Kash Patel: Former CIA Director Slow-Walked Declassification of Crossfire Hurricane Documents

The release of critical documents related to "Crossfire Hurricane," the FBI's investigation of former President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, was slow-walked and, in some cases, blocked by CIA Director Gina Haspel, former deputy national security adviser Kash Patel said in an interview on Feb. 28.

Trump, on his last night in office, ordered the declassification of previously confidential documents related to the flawed counterintelligence investigation launched by the FBI in July 2016 to investigate allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

"The institutional heads of places like the CIA and the FBI were always fighting the release of any documents, and they would claim national security issues-you're going to harm a source or you're going to destroy your relationship," Patel told The Epoch Times' "Crossroads" at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida.

"What we can't have happen is allow the CIA and the FBI to cover mistakes of a few selected individuals just because they're going to be embarrassed when they're revealed," Patel said.

The Crossfire Hurricane investigation was taken over in May 2017 by then-special counsel and former FBI Director Robert Mueller.

A part of the problem, Patel said, was that the same people running the investigations and determining what documents could be declassified were some of the same people who potentially could have been called out, incriminated, or were part of the scandal themselves.

"We were looking at the FBI and DOJ and CIA, but the problem is Congress doesn't have tremendous powers like the DOJ or FBI have. So they are able to institutionally protect themselves by just putting the guys in charge and saying, 'Well, you're not read into this, and you can't be a part of the declassification or the review of this material, because it's outside your lane,'" he said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/kash-patel-former-cia-director-slow-walked-declassification-of-crossfire-hurricane-documents_3715311.html