this matter. He doesn’t have to divulge how he deals with it or the details he deals with it, but he has to make a decision, and there has to be what we call a waiver by the defendant, and that’s a process.
Mr. Jekielek: So interesting, and so are there any other… these conflicts of interest that Durham outlined? I think there were others.
Mr. Patel: Well, the other one that’s actually… maybe it’s more prescient than the one we’ve talked about. I mean, this is crazy. It’s like all in one case. The other one is that John Durham quietly in his pleading basically told the world we’ve known the whole time. We’ve been saying, you and I, on this show.
The Hillary Clinton Campaign is being investigated by John Durham. So he’s telling the judge, “Not only am I not done with my special counsel investigation I’ve indicted clients with. I’ve indicted Sussmann. I’ve indicted Danchenko. I’ve told the world about Charles Dolan, Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele, Mark Elias, who used to represent the Hillary Clinton Campaign, the corrupt activities of the FBI, but I’m now also telling you, judge, I’m looking into the Hillary Clinton Campaign’s conduct and involvement in the production of the Steele dossier.”
That’s a massive conflict of interest. Even if John Durham doesn’t indict anyone in the Hillary Clinton Campaign, what John Durham is saying is, “Judge, I’m looking at it. I’ve been looking at it. I don’t know what I’m going to find. Are one of the people I’m looking at the Hillary Clinton Campaign connected to this law firm?” I’ll take it one step further. Is he looking at one of the lawyers who represented the Hillary Clinton Campaign?
People might say that’s a super far stretch, but we now know that Michael Sussmann, a lawyer for Hillary Clinton, has already been indicted for his conduct during the Russiagate hoax. So I don’t put it past him. I don’t know these lawyers. I don’t know that they’ve done that, but John Durham would be the only one that knows the answer to that question, and what he’s saying is those roads may lead to them or clients they represented. So you have the money angle, the information angle, the investigative angle, and we haven’t even gotten to the defendant’s constitutional rights, which I think trump all of those.
Mr. Jekielek: So, well, I think we do need to get to those. You’re laying it out perfectly here. Right? Now, why is that the most important thing here? That’s very…
Mr. Patel: Maybe I’m biased because of my time as a public defender, but what you’re supposed to do as a defense attorney is execute due process and stand up when your client has been charged with whatever they’ve been charged with. He’s afforded that right. Not at 50 percent or 70 percent, but 100 percent, and not just one day, but from beginning to end. He has to have that right. Otherwise, it could be a reversible error in the appellate courts because they’ll say counsel was ineffective as we call it.
If there’s a finding of ineffectiveness or a conflict because of ineffectiveness, it’s a reversal, and then he gets to go all over again, but I also believe that that’s the whole point of our justice system. That’s why it’s different from 90 plus percent of the world’s judicial systems. We have a system in place where everyone gets the counsel they’re choosing, and if they can’t afford one, there’s a public defender service to afford them that sort of representation that the constitution demands.
The defendant in this case, and the Supreme Court, again, adjudicated this, he has to be made aware of all these conflicts not just by his own attorneys, but by the prosecution and possible inquiry by the judge to further develop some of the lines that, in this case, John Durham has laid out for the court.
Only after the defendant has been made aware, all of those potential conflicts, the witnesses, the money, the bias, where the investigation is going. Then, the judge in open court has to ask the defendant if he wants to, even knowing all that information, stick with his lawyers. So he has to make what’s called the knowing, intelligent and Intentional waiver of a conflict of interest.
All three of those have to be met. So he can only do that if he’s been informed of the conflicts and the potential conflicts in their entirety, and then he has to go into open court and say, “Judge, I’ve reviewed all of that information,” and because the constitution speaks directly to this that is he is allowed his counsel of choosing, and I agree with this. If he knows about all of it and still wants to go with them, that should be his right. But what John Durham is saying is, “I don’t know if he knows about all of that.”
Plus, what John Durham is saying is, “I don’t know all of the information because I’m still investigating the Clinton Campaign. You, the judge, can talk to the lawyers outside of the prosecution’s presence. You can talk to the lawyers and the defendant outside of the prosecution’s presence. You, the judge, can call in witnesses and say, ‘I’ve been notified of a possible conflict of interest from your firm, or this organization, or this individual I hear might be indicted. I want to know the details so I can advise the defendant in this case of those details. So he can make that knowing and intentional waiver.’”
Yes. It gets pretty tricky, but the reason why judges are so careful in these matters is because… Here’s the one thing federal judges never want, a reversal. They don’t want to be reversed. They want to get it right the first time. They don’t want an appellate court to say, “You screwed up,” because like everybody else, federal judges have egos, but also, they have a record they want to establish that they’ve done it right.
Mr. Jekielek: Right. Their reputation. Of course. Yes.
Mr. Patel: Yes, and this is a high media case, so it’s going to get a lot of scrutiny. So I think it’s far from over. I think it’s going to take a little bit of time to develop this, and it also shows me that I’m not sure that Igor Danchenko has received all the discovery in this case because John Durham is now guarding… waiting to divulge all this information that he’s allowed under the prosecution to set up his defense because he, John Durham, if I were him, would be saying, “I don’t know what the defense attorneys are going to do with this information.”
So we’ll see where the judge goes, but it’s a pretty dynamic situation, and I would be really interested to find out how Igor Danchenko came to retain these guys in the first place and who’s paying for it because it is a six-figure monetary hire to retain counsel like that.
Mr. Jekielek: But we may actually never know this, right?
Mr. Patel: We might not. I think the most we’ll see… Usually, the most we’ll see is a pleading by the defense or the judge that says the matter has been adjudicated, the defendant has made a knowing and intentional and voluntary waiver or the judge could just issue a ruling and say, “You, the defendant, have to find new counsel.”
Mr. Jekielek: I see.
Mr. Patel: We would never know why. I guess the defendant could ultimately tell us why down the road, but that’s the other option, and then the judge would give him time to go get new counsel.
Mr. Jekielek: That was my question. It’s not just up to the defendant. The judge might just say, “This doesn’t look good to me. You need someone else.”
Mr. Patel: So it’s not up to the judge, right? Remember, the judge can’t make the decision for the defendant. The defendant has to make that knowing and intentional and voluntary waiver.
Mr. Jekielek: Okay.
Mr. Patel: If he makes that waiver after being advised of everything, he’s entitled to keep his counsel.
Mr. Jekielek: Okay.
Mr. Patel: The judge, and the defense attorneys, and the prosecution to some degree just have to make sure all that information is presented to him because fast forward and say the defendant only receives 70 percent of the possible conflicts or 80 percent, and then he gets convicted at trial.
That case is getting reversed because if it’s later shown that there was other possible conflicts of interest that weren’t shown to the defendant and he made the waiver, then he didn’t make it knowingly, knowing all the information that he should have known at the time, and he can come back on appeal and say, “Well, had I known the other 20 percent or the other 10 percent, then I would have gotten new counsel,” and the appellate court stuck there. They’ll have to reverse the case.
Not only did the judge not want to do that, but these are monumental prosecutions for John Durham. We don’t want the DOJ to spin for another two, three years while an appeal goes on and have to do it all over again because there wasn’t a proper disclosure to the defendant. I think that’s what John Durham is trying to safeguard against here by putting everyone on notice of these possible conflicts of interest, which I think are actual conflicts, but it’s ultimately up to the defendant.
Mr. Jekielek: That’s fascinating because I guess my question here is… Let’s say the defendant does write this waiver and say, “I’m going to keep this counsel.” Aren’t there ways that you could, I guess, weaponize that…
Mr. Patel: Well, yes, and I hadn’t thought of it before. There’s these things called JDAs, Joint Defense Agreements, and what you can do is… and we’ve seen these, and I’ve done these in large scale narco trafficking cases where you have 20, 30 defendants. You get together, and you say, “Okay. We’re going to basically team up with everybody’s lawyers and every defendant, and we’re going to present a unified case.” You’re allowed to do that. Again, you have to go through a similar process, you have to waive conflicts, and the defendants have to be advised, and then sign on to these agreements, and they can get pretty complicated.
Here, what I would be safeguarding against is a joint defense agreement between Danchenko and the Hillary Clinton Campaign, and I think that’s what John Durham is also looking at because he, Danchenko, could have retained these lawyers, and the lawyers, they’re not dumb, they know John Durham is investigating the campaign.
What they could be saying is, “We’re going to enter into a joint defense agreement where we represent both, and if Hillary Clinton and Hillary Clinton’s campaign or anyone from the campaign were charged, we would continue representation of both.” It gets a little more complicated and a little more tricky, but that’s something that we have to… we should watch for.
Mr. Jekielek: What advantage would that give to the defendant or defendants?
Mr. Patel: It’s a group effort, so you have… Instead of the defendants doing a he-said-she-said, “I didn’t do it. She did it. She didn’t do it. He did it,” defense, right?
Mr. Jekielek: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mr. Patel: You don’t have to be tried together. You don’t even have to be charged together for this type of joint defense agreement to be applicable. Generally, you’re co-defendants, generally speaking, but there could be some scenario where you’re not co-defendants.
But for example, Jake Sullivan, the current National Security Advisor to the President of the United States. I deposed Jake Sullivan a few years ago when I was running the Russiagate investigation, and that deposition was taken under oath. Like the Sussmann indictment, I deposed Sussmann. My deposition is in Michael Sussmann’s indictment as the basis for the prosecution that John Durham brought.
I think there’s a basis against Jake Sullivan for similarly lying to Congress about numerous things under oath. At the time, Jake Sullivan was a member of the Hillary Clinton Campaign. He was one of her top advisors of that campaign. So is John Durham looking at Jake Sullivan?
I think in the Sussmann indictment, he told us he is. I think in this pleading, he told us he’s looking at the Hillary Clinton Campaign. So there’s a very possible reality that these groups of lawyers have represented Jake Sullivan in the past either directly, or indirectly, or tangentially. What if he gets charged by John Durham going forward? Then, that’s a huge conflict of interest issue for not just the defendant, Igor Danchenko, but for the court and the prosecution.
The prosecution has to get it right the first time because they don’t want to have to do that all over again because they knew about it and they just said, “Nah, we don’t really need to tell anyone. It’s never going to come up.” When you do something like that is when it always comes up, and if it comes up mid-trial, then there are sanctions that the judge can bring against the prosecution for saying, “Wait, you knew this and you didn’t tell me because you say, ‘We didn’t think it was going to come up?’”
I’ve had that happen mid-trial, Perry Mason style, and the federal judge was not happy at all. I was a public defender at the time, and it ended up in order for the benefit of my client, but the government could have totally avoided that entire situation. I think that’s what he, John Durham, is trying to do here.
Mr. Jekielek: This is absolutely fascinating. We’ve really dug in here. What about this media presence of Hillary Clinton that you mentioned? Why do you think that’s significant?
Mr. Patel: I think it’s significant for a lot of reasons. Look, she has been around for a long time. Her campaign is enormous. It’s still ongoing. There’s rumors of her running again in 2024, and I’ve always said this. There are no coincidences in these types of prosecutions.
It is strikingly odd to me that at the same time on or about John Durham files his pleading, Hillary Clinton is in the spotlight of the media again not just talking about her science fiction book or whatever, but also regurgitating the lies of the Russiagate investigation, the Russiagate hoax by saying President Trump was aided by the Russians and put into power.
But we all know after… I don’t know how many congressional investigations, ours being the prominent one, and how many special counsel investigations, and Mueller who couldn’t find anything in the IG who agreed with us, she still says that. It’s very timely to me that she’s saying it at the time of this disclosure, and I think what she’s trying to do is muddy the media waters again by saying, “I didn’t do anything wrong, I, Hillary Clinton, or my campaign,” because her campaign is the one that’s under the spotlight through her attorneys right now.
I remind our audience that one of her campaign attorneys got indicted by John Durham already. So she’s always been savvy enough and cunning enough to inject into the media and try to distract away the narrative, and it’s working. I hate to say it’s working because you and I are one of the only people talking about it. The mainstream media isn’t talking about it. They’re just trying to help her sell her book and make President Trump look bad because that’s the narrative they want out there.
If they looked at the facts of this situation, you would think that in the biggest political criminal scandal in United States’ history, it would be headline news that there’s a possibility of a conflict of interest because the individuals that started the entire corrupt criminal enterprise with the Steele dossier are now related to the people that have been charged and defending them.
It’s literally like a movie you couldn’t even come up with in Hollywood because that scenario was just unfathomable—even to me. After trying 60 cases to verdict in criminal court, in state and federal court and having done all that work, I could never have even envisioned this scenario.
Mr. Jekielek: So, Kash, at the risk of going deep down the rabbit hole here a little bit, presumably there are multiple counsel for the Hillary Clinton Campaign. Presumably. We know there are, and it made it sound like you believe that the counsel that are representing Danchenko right now were involved back in 2016 or earlier.
Mr. Patel: So great point. My reading of the pleading is that. That’s my interpretation of it. Of course, John Durham doesn’t have to divulge that, but here’s a key piece of information to clear up most of these ginormous white-shoe law firms of thousands and thousands of lawyers. It’s a little different in this case.
I forget the name of the law firm off the top of my head, but two of the named partners in the title of the law firm are the two defense attorneys for Igor Danchenko. So it’s not like there are a thousand people working for them and that someone could have been so. My reading of the Durham indictment is that either they or someone in their firm represented pieces of the Hillary Clinton Campaign either five years ago, four years ago, three years ago, two years ago, last week, and this brings up a great point that we actually didn’t address, an internal conflict within the law firm.
So the law firm could have a hundred lawyers. It could have five. It could have a thousand. Did anyone in that law firm over the last five years represent anyone in the Hillary Clinton Campaign? If the answer to that is yes, then that’s a potential conflict of interest because everything within that law firm is…
The knowledge that is held within that law firm is applied to every member of the law firm when it comes to conflicts of interest. So if a junior associate represented a Hillary Clinton Campaign staffer on the Hill, let’s say, then there could be a conflict of interest here because that same law firm continues… Even if that lawyer is no longer at that law firm, the conflicts don’t cease because lawyers stopped working at place A or B. They continue in perpetuity, and so it’s a complicated wormhole that you have to navigate. It’s very delicate.
Now, what they also identified in the pleading, and I’m glad you brought this up, is that these defense lawyers informed the prosecution that they would wall themselves off from any other people in the law firm. Basically, what that means is they would literally… not quite literally, but basically, confine themselves into their own fort, and no other attorneys in the firm would be able to communicate with them, and they couldn’t communicate out about this matter.
But what was telling me about that is the way I read the pleading was the lawyers, the defense lawyers said they would do that going forward. What did they do going in reverse? Had it already happened? Had those lawyers, the defense lawyers already talked to other individuals in their law firm? Had those individuals worked on it in any fashion, civil, criminal, what have you matters for the Hillary Clinton Campaign? We don’t know the answers to those questions. So that’s a whole nother area of possible conflicts we didn’t talk about that’s just housed within the law firm itself.
Mr. Jekielek: As you mentioned earlier, Kash, typically, there’s one conflict, potential conflict, a piece of a conflict. This really seems like a myriad of potential conflicts, so.
Mr. Patel: Yes, this is like a law school nightmare come true in terms of law school exams, right, because you look for these scenarios where you have like 27 issues, and in real life, you might have maybe one or a piece of one. Like you said in this and like we’ve outlined, I think maybe they should make a law school exam out of this scenario. You have every conflict of interest under the sun in one case. It’s shocking that it’s gotten to that extent, but it doesn’t surprise me anymore given the nature of the campaign’s involvement from jump on all things Steele and Russiagate.
Mr. Jekielek: So, in a normal situation, not this high-profile case, not this… I guess I’ll just say craziness over however many years. What would happen in a case like this?
Mr. Patel: Normally, as a defense attorney, step one, me, if I was representing the client in a case like this, I would go to the client and say, “I can’t represent you anymore. I want to, but I cannot because legally and ethically, I’m not permitted to do so.”
I would even go far as to tell them, “Look, you can waive, you can knowingly and intentionally and voluntarily waive, but I would tell them affirmatively, and almost every defense lawyer I know would do the same thing. I can no longer represent you in your best interest because something might come up in the future, and that could harm you, and you are looking at prison time if I get this wrong.”
So that’s what would normally happen, and what would normally happen is they’d leave, and some other counsel would come in, or the judge would help them get to that decision relatively quickly. Since this is not a normal case, unfortunately, it might be treated with a different set of rules as has seemed to be the case for most things involving the Hillary Clinton Campaign.
Mr. Jekielek: So this is absolutely fascinating and much deeper than I expected we would go. I want to switch gears a little bit and just talk about these very fascinating revelations we got from [inaudible 00:34:25] emails that Dr. Collins and Dr. Fauci exchanged in response to the publication of the Great Barrington Declaration.
Now, actually, let me remind our viewers what the Great Barrington Declaration was. So we’re looking at three top scientists, Dr. Martin Kulldorff who was at Harvard, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya who’s at Stanford, and Sunetra, Dr. Sunetra Gupta, who’s at Oxford. Together, they came out with this declaration.
The declaration was simply that we should do focused protection of the most vulnerable people in society in response to the pandemic, and this is in response to these mass lockdowns. They were seeing a lot of costs and not a lot of benefits from them, and this was an attempt… and I know from speaking to at least two of them that this was just an attempt to create a discourse, a scientific discourse in the community.
Now, here’s the thing. These emails basically show, and I’m going to… I’ll actually read a line from an email from Dr. Collins who said something to this effect. Oh, actually, this is a direct quote. “There needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises.” That’s talking to the Great Barrington Declaration. “I don’t see anything like that online yet. Is it underway?” He also describes the three as “three fringe epidemiologists,” which is preposterous given these people’s credentials. So what’s your response to this?
Mr. Patel: Unfortunately, I think… and the reason I lobbed my head back in almost disbelief is I can’t believe we’re addressing it because that’s the state of most of the media today, and it started with what we were talking about, the Russiagate investigation, I believe, in President Trump’s candidacy back then, and then his ultimate actual presidency.
The media, as we’ve talked about in this show in the past, so many large factions of it have put on misinformation and disinformation campaigns, and you can pick your topic. It doesn’t have to be Russiagate. It can be the BountyGate scandal. It can be impeachment. It can be COVID, China origins on COVID. It can be anything we’re talking about related to the Winter Olympic Games today.
There’s always these continuous narratives that certain sectors of the media just want to push irrespective of what the actual information is, and all these journalists just stopped being journalists, and stopped fact-checking, and stopped getting credible information, and even started doctoring videos and statements to support a narrative, a conclusion they wanted to be true rather than actually investigating it. So I think that’s why we’re here. I think that’s what landed us here, and it continues with all things, as you say, the CCP virus.
Mr. Jekielek: It’s interesting, Kash, that you focused on the media aspect here because obviously, that’s incredibly important, something that Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke who have this wonderful show called Truth Over News on Epoch TV. Something they noted in a recent article about this email dump is actually that there was this jumping on a particular… essentially the narrative that was coming from Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins, and this immediate censorship of everything.
I think it was shortly after these emails were actually published, Facebook, the social media would start basically censoring mentions of this. Hans Mahncke and Jeff Carlson in a recent article about this whole piece have mentioned how there was a collaboration between Facebook essentially supporting CDC messaging ostensibly, but now we know how this messaging actually came about. What strikes me about this is just how actual scientific inquiry is lost in all of this.
Mr. Patel: No, you’re totally right, and then that’s the whole point. The point of government partly is supposed to get information, accurate information to its citizenry. The point of government is not to collaborate with certain sectors of the media to help push a narrative and suppress the information underlying that narrative, or not report it accurately, or not let out that statistical information. I think that’s what you’re talking about, and that’s what’s happening here.
I think the public sees that finally. They’re saying, especially in the whole landscape of Omicron, “Why is there mass hysteria, and where are the facts? Where’s the information the CDC is supposed to give me? Where is the NIH director saying, ‘Well, this is why I’m saying this,’ not just jumping up, and down, and screaming the conclusion, and having the media parrot that information?”
I think that has been lost, unfortunately. When you have government sectors join up and collaborate with the likes of Facebook and everything, that can be good, but it can also be bad in the sense that if they just cut out all the actual information that they’re supposed to provide and just provide these fictionalized almost to a certain degree epithets, then I think you just hurt not just the media, but you hurt the American public because they’re asking why and you’re not telling them.
Mr. Jekielek: So it’s interesting that you mentioned that because there was this Wall Street Journal editorial recently that I thought was also really fascinating and put it well. I’m going to briefly read what they said. They said, the emails… and we’re talking about these email exchanges, right, suggest a feedback loop.
The media cited Dr. Fauci as an unquestionable authority, and Dr. Fauci got his talking points from the media, and Facebook censored mentions of the Great Barrington Declaration. This is how groupthink works. It’s deeply concerning because this is… The health policy actually, not just for America, but a lot of other countries have actually mirrored American policy.
Mr. Patel: No, we’re supposed to lead with facts and information, and instead, we have places like South Africa leading on Omicron, and the variant, and scientific information and data to back up its statements. That’s why you’ve had the South African government speaking internationally on it, and America is not speaking internationally on it because the international community has lost faith and credibility in the government’s ability to report that underlying information that you’re talking about.
This loop, this circular reporting and so called loop reporting that you’re talking about, tragically, it’s not the only place that’s happened. It’s happened in… Pick your subject in national security. Pick your subject on impeachment. Pick your subject on Russiagate. I hate to keep coming back to the Steele dossier, but Steele literally reported X leaked it to the media. The FBI jumped on it and said, “Oh, it’s in the media. We can corroborate what you were saying, even though you were the one leaking the false information.”
I mean, that’s just the worst thing that can happen to our republic because not just are you putting out wrong information, you’re destroying Americans’ belief in the government and the media. How else are we supposed to operate as a society if… and I see this all around when I go around the country. People have just stopped reading and listening to the news entirely on both sides of the spectrum because they can’t stand its politicization anymore, and this doesn’t help.
Mr. Jekielek: I think I mentioned this at the beginning of the show that there’s a lot of folks out there and sometimes myself included, sometimes losing a bit of hope, right, in the system and where things are going.
Mr. Patel: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Mr. Jekielek: At the same time, I have to mention for our American Thought Leaders on Christmas Day, we actually are having Bob Woodson come on the show, talking about the incredible work that he’s been doing at the grassroots level to basically help, as he describes it, people become agents of their own uplift in some of the most difficult communities, and that’s…
The thing that keeps striking me is that it’s at the grassroots level, it’s at the people’s level that the solutions to all of these pretty significant challenges that we’ve been talking about today are coming from. Frankly, I mean, this is at the federal level. We have, of course, the special counsel, John Durham. We have Kash Patel, frankly, working for a number of years, discovering all these things. We have The Epoch Times, but that’s a little bit… basically, trying to wade through all of this and find the truth.
A number of the people who have become reporters for The Epoch Times are people who are just going through this and looking at the data, trying to figure things out, seeing that there wasn’t… that what they were hearing wasn’t jiving with reality. They started out as citizen reporters, and then they became actual reporters because they were doing [a] so much better job than many of the people that were doing it professionally. I don’t know how this is all going to play out, but I do see, I do see a hope in all of this. Yes.
Mr. Patel: Yeah, you’re right, and it’s good to not provide people with false hope because that’s worse than actually providing them with actual hope, which is what you’re talking about. You’re talking about media organizations and individuals that have gone out there, and waded through the evidence, and put that evidence and information out for the American people to read and see themselves and not just conclusions. Epoch Times is at the front of that, for sure, especially on all things COVID reporting and attacking disinformation, and misinformation, and any of its variants.
So it is refreshing to see that, and it’s very encouraging to see the slow methodical course corrections that John Durham is making because I think too many have lost faith in our FBI or DOJ and our intelligence apparatus after the entire Russiagate scenario that we’re still living with. I think that finally, I agree with you that John Durham is more than just the hope that we need. He, by having people held accountable, will restore the credibility and faith in government and the media collaboratively.
Mr. Jekielek: I also wanted to mention. So we’re talking about on the COVID side of things or CCP virus side of things.
Mr. Patel: Yes.
Mr. Jekielek: There is the Brownstone Institute founded by Jeffrey Tucker that is bringing together some of the brightest minds that are deeply truth-seeking around coronavirus and the costs of coronavirus. I think in his own words, wanting to create a sanctuary for free thought and discovery around this issue now presumably that will evolve with time as well.
Mr. Patel: Yes.
Mr. Jekielek: These things do exist, and I guess these networks are developing across America and across the world.
Mr. Patel: Yes. We’re just going to have to keep… We’re going to have to keep going all next year–to keep at it.
Mr. Jekielek: Well, and so I think it’s time for our shout-out.
Mr. Patel: So this week’s shout-out goes to Danny O’Neil. Thanks so much for your fabulous support to Kash’s Corner and all the Kash’s Corner audience for your commentary. Jan and I, and the team read that every week. We take your feedback and your suggestions, and it helps us improve the show. Most importantly, Merry Christmas to you and your family, and a happy holiday season. We’ll see you next time on Kash’s Corner. Of course, we want to wish everybody a very Merry Christmas, a happy holiday season, and a great new year. We really look forward to seeing you in 2022.
Mr. Jekielek: Yeah, and to reiterate what we said at the beginning, Merry Christmas from actually the entirety of the Epoch Times. A great new year to everybody. We’re actually going to be skipping one week next week of Kash’s Corner, but we’ll see you all at the beginning of the new year.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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