ANALYSIS:
FBI Director Kash Patel has extended an invitation to Rep. Eric Swalwell to “sit down” with agents, renewing an old rivalry that stretches back to the heady days of Trump-Russia on Capitol Hill.
“@EricSwalwell has maintained that none of the allegations against him are true, and now that he’s resigned, we would welcome him to sit down with the FBI and share any information he has,” Mr. Patel posted on his X account.
Four women have accused Mr. Swalwell of sexual assault and misconduct while representing Northern California in Congress, according to CNN. One former aide accuses Mr. Swalwell, who announced his resignation Monday, of drugging and raping her.
“We also encourage and welcome any person with relevant information to any of these matters to speak with us. Door is open to all @FBI,” Mr. Patel said.
Back in 2017, Democrats were in a lather over a Russian-sourced dossier accusing first-term President Trump of a Kremlin election conspiracy. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes set out to investigate how the FBI used the Democratic-financed 35 pages of unconfirmed felony charges.
And his lead staff investigator was Mr. Patel, who also had a hand in writing the final memo, released in February 2018.
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No Democrat on the intelligence committee, setting aside now-Sen. Adam B. Schiff, pushed the dossier more than Mr. Swalwell.
The Nunes/Patel team discovered something profound: The FBI misused the dossier to obtain wiretaps and submitted warrants to District Court judges containing its false claims.
This report highly offended Mr. Swalwell. Democrats counted on the dossier, funded by the former Secretary of State’s Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic Party, to bring down Mr. Trump and his aides.
He at first attacked the investigation itself in 2017.
“The House Intelligence Committee is charged with investigating Russia’s interference into our election and whether any U.S. persons were involved,” Mr. Swalwell said at the time. “The chairman’s actions and closeness to a president whose campaign is under federal investigation have gravely damaged the investigation’s credibility.”
In February, when Mr. Nunes won White House declassification and publicized his memo, Mr. Swalwell said: “I think he betrayed the duty to conduct an independent, collaborative investigation.”
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Mr. Nunes knew the “collaborative” idea would not work. He and Mr. Patel needed to get inside the FBI to see how Director James B. Comey and his Crossfire Hurricane team persuaded judges to approve a year’s worth of wiretaps on Trump volunteer Carter Page.
Mr. Nunes and Mr. Patel were astounded. Their scoop: All the wiretaps rested on the unproven dossier written by retired British intelligence official Christopher Steele. The two men had changed the entire debate in Washington as the Trump-Russia moniker slowly became the “Russia Hoax.”
They quoted the FBI as saying that validating the document was only in its “infancy” when the wiretaps began. An independent FBI unit later concluded the dossier was only “minimally corroborated.”
And, said Nunes/Patel, “Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or. any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials.”
Mr. Swalwell rejected the findings. “What the Republicans did was poisonous to the investigation and we think clearing it up with our rebuttal memo is the best antidote,” he said. “Just to make sure point-by-point we rebut what they have asserted, to show the seriousness of the investigation.”
The problem for Mr. Swalwell was that the Schiff-issued rebuttal memo was riddled with errors.
And in 2019, the Justice Department inspector general issued a report that essentially validated Mr. Nunes and accused the FBI of essentially lying to judges.
Subsequently, special counsel John Durham issued a report concluding that none of Mr. Steel’s substantive allegations were ever proven by the FBI.
Before the Nunes memo came out, his committee held a historic hearing in March 2017, with Mr. Comey and intelligence officials at the witness table.
It is important to note that at this juncture, unbeknownst to the committee, the FBI had interviewed the dossier source, Russian Igor Danchenko, three times. He admitted the dossier was based on gossip and accused Mr. Steele of exaggerating what he told him.
At the hearing, Mr. Swalwell spent time getting Mr. Comey to confirm that the Kremlin will try to blackmail a target. Mr. Swalwell was referring to the unfounded dossier allegations about Mr. Trump and a supposed prostitute at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton.
“How about inadvertently capturing a compromise, meaning they have vast surveillance and you stumble into that surveillance and are caught in compromise?” Mr. Swalwell asked Mr. Comey, who, by the way, approved using the dossier as evidence.
Mr. Durham’s report said the Ritz anecdote came from a Clinton supporter who did business in Moscow.
Mr. Swalwell also asked Mr. Comey about Mr. Trump trademarking his name in Russia, as if that in itself was evidence of election collusion.
Mr. Trump looked at possible sites for a hotel or other enterprises but the Trump Organization never built anything in Russia, where hundreds of American companies do business.
Mr. Swalwell planted conspiracies by saying Mr. Trump, an international developer, had visited Russia three times.
“When your agents are conducting a counterintelligence investigation with respect to a foreign adversary in their efforts to recruit or cooperate with a U.S. person, would you look at the U.S. person’s travel to that country?” he asked Mr. Comey.
Fast forward to last September, when Mr. Patel appeared before the House Oversight Committee. Mr. Swalwell grilled him on the Epstein files.
Mr. Patel told him, “I’m going to borrow your terminology and call b———- on your entire career in Congress. It has been a disgrace to the American people.”
• Rowan Scarborough can be reached at rscarborough@washingtontimes.com.
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