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Former Devin Nunes' aide acted as secret Trump Ukraine backchannel

Andre1984

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This came up in the testimony from last week.

Which was leaked...

A few months ago

Nunes Ally Kash Patel Who Fought Russia Probe Gets Senior White House National Security Job

Kash Patel, who helmed the efforts of former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes to scrutinize the court-authorized surveillance of a Trump associate has taken on the role of Senior Director of the Counterterrorism Directorate of the National Security Council (NSC), according to two sources familiar with the move.

Now

White House Aides Feared That Trump Had Another Ukraine Back Channel

Senior White House officials suspected that a colleague whom they viewed as a political partisan was ferrying documents about Ukraine in recent months to President Trump, effectively creating another back channel to him that could warp American policy, according to congressional testimony and interviews.

Colleagues grew alarmed after hearing that Mr. Trump had referred to Kashyap Patel, a National Security Council aide who figured prominently in Republicans’ efforts to undermine the Russia investigation, as one of his top Ukraine policy specialists and that the president wanted to discuss related documents with him. Mr. Patel, who is known as Kash, is assigned to work on counterterrorism issues, not Ukraine policy.

Fiona Hill, the National Security Council’s former senior director for Eurasian and Russian affairs, testified to House investigators last week that she believed Mr. Patel was improperly becoming involved in Ukraine policy and was sending information to Mr. Trump, some of the people said.

Ms. Hill grew alarmed earlier this year when an aide from the White House executive secretary’s office told her that Mr. Trump wanted to talk to Mr. Patel and identified him as the National Security Council’s “Ukraine director,” a position held by one of Ms. Hill’s deputies. The aide said Mr. Trump wanted to meet with Mr. Patel about documents he had received on Ukraine.

Ms. Hill responded by asking who Mr. Patel was. While the aide from the executive secretary’s office did not state explicitly that Mr. Patel sent the Ukraine documents to Mr. Trump, Ms. Hill understood that to be the implication, according to a person familiar with her testimony.

Mr. Patel’s apparent communications with the president prompted Ms. Hill to raise concerns with her superiors, including John R. Bolton, then the national security adviser, that Mr. Patel was meddling outside his portfolio. As early as May, Ms. Hill had begun discussing with colleagues her concerns about whether Mr. Patel was running a shadow effort on Ukraine at the White House, according to four people briefed on the discussions.

Mr. Patel joined the National Security Council in February and began getting involved in Ukraine matters in April, as Mr. Giuliani pushed the Ukrainian government to discredit evidence against Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman.

Mr. Patel is closely aligned on the National Security Council staff with another alumnus of Mr. Nunes’s committee, Michael Ellis, now a top White House lawyer. Mr. Ellis worked for Mr. Nunes for years as a lawyer on the House Intelligence Committee and helped champion Mr. Patel’s work on the staff, a person familiar with their roles said.

Mr. Ellis was involved in another bizarre episode early in the Trump administration in which he and another White House lawyer printed highly classified reports to show Mr. Nunes, who used them to accuse Obama administration officials of spying on Mr. Trump and his associates. The claims quickly unraveled, and Mr. Nunes eventually recused himself from his committee’s own Russia investigation as a result.
 

shebasmudder

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We knew it was him running back and forth. He just had his aide do it. Wonder what his cow on twitter has to say about it ?!

 

BiBlakbeauty

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I just...can’t. I can’t even can at this point.

I’m saddened and disheartened at this point. These people are breaking every established security protocol for an inept administration. I don’t care what official capacity Patel was acting in, if he didn’t have a need to know he should have been denied access to those documents and as far as printing and removing and passing that info in order to give to someone else...there needs to be a separate investigation and debarment from government work and charges. “ There is no” meddling outside his portfolio “ that’s not a term in the community. If he is removing intel then he is committing a crime. This is utter bs these ppl testifying need to use the terminology that should be applied, not soften the language and all of that.
 

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