今年6月，在联邦调查局搜查前总统唐纳德·特朗普的Mar-a-Lago庄园以寻找机密材料前国防部任命的直言不讳的特朗普忠诚者Kash Patel发誓要从国家档案馆检索机密文件，并在他的网站上发布。
川普刚刚发布了一封信，指示国家档案馆允许帕特尔和保守派记者约翰·所罗门查阅非公开的政府记录，据报道当时。
帕特尔曾在特朗普手下担任代理国防部长的幕僚长，他在一系列采访中声称，特朗普在执政的最后几天解密了一批“俄罗斯文件”。但帕特尔声称，特朗普的白宫法律顾问阻止了这些文件的发布，而是将它们交付给了国家档案馆。
“我从未告诉过任何人这件事，因为它就这么发生了，”帕特尔在6月22日的一个亲特朗普播客上接受采访时说。“我将找出他们在国家档案馆阻止解密的每一份文件，我们将在下周开始公布这些信息。”
Patel没有明确解释他将如何合法或实际获得这些文件。
帕特尔在随后于6月23日接受另一个亲特朗普的互联网节目采访时说:“白宫法律顾问和公司违反了总统令，并在出去的路上实施了联邦政府的官僚主义，基本上是将毒品送到了国家档案馆，现在它就在那里。”。
特朗普和他的盟友多年来一直在积极推动解密与联邦调查局“交叉火力飓风”调查有关的材料，该调查审查了特朗普2016年总统竞选与俄罗斯之间的所谓联系-这是一项后来的调查受到控制在他被任命为特别顾问后，罗伯特·穆勒。帕特尔曾在努内斯担任众议院情报委员会主席期间在当时的众议员德文·努内斯(加利福尼亚州共和党)手下工作，他声称向国会提供的非公开信息削弱了俄罗斯的调查，并帮助支持了特朗普关于调查缺乏价值的说法。
Kash Patel participates in panel at CPAC Texas 2022 conference in Dallas, Aug. 5, 2022.
Lev Radin/Sipa USA via AP
在他离任的前一天，特朗普授权解密一组与俄罗斯调查有关的文件。这备忘录于2021年1月发布，承认“活页夹中的部分文件仍然是保密的，没有向国会或公众公布。”
因此，根据帕特尔的说法，特朗普要求他从国家档案馆检索机密文件，然后向公众公布。“特朗普总统说，‘谁比任何人都了解那些文件?’我就说，‘如果你想让我去，我就去。’”帕特尔说。
“我知道档案里有什么”，帕特尔说。“我仍然不能谈论他们，但整个过程将是:识别文件，无论是俄罗斯门，亨特·拜登，弹劾，1月6日——并把它们拿出来。”
帕特尔的发言人埃里卡·奈特(Erica Knight)告诉美国广播公司新闻，帕特尔是“代表特朗普总统与国家档案馆合作，让他们披露信息。”
“对于如何处理总统记录，美国总务署有自己的政策和程序，帕特尔完全配合，”奈特在谈到国家档案馆的附属机构联邦政府总务管理局时说。
帕特尔声称特朗普指示他检索机密文件的评论发生在这位前总统与国家档案馆官员日益加剧的争端之中。到6月份，国家档案馆已经要求司法部调查前总统对白宫记录的处理，此前国家档案馆官员曾在1月份进行过调查找回了15盒记录这违反了总统记录法案，被不恰当地带到了特朗普的家中。
虽然帕特尔说前总统说要解密“堆积如山的文件”，但专家说确实有协议到位确保国家安全在信息解密时不会受到损害——即使是被总统解密。
前国土安全部官员、现为美国广播公司新闻撰稿人的约翰·科恩(John Cohen)说:“(帕特尔)正在抨击官僚主义，但正是这种官僚主义和那些协议防止了不当披露国家安全信息对我们国家安全的损害。”。
科恩说:“我不能强调这些协议有多重要。“对于每一个有权限的人来说，在你的大脑中根深蒂固的是，即使是绝密信息的无意泄露也可能对国家安全造成巨大伤害。”
根据帕特尔的说法，6月份的计划是从国家档案馆检索这些文件，并“免费”将其发布在他的网站上，然后“每次发布新文件时都要发布一个大公告”。
根据众议院调查委员会的说法，帕特尔是前共和党国会助手，在加入五角大楼之前曾在特朗普的国家安全委员会工作，他也参与了1月6日在国会山计算选举人票的安全准备工作1月6日攻击引用从国防部获得的记录。
去年9月，1月6日委员会向特朗普政府的四名前高级官员发出传票，其中包括帕特尔出席委员会会议十二月的几个小时。
今年4月，帕特尔被任命为前总统媒体公司特朗普媒体的董事会成员&科技集团，于二月份推出了“真相社交”平台。帕特尔还出版了一本亲特朗普的儿童书籍，名为《反国王的阴谋》。
截至上个月，帕特尔仍在推行他的计划，出版目前在国家档案馆的文件。
“现在我们在这场战斗中，”花瓣在7月4日的采访中告诉保守派评论员本尼·约翰逊。“我正在努力。当然，官僚机构正在碍事，但这不会阻止我们。”
“我将在未来几周内前往国家档案馆，我将鉴定这些文件，”他说。
Weeks before Mar-a-Lago search, ex-Trump DOD official vowed to publish classified documents from National Archives
In June of this year, seven weeks before the FBI raided former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in search ofclassified materials, former Defense Department appointee and outspoken Trump loyalist Kash Patel vowed to retrieve classified documents from the National Archives and publish them on his website.
Trump had just issued a letter instructing the National Archives to grant Patel and conservative journalist John Solomon access to nonpublic administration records,according to reportingat the time.
Patel, who under Trump had been the chief of staff for the acting defense secretary, claimed in a string of interviews that Trump had declassified a trove of "Russiagate documents" in the final days of his administration. But Patel claimed Trump's White House counsel had blocked the release of those documents, and instead had them delivered to the National Archives.
"I've never told anyone this because it just happened," Patel said in an interview on a pro-Trump podcast on June 22. "I'm going to identify every single document that they blocked from being declassified at the National Archives, and we're going to start putting that information out next week."
Patel did not provide a clear explanation of how he would legally or practically obtain the documents.
"White House counsel and company disobeyed a presidential order and implemented federal governmental bureaucracy on the way out to basically send the stash to the National Archives, and now that's where it's at," Patel said in a subsequent interview on June 23 on a different pro-Trump internet show.
Trump and his allies have for years pushed aggressively to declassify materials related to the FBI's "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation that examined alleged ties between Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and Russia -- a probe that was laterput under the controlof Robert Mueller following his appointment as special counsel. Patel, who previously served under then-Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) during Nunes' time as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has claimed that nonpublic information provided to Congress undercut the Russia probe and helped support Trump's claim that the investigation lacked merit.
The day before he left office, Trump authorized the declassification of a set of documents related to the Russia probe. Thememorandum, released in January 2021, acknowledged that "portions of the documents in the binder have remained classified and have not been released to the Congress or the public."
So according to Patel, Trump asked him to work on retrieving the classified documents from the National Archives and then release them to the public. "President Trump was like, 'Who knows those documents better than anyone?' And I was like, 'If you want me to go, I'll go,'" Patel said.
"I know what's there" in the Archives, said Patel. "I can't still talk about them, but the whole process is going to be: Identify the documents, whether it's Russiagate, Hunter Biden, impeachment, Jan 6th -- and put them out."
Erica Knight, a spokesperson for Patel, told ABC News that Patel was acting as "a representative on behalf of President Trump to work with the National Archives to get them to disclose information."
"The GSA has their own policies and procedures for how presidential records must be handled, which Patel is in full cooperation with," Knight said of the federal government's General Services Administration, an adjunct of the National Archives.
Patel's comments claiming that Trump had directed him to retrieve classified documents came in the middle of the former president's growing dispute with National Archives officials. By June, the National Archives had asked the Justice Department to investigate the former president's handling of White House records, after National Archives officials had in Januaryretrieved 15 boxes of recordsthat had been improperly taken to Trump's home in violation of the Presidential Records Act.
And while Patel has said the former president said to declassify "a mountain of documents," experts say there areprotocols in placeto ensure that national security is not harmed when information is declassified -- even by the president.
"[Patel] is lashing out at the bureaucracy, but it's that bureaucracy and those protocols that are in place to prevent damage to our national security by an inappropriate disclosure of national security information," said John Cohen, a former Department of Homeland Security official who is now an ABC News contributor.
"I can't stress how important those protocols are," Cohen said. "For everyone who has a clearance, it is ingrained in your brain that even an inadvertent disclosure of top secret information could cause great harm to national security."
According to Patel, the plan in June was to retrieve the documents from the National Archives and publish them on his website "for free," then "make a big announcement every time" a new document was published.
Patel, a former GOP congressional aide who worked on Trump's National Security Council before joining the Pentagon, was also involved in security preparations for the Jan. 6 counting of the electoral vote on Capitol Hill, according to the House committee investigating theJan. 6 attack, citing records obtained from the Defense Department.
Last September, the Jan. 6 committee issued subpoenas to four former senior Trump administration officials, including Patel, whoappeared before the committeefor several hours in December.
This past April, Patel was brought on as a member of the board of directors for the former president's media company, Trump Media& Technology Group, which launched the "Truth Social" platform in February. Patel also published a pro-Trump children's book titled "The Plot Against the King."
As of last month, Patel was still pursuing his plan to publish documents currently in the National Archives.
"Now we're in this fight," Petal told conservative commentator Benny Johnson in a July 4 interview. "I'm working on it. And of course, the bureaucracy is getting in the way, but that's not going to stop us."
"I will be going to the National Archives in the coming weeks, I will be identifying those documents," he said.
