The FBI spied on Kash Patel, its potential next director

In a controversial episode, a watchdog report revealed that the FBI spied on Kash Patel for years, Donald Trump's nominee to be the next director of the agency.

According to the nearly 100-page report released by the Department of Justice's inspector general, the DOJ secretly obtained the phone records of two members of Congress and 43 members of its staff, including Patel and Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell.

While Patel, Schiff and Swalwell are not named in the report, several media outlets, including CNN, reported that they were investigated and spied on, citing sources familiar with the matter.

The obtaining of Patel, Schiff and Swalwell's personal records came during massive federal investigations into alleged information leaks to media outlets during Trump's first term. At the time, Patel was counsel to the House Intelligence Committee and investigating the FBI's role in the bogus Russia-Trump plot.

According to the report, prosecutors also sought records, including e-mails, from journalists at CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times.

Paul Sperry, a reporter for RealClearInvestigations, criticized the FBI and DOJ harshly and recalled Patel's own annoyance about the spying against him.

According to Sperry, DOJ officials and FBI agents secretly sought Patel's phone records and emails beginning in late 2017, when he led the House committee's investigation into the FBI's reliance and role in investigating Hillary Clinton's campaign against a Trump campaign official during the fake Russian plot.

In particular, the FBI subpoenaed the records as part of its own investigation into whether congressional staff leaked classified information about their role in the unfounded Trump-Russia collusion to the media.

In the wake of the case, the FBI, working closely with DOJ prosecutors, pressured and compelled Google and Apple to turn over sensitive private information of those under investigation, including Patel.

"The court orders gagged the service providers from notifying Patel and other customers of the intrusion," Sperry wrote, who recalled the case in a column for the New York Post. "As chief counsel, Patel had no idea that the subject of his investigation — the FBI — was collecting his data and increasing the visibility of witnesses he was communicating with, including whistleblowers."

According to the chronology of the DOJ inspector general's report, the FBI spied on Patel just as he demanded to review FBI documents and depose agency witnesses to determine whether the bureau had abused its power by obtaining a FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page, the Trump adviser embroiled in the case.

All this was compounded by the fact that Patel didn't know he was under investigation until 2022 when Google finally got permission to send him a copy of the subpoena for his records.

"The FBI and DOJ subpoenaed my personal records while I caught them doing this to Page back in 2017," Patel told Sperry at the time.