FBI Director Kash Patel told Sean Hannity that the bureau lied in its applications for surveillance warrants and used them to illegally spy on Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign and his first term in the White House. The remarks, delivered on a Tuesday episode of Hang Out with Sean Hannity, came shortly after Congress approved a 45-day renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a move that has intensified debate over the government's surveillance powers.
Patel did not mince words. He said the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court itself concluded the warrants were illegal, that the FBI withheld exculpatory evidence, and that the applications amounted to lies.
The accusations carry particular weight now. Patel is no longer a congressional staffer or outside critic. He runs the FBI. And he is telling the public, on the record, that the agency he leads engaged in systematic dishonesty to spy on a presidential candidate, a sitting president, members of Congress, and Patel himself.
Patel walked Hannity through a timeline that stretches back nearly a decade. He said it took him two years to establish what he described as a scheme by a political party to manufacture intelligence and feed it into the surveillance system.
As Breitbart News reported, Patel told Hannity:
"It took me two years of my life to prove the following: that a political party in the United States of America, in the 21st century, would go overseas and hire some bogus intelligence asset to manufacture fraudulent, fake, unverified information."
He described the pipeline in blunt terms. The manufactured information, he said, was funneled to both the intelligence community and the FBI, then packaged and presented to a secret surveillance court, all funded, he alleged, with campaign finance money.
Patel told Hannity the purpose was plain: to "illegally spy on your opponent to be the next President of the United States."
The reference points are familiar to anyone who followed the Russiagate saga, the Steele dossier, the FISA applications targeting the Trump campaign, and the years of investigations that followed. Patel's account places the FBI at the center of a deliberate effort to deceive the court that authorized the surveillance.
Patel pointed to the FISA court's own conclusions as vindication. He told Hannity the court found the warrants were illegal and that the FBI had failed to present exculpatory evidence, information that might have shown the targets were innocent.
"And what did we find out? The FISA court themselves came back and said these warrants were illegal, that the FBI did not provide evidence of exculpatory evidence and innocence, and that the FBI essentially lied in those applications."
That finding, in Patel's telling, was only "step one." He said he knew the misconduct did not stop with the 2016 campaign or the first Trump term.
Patel has made no secret of his willingness to confront the institutional culture he inherited at the bureau. His recent defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic reflects a combative posture toward media and establishment critics alike.
The FBI director told Hannity the illegal surveillance did not end when Trump left office. During the four years between the first and second Trump terms, Patel said, the same institutional machinery kept running.
"I knew in the four years that we were out of office that they continued to regenerate that institution of weaponization."
He named names. Patel said he was personally and illegally surveilled "by the likes of" former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein and former FBI director Chris Wray. He added that "ten other staffers on the Hill, and people who were elected to serve this country in the halls of Congress" were also targeted.
That claim, that sitting members of Congress and their staff were subjected to illegal government surveillance, is extraordinary. If true, it would represent one of the most serious abuses of federal law enforcement power in modern American history. Patel offered no specific names of the staffers or lawmakers involved.
The broader pattern Patel describes fits a narrative that has gained traction among conservatives for years: that elements within the FBI and Justice Department weaponized surveillance tools against political opponents. Patel has previously claimed the FBI holds evidence relevant to other politically charged controversies, reinforcing his role as the administration's point man for institutional accountability at the bureau.
Patel told Hannity he entered office confident that the evidence of wrongdoing was sitting inside the FBI's own records. The people responsible, he said, were too proud to cover their tracks.
"I knew walking in the door the following: These individuals, these purported leaders of law enforcement and government are so arrogant that they write the stuff down themselves to memorialize how great they are."
He drew a direct line to the Russiagate investigation, saying the proof came not from his own files but from the FBI's internal records, emails, FISA applications, the Steele dossier, and what he called "unverified reporting that was documented in FBI holdings."
"That's how we caught them in RussiaGate," Patel said. "It wasn't my documents. It was their emails."
Patel said he believed additional incriminating information was hidden elsewhere within the government. On his first day as FBI director, he said, he began looking for it.
"So, day one I set out to find it and we found it."
He did not specify what was found, where it was located, or what form it took. That gap is significant. The claim that evidence was discovered on day one invites obvious follow-up questions: What exactly was found? Who created it? What actions will follow?
The internal upheaval at the FBI extends well beyond Patel's public statements. Reports of efforts to root out suspected leakers inside the bureau suggest a broader campaign to clean house, one that has drawn fierce resistance from defenders of the old guard.
Patel's remarks landed at a politically charged moment. Congress had just approved a 45-day renewal of Section 702 of FISA, the provision that authorizes the collection of foreign intelligence on non-U.S. persons abroad but has repeatedly drawn fire for sweeping up Americans' communications in the process.
The short-term renewal reflects the unresolved tension on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have raised concerns about how FISA authorities have been used, and abused. Patel's account of the FBI lying in warrant applications feeds directly into that debate and gives reformers fresh ammunition.
For conservatives, the question has never been whether the government needs surveillance tools. It is whether those tools can be trusted in the hands of an institution that, by its own director's account, lied to a secret court to spy on a political campaign.
The broader landscape of FBI controversies, from politically sensitive case files to questions about institutional transparency, only deepens the skepticism.
Patel's interview was long on accusations and short on new documentary evidence. Several critical questions remain open.
Which specific FISA court ruling or document is Patel referencing when he says the court declared the warrants illegal? What evidence did the FBI find, or claim to find, on day one of his tenure? Who are the ten congressional staffers he says were surveilled? And what concrete steps, if any, will the bureau take against those responsible?
Patel has spent years building the case that the FBI was weaponized against Trump. He now leads the agency. The public deserves more than an interview. It deserves the receipts.
And if Patel has them, there is no good reason to wait. His tenure has already drawn scrutiny from multiple directions. The strongest answer to critics, and the strongest service to the country, would be to put the evidence on the table and let the American people see exactly what was done in their name, with their tax dollars, inside their justice system.
An FBI director who says the FBI lied has an obligation to prove it. Not on a podcast. In the light of day.
