Kash Patel

Kashyap Pramod "Kash" Patel (born February 25, 1980) is an American attorney and former government official.

He served as a U.S. National Security Council official, senior advisor to the acting Director of National Intelligence, and chief of staff to the acting United States secretary of defense during the Trump presidency.

A member of the Republican Party, Patel previously worked as a senior aide to congressman Devin Nunes when he chaired the House Intelligence Committee.

He was previously a federal public defender, a federal prosecutor working on national security cases, and a legal liaison to the United States Armed Forces.

Patel has widely been described by news organizations as a "Trump loyalist."

Kashyap "Kash" Patel was born in 1980 in Garden City, New York to Gujarati Indian parents who had immigrated to the United States from East Africa, via Canada.

He graduated from Garden City High School.

Patel graduated from the University of Richmond in 2002.

He received a certificate in international law from University College London in 2004, and earned a Juris Doctor from Pace University School of Law in 2005.

After graduating from law school in 2005, Patel worked as a public defender in Florida for eight years, first in the Miami-Dade County public defender's office and later as a federal public defender.

As a public defender he represented clients charged with felonies including international drug trafficking, murder, firearms violations, and bulk cash smuggling.

In 2014, Patel was hired as a trial attorney in the United States Department of Justice National Security Division, where he simultaneously served as a legal liaison to the Joint Special Operations Command.

As an aide to Congressman Devin Nunes, Patel played a key role in helping Republican attempts to fight the investigations into Donald Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Patel played a prominent role in the Republican opposition to the investigations into Donald Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In 2017, Patel was appointed senior counsel on counterterrorism at the House Select Committee on Intelligence.

In April 2017, Patel became the senior committee aide to House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes.

According to The New York Times, Patel was the primary author of the 2018 Nunes memo, alleging FBI misconduct in its application for a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for electronic surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

That claim was disputed by the committee's staff director, by a spokesman for Nunes, and by unattributed sources interviewed by India Abroad.

Patel did not offer a public comment on the matter.

The New York Times opined that the memo was widely dismissed as "biased" containing "cherry-picked facts", but "it galvanized President Trump's allies and made Mr. Patel a hero among them".

After Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in January 2019, Patel worked for about a month as a senior counsel at the House Reform and Oversight Committee.

Patel was hired in February 2019 as a staffer for President Trump's National Security Council (NSC), working in the International Organizations and Alliances directorate, and in July 2019 became Senior Director of the Counterterrorism Directorate, a new position created for him.

On December 3, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee's report included phone records, acquired via subpoenas to AT&T and/or Verizon, including a 25-minute phone call between Patel and Giuliani on May 10, 2019.

The call occurred after Giuliani and Patel attempted to call each other for several hours, and less than an hour after a call between Giuliani and Kurt Volker.

Five minutes after the 25-minute call between Giuliani and Patel, an unidentified phone number called Giuliani for over 17 minutes, after which Giuliani called his associate Lev Parnas for approximately 12 minutes.

In a statement to CBS News on December 4, 2019, Patel denied being part of Giuliani's Ukraine back-channel, saying he was "never a back channel to President Trump on Ukraine matters, at all, ever", and that his call with Giuliani was "personal".

In an October 2019 story, Politico, citing an anonymous source it reported had formerly worked at the White House, wrote that Patel had "unique access" to Donald Trump and had provided "out of scope" advice to him on the United States' Ukraine policy.

Patel denied the claims and, the following month, sued Politico for defamation, seeking $25 million in damages.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Patel led a secret mission to Damascus in early 2020 to negotiate the release of Majd Kamalmaz and journalist Austin Tice, both of whom were being held by the Syrian government.

In February 2020, Patel moved to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), becoming a Principal Deputy to Acting Director Richard Grenell.

Later that month, Patel was part of Trump's entourage during the state visit of the United States to the Republic of India and was noted in press reports as one of two Americans of Indian descent to accompany the president.

Patel has widely been described as a "Trump loyalist".

Within months of Patel's appointment to the NSC, it was suspected that Patel had assumed the role of an additional independent back channel for the President, which was seen as potentially detrimental to American policy in Ukraine.

It was noticed that during NSC meetings Patel took few notes and was underqualified for his portfolio, the United Nations.

Red flags were raised when Trump referred to Patel as "one of his top Ukraine policy specialists" and as such wished "to discuss related documents with him".

Patel's actual assignment was counter-terrorism issues, rather than Ukraine.

He was thought to have operated independently of Giuliani's irregular, informal channel.

Impeachment inquiry witnesses were asked what they knew about Patel.

Fiona Hill told investigators that it seems "Patel was improperly becoming involved in Ukraine policy and was sending information to Mr. Trump."

Gordon Sondland and Kent testified they did not come across Patel in the course of their work.