Kash’s Corner: Why Is the Biden Admin Still Seeking Russia’s Help to Finalize Iran Nuclear Deal?

“Can you remember the last time that the leader of the Saudi Kingdom ignored a president of the United States’ request for a phone call?”

America’s traditional allies in the Middle East, from Saudi Arabia to the United Arab Emirates, are turning away from America, says Kash Patel. And in the midst of the Russia-Ukraine war, the Biden administration is still counting on Russia’s help to finalize a new Iran nuclear deal.

Tonight, we discuss the growing Russia-China-Iran alliance, shifting alliances in the Middle East, and special counsel John Durham’s latest filing.

Kash Patel: Hey everybody. And welcome back to Kash’s corner. Jan and I are going to kick off season four from New York City at Epoch Times headquarters, and I could not be happier to be back with everybody.

Jan Jekielek: Well Kash, we’ve been away for a little while, and frankly there is a lot to talk about. There’s even just the other night, Durham has a new filing, I think in the Danchenko case. We need to talk about that, but let’s leave that for the end. Okay? The thing that’s been really concerning me, over the last month, as we have the Russia-Ukraine war playing out in front of our eyes, is this emergence really of a tighter Russia, China, and some other players as well, block. And so why don’t we start with that.

Mr. Patel: What I think is happening, and we’ll talk through it here, is that Russia is aligning itself with more adversaries of America, for instance, Iran. And obviously we know about China and Xi Jinping’s pact with Putin to basically combine efforts to take on America and decrease America’s sort of superiority in the world, at least in the national security front. Russia, from their perspective, Putin is thinking, how do I continue that trend? How do I continue to strengthen that effort? And the way he does it, is he makes more allies, Putin and Russia with people who are adversarial to the United States, such as Iran.

And an extension beyond that, is if Russia is successful in making allies with our actual allies or getting an Iran to make allies with our actual allies. What I mean by that is, folks that were traditionally American partners, the Saudis, the Emiratis, and other middle Eastern countries. And we can walk through some of that, but I think what he’s doing should be gravely concerning to the so-called Western alliance, the NATO front and everything like that, because these are countries that everyone has to deal with, and it’s not just for oil.

Mr. Jekielek: When we look at this kind of, let’s call it information works. This is a major part of this war, of course Russia, Putin, they’re kind of best in class in these disinformation efforts. I think we’ve known that for a long time. And there’s all sort of course, war propaganda coming out of Ukraine, and frankly the west, and some of the same players that in the past have actually talked about Trump-Russia collusion very hard, and many other things [and] a very specific vision of COVID very hard, right? So you have a lot of Americans actually looking at this and thinking, “Wow, can I really trust these people now that they’re telling me all these things about Ukraine and the realities there and what they’re supposed to think.”

Mr. Patel: Yes. In the couple weeks we took a break from season three to season four, there’s so much, I don’t know if it’s disinformation or misinformation or just areas of information that are questionable. For instance, this whole narrative that, “Is the U.S. funding biological programs in the Ukraine?” I don’t know, I’m out of government. I can’t speak to that? But that’s a valid question. And hopefully it’s no, a simple no, but what I think to your point, so many Americans are just split on that one issue. “Are they? Aren’t they? Is it okay? Isn’t it okay? 

On the heels of, it took America and the world a little while to realize that the coronavirus came from China and specifically Wuhan. And all the questions surrounding the Wuhan laboratory there, American funding tied to that. There was a huge back and forth on that. And so I think when you extrapolate that pattern from one subject to the next, unfortunately it leads people to continue to question what they’re hearing from their government leaders, especially from the likes of Fauci.

Mr. Jekielek: And frankly, let’s call it corporate media or mainstream media choose certain ways to present information. Instead of just being able to think, “Okay, this is a reasonable representation.” There’s a whole lot of people out there just thinking, “What can I believe?” Right.

Mr. Patel: It’s hard. And what they should believe is Epoch Times, but I’m biased. But I think we, you and I try to distill through sort of the political narratives that encompass both sides of every issue and try to just present the facts and let people read it, watch it, consume it and say, “Okay, this is what I think on X, Y or Z.”

Mr. Jekielek: So let’s get your thoughts here. Well, first of all, President Biden is I think, as we are recording here on route to speak with NATO, right?

Mr. Patel: Yes. So here’s the problem. You can’t trail with sanctions. Okay? You have to issue a paper bomb of sanctions from jump. What I mean by that, and let me use Iran and my time in the Trump administration as an example of how you utilize sanctions effectively. It’s a three prong approach. You have to issue sanctions like we did to the Ayatollah and his regime and crush their ability to access the SWIFT banking system, the European banking system and monetary hard cash holdings throughout the world. We successfully did that on prong A. Prong two, you have to have the willpower to issue kinetic operations, that is military offensive operations, or at least the threat of, where your adversary knows they can’t step too far out of line.

We did for Iran when we killed Qasem Soleimani, the head of the IRGC, the biggest state sponsor of terror, their specials forces arm that has killed and caused more casualties to U.S. soldiers than any foreign terrorist organization on planet earth. The last prong is the diplomatic effort. And what people don’t realize about the diplomatic effort is, you cannot have diplomacy unless you have the threat of a kinetic force behind it. 

That’s the purpose of conflict. It’s not to stay in war forever. It’s to create space, so your armies and your militaries go out and create space, so the diplomats get together and hopefully find a peaceful solution. That three prong effort worked with Iran under Trump, because what do we do on the diplomatic front? We went to our allies, because Iran doesn’t talk to us, and we actually, under Trump, successfully returned American hostages being held captive in Iran.

That’s how you do the trifold as I call it of international relations. When Joe Biden goes to NATO and says, “I’m going to now, a month after Putin has launched his war, issue sanctions on some Russian individuals.” I think the response is going to be the same as Putin’s was before he invaded the Ukraine, “Who cares?” This commander-in-chief is not going to stop me. I’m going to continue to do what I want. I’ve got China backing me. They’ve got banks, they’ve got money. I’ve got access to Iran’s monetary system now. Oh and by the way, apparently Joe Biden has named Russia, the neutral arbitrar for re-entry into the Iran Nuclear Deal, which I know we’re going to talk about in a little bit.

Mr. Jekielek: It’s kind of bizarre to imagine that Russia in the midst of being isolated from the world, being a pariah, doing all these terrible things is now supposed to be, I guess the arbiter of the re-entry into an Iran deal. I don’t…

Mr. Patel: Just think on that, Jan. I mean, if our audience watches no other part of the show and has no other takeaways from the show, ask yourself this question, “Are you as an American citizen okay with Putin and Russia who started a war in Europe, are you okay with that adversary being at the negotiating table to decide whether or not America gets back into the Iran Nuclear Deal?” And putting aside the issue that I think that’s a terrible idea, we just handed over to our number one adversary right now to say, “Okay, you go deal with Iran and bring us back an offer that we can allow Iran to have nuclear weapons, access to the banking system and enrich their oil industry and things like that.”

I just think it is a shocking and pitiful execution of leadership by this commander-in-chief. And I think unfortunately, they continue the politicization of the national security apparatus by just saying, “What did Trump do? We’re going to do the opposite.” Trump got us out of the Iran deal,  for the right reasons I believe, they want to go back in even if the bed is made by a warmonger and Putin.

Mr. Jekielek: Hard to conceive how these two things can work at the same time.

Mr. Patel: It’s baffling. I mean, just for the audience, the Iran Nuclear Deal is more than nuclear. Yes, it allows Iran to go back on the road to getting a nuclear weapon, but just to remind everybody, remember, President Obama issued the JCPOA, the Iran deal, whatever you want to call it, right? And said, “Okay, Iran, you can produce uranium for your energy supplies, but you can’t go above X, Y, or Z.” 

In exchange, we, the world, will lift sanctions on your economy and your access to banking so you can have monetary instruments flow through Europe and the west. What did Iran do? They said, “Thanks for that, and we’re going to break the rules of the Iran deal anyway and enrich Uranium past the levels that they were supposed to.” Which is exactly why president Trump called the deal off and withdrew and put sanctions back on.

Meaning Iran did not have access to the Western banking system. They did not have access to their hard cash deposits and their oil industry could not sell and exchange their petroleum products to the world. And it suffocated the Iranian regime, which is why they did not like President Trump. But it worked. We are now on the verge of doing the opposite, and the latest from Deputy Secretary of State, Wendy Sherman, who wouldn’t answer the question on whether or not they’re going to undesignate the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Core, the biggest terrorism outfit on planet earth.

It’s on the table for this administration to say you are no longer a terrorist organization is outrageous. How you can go to the families of the fallen soldiers, the hundreds and hundreds that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has been responsible for killing, that Qasem Soleimani used to head and convince any American that’s a good idea just shows you how far I believe Joe Biden is wrong on everything Iran and basically everything Russia.

Mr. Jekielek: Well. And while we’re talking about Iran, there’s also, and again, I didn’t really expect to hear this, but apparently Saudi Arabia is actually interested in dealing with Iran when it comes to oil. But at the same time they’re not taking the calls from the U.S., from what I understand anyway. And again, I mean a big shift in how these people are thinking.

Mr. Patel: Well, look, it’s no surprise. Under president Trump, MBS and the Saudi regime had a great relationship with President Trump’s white house on foreign policy matters and international matters. Saudi is a big player in OPEC and the international oil trade, right? They control a large chunk of the world’s production, and thus they control the price. 

We now know what happens when you make bad decisions from the top. We’ve seen gas prices skyrocket in America for a number of reasons. The problem now is our traditional ally in the middle east, Saudi Arabia, is now partnering with another one of our adversaries, the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, Iran to gain access to their oil markets so they can, I believe, further control the oil industry globally.

And they will then dominate, what is the price and what isn’t the price? The worst part about it is, they’re going to be sending Iran money, billions of dollars from this oil transaction if it’s successful, and Iran’s going to sell its oil to the rest of the world, to Russia, to China, to Venezuela, or where have you, right? To adversaries of America, and they’re going to enrich themselves. 

So not only is Joe Biden, if he’s successful in negotiating a re-entry to the Iran Nuclear Deal, which automatically lifts all the sanctions we put on under Trump and freeze billions of dollars of money, that hard cash money that has been frozen due to those sanctions under Trump, they get that. Just like they did under the JCPOA in Obama, where they got, I forget the number, 10 or 15 billion dollars in hard cash. They get all that, plus we’re turning on their spigot for the oil industry so they can now partner with our traditional allies like Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Jekielek: What is the significance, like the regional significance of this kind of dramatic change in who, I guess the U.S. allies are, right?

Mr. Patel: I think you put it best. They don’t take our phone calls. Saudi Arabia and MBS, it’s reported in the media and through the Saudi regime, that when President Biden puts in for a phone call request, it’s denied, it’s ignored. Can you remember the last time that the leader of the Saudi Kingdom ignored a President of the United States’ request for a phone call? 

Not just that, here’s one more example, the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, who has been a traditional ally in the mideast of America as well, just received President Bashar al-Assad of Syria for an in-person meeting in UAE. President Bashar al-Assad is a dictator, he is a murderer, he has committed genocide, he is no friend of America, he has kidnapped American hostages and his country is in the middle of a what? 10 plus year civil war that’s causing thousands to die every year. 

We have now let another American ally partner up with another American adversary in Bashar al-Assad and Syria’s regime. Their take, they being the UAE, and I’m just guessing here is probably similar, “We don’t have to take Joe Biden’s request for phone calls, because we now, UAE-Saudi are looking out for UAE-Saudi’s best interest, but not taking any more consideration what America’s interest is with those decisions.” That’s the significance. They don’t seem to care how it impacts America, and that’s the difference, I believe, between Trump’s foreign policy decisions and Biden’s foreign policy.

Mr. Jekielek: I mean the biggest question is of course, why? I mean the most obvious thing, and this is why it gets complicated in my mind, and maybe you can help elucidate this a little bit. But, obviously the Iran deal, right, that Saudi is very uninterested in any prospect of nuclear armed Iran, that’s for sure. But at the same time they’re talking with Iran about having an energy partnership. So I don’t understand that.

Mr. Patel: Well, I think it comes down to money, like everything else. This is just my take on it, but I think, the Saudis are very smart. They know Iran’s been producing an enriching uranium and breaking their so-called commitments to the original Iran deal. They know they’ve blown past that. They know we, under President Trump, significantly curtailed those efforts. And they know President Trump is no longer president anymore. So they, I think, assessed the situation that’s in their best interest and say, “Look, we the Saudis can’t stop Iran, right?”

Mr. Jekielek: And they’re not afraid of alienating America at this point, is what you’re saying?

Mr. Patel: No. And I think that’s the biggest negative consequence of Joe Biden’s foreign policy. The Saudis, the Emiratis are no longer considering how it impacts American global security or American relations with them. And I think that’s why Saudi, it’s so striking to see that Saudi’s willing to partner monetarily with an Iran, the world’s largest state sponsor of terror and just brush aside the raw nuclear deal. Because I think they assess that their best way forward, they being Saudi Arabia right now, is to, at least in the oil markets, make a partnership with Iran so they can control more of the world’s oil. And from a Saudi perspective, I think that’s smart but it’s not good for America and the rest of the world.

Mr. Jekielek: So this is really a very significant reconfiguration; we alluded to this earlier. Now, okay, so jumping back to Russia. I think one of the perhaps big successes of Russian disinformation or misinformation is, I don’t know, this perception, and I think this actually has even made it into the kind of U.S. messaging for the lack of a better term. Is that, of course Russia is a nuclear power and that makes it significant, but economically it’s small. It’s like a quarter of Germany or something like that, right? It’s not a huge power, right? But of course it does have these… But there’s this kind of perception, I don’t know, people seem to think Russia is kind of massive on the stage, it’s the big global threat right now. Do you perceive this?

Mr. Patel: I hate to answer questions yes and no, but I’m going to go with yes and no here, and here’s why. So I think Vladamir Putin has been unbelievably successful in taking charge of the Russian propaganda machine and forcing it on the world stage. And now we think, many think, that Russia is this big bad actor that has all these tentacles and all these lines of efforts going and all this money coming in, when in reality as you pointed out, clearly they don’t. But so many people have been misinformed by Russia’s disinformation, misinformation campaigns, which Putin, and I remind people, a GRU intelligence officer who was very good at that job is continuing to run those types of misinformation, disinformation campaigns while launching a war.

And look, Russia isn’t one of the world’s premier economic powerhouses, but they’re also not the poorest. But what they’re doing, and I think this circles back nicely to the beginning of our conversation is they’re partnering with people who have great access to money—China and Xi Jinping. They completed the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which is going to pay Russia billions of dollars from Germany, for energy that Russia provides to Western Europe, which is why Germany has been so reticent to engage in anything regarding this conflict. Those are just two examples of the relationships they are creating. The Russians are probably talking to the Iranians. Of course, they are.

And seeing how they can make money and also ally with another adversary of America. So it’s both monetarily that Putin’s taken advantage of other countries who are traditionally American allies. He’s taking advantage of other countries that are normally American adversaries. He’s taking advantage of the disinformation campaign because he controls the entire narrative because there’s no one in the west to rebut it, because no one’s taken Joe Biden’s phone calls. And he’s putting it all together and he launched a war and there’s no signs of him stopping.

Mr. Jekielek: So, and speaking about messaging, it seems to be one of the themes of our show today, we were talking offline a bit about [a] kind of curious messaging you’re seeing on the U.S. side from the defense department.

Mr. Patel: Yes. One of the most upsetting things that I saw come out of the defense department was from the Secretary of Defense, who during an interview over the last week or so, basically referenced Russia’s war into the Ukraine as a botched invasion; that’s his quote, botched invasion. And I couldn’t disagree more. Thousands have been murdered, hundreds of thousands if not millions have been displaced, there’s a generational refugee crisis that you and I have talked about and he, Putin continues to wage a war into another country’s sovereign territory. I don’t call that a botched invasion.

Unfortunately, he, Putin is somewhat succeeding. And so for our Secretary of Defense to just message to the world that it’s a botched invasion, by saying it and by being the supposed leader of the world’s greatest fighting force where I was the civilian leader of, is just a shocking detachment from reality for our Secretary of Defense to sort of glance over what’s actually happening. And this seems to be a common narrative for the Biden foreign policies, is if we just say what we want it to be, and we repeat it over and over again, the mainstream media will carry our water.

Mr. Jekielek: So what do you think is happening? I mean, ostensibly Putin isn’t getting everything that he’s wanted.

Mr. Patel: He’s not getting everything that he wants but he’s getting a lot. He’s started a war. He’s taken over areas of the Ukraine. He hasn’t taken over Kyiv and Ukraine at large, but certain cities, certain sections in the east and the south, that’s a win for him. Any territorial land gain for one sovereign nation of another is a win, especially in war time. And he has a propaganda machine, which we talked about earlier. 

And the other thing is he’s shown America to not only be on the defensive, but to have lost footing and power and national security prowess that we had under the Trump administration. He has shown that global leaders in Saudi Arabia, in the United Arab Emirates, will no longer care what America thinks. That will not be in their calculus. And Russia will align with both America’s allies and our traditional adversaries. And I think that is a tectonic shift in global national security from an American perspective. So I do think that’s another win for Vladimir Putin under President Biden’s watch.

Mr. Jekielek: Let’s talk a little bit about China. Okay? Because I can’t help but thinking about this, again about messaging. I’m seeing this messaging that China’s sort of on the fence or something, but that’s not what I’m seeing at all. China’s made it very clear. I think that by taking the posture that it has, that it’s essentially supporting the agreement they made at the genocide games, let’s call it, right?

Mr. Patel: Yes. The genocide game pack as you and I call it. Where Biden, excuse me, where Putin and Xi Jinping stood together, made a pact, said they were going to combine efforts basically to take on America. And from their perspective, that’s a smart geopolitical decision because, while they both probably have interests that conflict against each other, they’re greater conflicting interest is all things America. So I think that’s hugely problematic. 

Here’s another example of where I think Biden has tremendously failed America. A week or two ago, President Biden provided, or it came out that Biden had provided Xi Jinping with classified intelligence about troop locations in and around the Ukraine. What did Xi Jinping do? He turned around and gave it to Putin as if that were a surprise. The fact that our commander-in-chief could not see that sleight of hand coming is more than concerning and shows that China is not allied with anything America is doing.

Mr. Jekielek: And there’s also this two hour phone call that’s been talked about a lot again in the media, in the messaging, but curiously the American administration has not provided any kind of information about what happened during this phone call whereas the Chinese state media are offering a number of suggestions. But of course they’re not known for being particularly truthful. I’d say they’re known for lying constantly.

Mr. Patel: That’s what they do. You’re referring to the two hour phone call that Biden had with Xi Jinping, I think in the last few days here. And that came on the heels of that classified intelligence sharing that we just discussed. It’s ironic and hypocritical, that’s my view, of the majority in the current media here in America to not demand the entirety of that call transcript when we have a country partnering with another country that’s at war, China and Russia, when they demanded the call transcript of President Trump and his phone call with President Zelenskyy in the Ukraine a couple years ago.

And President Trump provided it. And if you read the transcript, it speaks for itself. The Biden administration was asked to provide this transcript and they said no, and the media just glossed over it. What were they hiding? What was the contents of that conversation? Why are we allowing, as you said so pointedly, why are we allowing a regime, the CCP, that lies for a living to message on a global scale about a conversation that our commander-in-chief had. It’s just another example of where we’ve lost footing on the global stage.

Mr. Jekielek: To me that’s the biggest problem. I think it’s very fair for these types of calls to be private. I don’t think every call needs to be public knowledge-

Mr. Patel: No. Not everyone.

Mr. Jekielek: But in a situation like this where the Chinese Communist Party is taking advantage of it to basically message entirely along its own lines. Whether it’s true or not, who knows? Again, adding to this morass of confusion, of confusing information. And frankly, sometimes I wonder if this isn’t the purpose because it’s just really hard to know what’s up and what’s down in this information environment.

Mr. Patel: Well, coupled with the morass of information we can’t weed through, unfortunately it’s directly connected to information we do have, such as the president of the United States providing classified information to China so he can provide it to Russia. Is that what happened on this two hour phone call? Was there more of that? Was there less of that? Was there capitulation regarding the Iran Nuclear Deal? Is China going to provide monetary aid to Iran? What are they doing with Russia? Are they propping up the Russian ruble with their currency? Because we know the Russian ruble is on a drastic decline. 

At least tell us… I agree with you, especially after serving in the White House, most phone calls between presidents and premieres and presidents and leaders should be kept between the two for diplomatic relations, but at least generally tell us what the conversation was about. Don’t allow China to dictate it.

And another example is, Wendy Sherman, our deputy secretary of state, not willing to answer a direct question on, are you, under the Biden administration putting on the table an undesignation of the IRGC, one of the world’s largest foreign terrorists organization? To me, in diplomatic speak, what that means, and I’m borrowing from my friend Rick Grenell here, “If you are not willing to deny it publicly when asked, that means it’s on the table. That means it’s being discussed.” Was that discussed with Xi Jinping in this two hour phone call too? I think we have a right to know, at least some generalities.

Mr. Jekielek: As we finish up, let’s jump to this new Durham filing. And again, so the theme being messaging, of course special counsel Durham has been using these filings to do all sorts of messaging, right? At least that’s how we’ve been reading it. This one doesn’t have so much messaging in it, but it does have a few curiosities, which I certainly wouldn’t have picked up but you with your prosecutors hat on did notice.

Mr. Patel: So as promised, as we promised on True Social, we would talk to Durham, and you know you and I love talking to Durham. So I’m glad we have a few minutes here to discuss his latest filing, which was only a page and a half long. So really any of our viewers can go read it in about three minutes. This is more of a procedural filing than it is a substantive filing, like we’ve talked about on previous episodes. 

But I think it has a very telling story behind it being a former terrorism prosecutor who utilized sensitive information to prosecute terrorists. So what John Durham did was basically say to the judge, “Hey, I’ve got a lot of discovery I got to get out.” Unclassified and classified. And what governs that is this thing called CIPA, C-I-P-A, Classified Information Procedures Act. It’s a federal statute.

It’s fancy for basically like, okay, if you, as a federal prosecutor have classified information, how do you get it to the defense so you satisfy your discovery obligations? How do you tell the court because the court has to know everything? And also what filings do you need to make under CIPA, there’s various sections, section four and whatnot, to say, “We need to use some of this sensitive information in a prosecution.” 

And as our audience knows, you can never use classified information in a federal prosecution. You have to go through a declassification process, which is exhausting and lengthy for every piece you want, then you have to present it to the judge and the judge has to sign off on it.

So what John Durham has said is, because of this cumulative effect of unclassified information, classified information, CIPA filings that he has to make regarding sensitive information, he wants to use during his prosecution of Igor Danchenko, he and the defense have agreed they need more time. So it’s likely that the judge will grant them more time. He laid out a timeline from May to July to provide sequentially certain pieces of this information, this discovery, this evidence over the course of the next couple of months. To me, that’s pretty telling because in a prosecution, if you’re not using classified information, you don’t use CIPA. He just told the world…

And we kind of knew that, I mean, at least us former national security prosecutors kind of knew that, when you’re dealing with Igor Danchenko, a source to a former FBI source, Christopher Steele, who now the world knows is a total fraud in my opinion, he of course would have lived in the classified realm of things. And a prosecution involving a source who was providing information truthfully or untruthfully to Steele, to the Democratic Party, to the FBI is going to be covered masked in classified markers. So it means to me, John Durham has gone all the way down the rabbit hole and said, “I got a lot of work to do.”

Because I know what it takes as a former terrorism prosecutor to declassify one sentence of information in a federal prosecution. I’ve spent five months declassifying one sentence. That’s only step one. Then I have to convince the judge that I’ve satisfied all the discovery obligations and due process obligations the defendant rightly has under the constitution. That’s step two. And then if you satisfy the judge, then you can come up with either what’s called a declassified version of that classified document, or if the information is too sensitive, you have to come up with what’s called a sub-CIPA substitution. Which basically says “Here’s a document or here’s a witness, and they say X, Y, and Z. And it’s very squirrely classified information but here’s a summary of it.”

And you go to the judge ex parte, and thanks for bringing this up. John Durham said there are ex parte filings he needs to make with the court. What that means is the prosecutors alone go to the judge, no defense counsel present during that portion of those filings. And you do that when you’re bringing national security prosecutions, when you have very sensitive classified information that you can’t even show the defense yet. Whether or not they’re cleared is irrelevant.

You have to go to the judge and say, “Judge, we’ve got something that we are either going to use in our case in chief, or we have an obligation to turn over to the defense, but there are certain national security overriding conditions that we need to discuss with you. Hear us out and then see if our, and I’m speaking as a prosecutor, our U.S. government DOJ representation to the court is sufficient so that due process is achieved.” So in those four or five bullets that John Durham issued on his one pager, that is a mountain of work behind each one of those little bullets.

And that’s why I think when people keep asking me, “Why is it taking so long? Why is it taking so long?” This is why. This is one case which is one of his three indictments. And it’s just dealing with a fraction of the discovery obligations he has in that case. So we’re going to be in it for a little while longer. The Danchenko case, the trial date isn’t said till October. And realistically, even if there were a plea agreement, it couldn’t happen before discovery is satisfied at the end of May pursuant to this new timeline. So we got a ways to go.

Mr. Jekielek: Fascinating. And so this very interesting, very sensitive, classified information scenario where the prosecutor goes alone to the judge basically, how common is that?

Mr. Patel: It’s rare. I’ve done it. You remember you only do it in national security cases when you have classified information. And the statute speaks on the process and the procedure you’re supposed to apply. But it’s important, because there were cases I brought throughout America. We charged terrorists that I could not have brought unless I used CIPA and I went ex parte with the judge to get a very sensitive piece of information declassified and the appropriate substitute submitted before the jury and the defense during trial. So-

Mr. Jekielek: And the substitute, just to be clear, is something that represents the information from the judge’s perspective sufficiently that the jury can basically use it as a data point to make decisions?

Mr. Patel: Well, more importantly than that… Yes. I shouldn’t say more importantly, but equally as important, the judge has to determine that the defendant’s rights, and me as a former federal public defender who’s speaking to those rights a lot in federal court… The defendant’s due process rights, the defendant’s discovery obligations, the Brady obligations, is there exculpatory information in there? Is there impeachable evidence in there? All of that information must also be balanced by the judge to say, “Okay, your substitution in this scenario satisfies due process and all discovery obligations, and is in a format that a jury can hear it in an unclassified manner.”

Because once a jury hears it’s public. It’s for the world to see. That’s why you have to go through that process. And just to give you a quick vignette, not to get down into Roger Rabbit’s hole on this one, but to get a piece of information declassified from the intelligence community, it’s not just one agency, say for instance the FBI that signs off on it. 

Every intelligence community, agency or department that has an equity in that classified information has to sign off on every piece of information you need to classify. So it could be the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, the Department of Defense. It could be Homeland Security and a myriad of other agencies. That you have to get their head, their cabinet secretary level to say, “Okay, we agree for purposes of this prosecution.” The attorney general’s got to get involved. It is a process.

Mr. Jekielek: All right. Well Kash, I mean, absolutely fascinating. And I know we’ll be learning more in coming shows. So I think it’s time for our shout out.

Mr. Patel: Thanks for helping Jan and I kick off season four of Kash’s Corner. Today’s shout-out for me goes to the entire Epoch Times crew and the Epoch TV crew. They have done three seasons of Kash’s corner, which is awesome and surprises no one more than me. And I’m very thankful for their dedicated effort to the show. So this show’s dedicated to them. Thank you all of you. And we need to start hearing your comments again, so keep that comment scroll coming. Jan and I review those comments and maybe we’ll start posting some of your comments on Truth Social.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

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