Another member of Trump’s inner circle reportedly takes the Fifth

Kash Patel first came to national attention during Donald Trump’s first impeachment scandal. Fiona Hill, the former top Russia expert at the White House National Security Council, told Congress that she discovered that Donald Trump was ignoring the NSC’s Ukraine expert, choosing instead to listen to Patel — which struck Hill as quite odd.

In fact, Patel had no expertise on Ukraine, though he was an aide to then-Republican Rep. Devin Nunes and the alleged co-author of the hopelessly misguided “Nunes Memo” on the Russia scandal. With this in mind, Hill found it necessary to warn her staff to be “very careful” about communications with the Republican operative, and she removed Patel from internal distribution lists.

A year later, as regular readers might recall, Trump gave him a promotion, and Patel landed a plum assignment at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Nine months later, the outgoing Republican president gave Patel another promotion, naming him to a prominent position at the Pentagon.

By some accounts, Trump, after his 2020 defeat, even wanted to make Patel the deputy director of the CIA, though other insiders pushed back aggressively and derailed the idea. Former Attorney General William Barr wrote in his memoir that Trump also considered making Patel the deputy director of the FBI, though Barr said he told the White House that would happen “over my dead body.”

In the wake of the 2020 results, the operative stuck with Trump. In fact, the former president designated Patel as of one of his representatives to the National Archives and Records Administration to deal with his presidential records — which in turn made Patel a relevant figure in the Mar-a-Lago scandal. What’s more, when Patel helped promote the highly dubious idea that Trump had declassified the relevant materials, his perspective became even more important.

It was against this backdrop that The New York Times reported this week:

Part of what makes this notable is the fact that Patel appeared before a grand jury, reinforcing reports that the Justice Department is taking the Mar-a-Lago scandal quite seriously.

But just as notable is the apparent fact that Patel took the Fifth rather than answer investigators’ questions.

He has plenty of company. Let’s circle back to our earlier coverage and review the list of high-profile figures from Trump’s orbit who’ve invoked the Fifth recently:

• Donald Trump took the Fifth in August, as part of a New York investigation into his allegedly fraudulent business practices.
• Eric Trump, in this same civil case, reportedly invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to more than 500 questions.
• Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser and GOP operative, said two weeks later that he also took the Fifth.
• Alex Jones, by his own admission, invoked the Fifth nearly 100 times when the professional conspiracy theorist sat down with congressional investigators.
• Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official, also took the Fifth, reportedly more than 100 times.
• Michael Flynn, the beneficiary of a Trump pardon despite having previously pleaded guilty to felonies, took the Fifth in response to investigators’ questions in March.
• John Eastman, a Republican lawyer who allegedly played a leading role in the overall coup scheme, reportedly invoked the Fifth with both the Jan. 6 committee and a Georgia special grand jury.
• Kelli Ward, the Arizona Republican Party chair, also asserted her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid answering the Jan. 6 committee’s questions.

“The mob takes the Fifth Amendment,” Donald Trump said in 2016, deriding those who assert their right against self-incrimination. “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”

The relevance of the quote still lingers.