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‘Let Me Know If You Need Help’: Kash Patel’s Literally Unbelievable Distancing From Far-Right Extremist Stew Peters

Image from livestream of Kash Patel confirmation hearing: Patel in suit and tie, seated at desk with his hands folded in front of him, leaning into and speaking into microphone
Kash Patel, nominee for FBI director, at his Senate confirmation hearing.

During his confirmation hearing Thursday, President Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI Director Kash Patel feigned ignorance when Democratic senators asked about his frequent appearances on a show hosted by rabid conspiracy theorist and antisemitic extremist Stew Peters. Patel’s response should encourage senators to question the truthfulness of Patel’s assurances that somehow his future actions will not reflect his own past behavior and rhetoric.

When Sen. Dick Durbin asked Patel if he was familiar with Stew Peters, Patel’s response was “Not off the top of my head.” When reminded by Durbin that he had appeared on Peters’ show eight times, and with other extremists as well, Patel claimed that he used his media appearances to “take on people who are putting on conspiratorial theories” and “to talk to them about the truth.”

 “Clearly, Kash Patel is lying,” said Peters in response. “He absolutely does know who I am.”

Peters shared some details: “Fight with Kash came to the aid of Stew Peters and 'The Stew Peters Show' because of Kash Patel personally, who personally knew me because of multiple appearances on this program, and then we exchanged contact information, and we directly text via personal cell phones constantly, and we’re on the phone with each other as Fight with Kash was hiring a team of attorneys to represent Stew Peters and the Stew Peters network against the Rolling Stone. So he absolutely knows who I am.”

To be clear, Right Wing Watch does not take at face value anything Peters says. But there’s at least some evidence to suggest that he may be being more truthful than Patel.

In an appearance on Peters’ show three years ago, Patel talked about creating Fight with Kash to raise money to support people bringing defamation suits against the mainstream media. (Patel has filed multiple defamation suits on his own behalf.) When Peters mentioned that he was suing Newsweek, Patel said, “Let me know if you need help.”

Let’s consider Patel’s claim that his purpose in going on far-right shows like Peters’ was to take on people who promote conspiracy theories. During a show about the trial of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking enabler Ghislaine Maxwell, Patel let go unchallenged the assertion Epstein was murdered in prison and Peters’ declaration that “I’m sure the Clinton’s had something to do with it.” During another appearance, Patel failed to take on Peters’ claims that the 2020 election was “a Marxist coup” or his assertion about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that “100 percent this is George Soros’s war.” To be absolutely fair, in response to questions from Peters, Patel did say that Epstein is really dead and that Special Counsel John Durham’s review of an FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election was an actual investigation and not a “psyop.”

Speaking of Durham, it’s good to remember that Patel entered MAGA insiderdom with his work for Rep. Devin Nunes investigating “Crossfire Hurricane,” the FBI’s code name for its investigation of Russian election interference. On one of Peters’ shows, Patel claimed that the supposed FBI plot against Trump was the “biggest political scandal in the history of the United States of America, if not the world.” Ultimately, Durham’s three-and-a-half year investigation resulted in one guilty plea by a low-level FBI lawyer and the acquittal of the two people Durham brought to trial, leading the Washington Post to conclude that his investigation, “which conservative commentators once anticipated would expose a ‘deep state’ scheme to undermine then-candidate Trump,” had actually “uncovered next to nothing.”

During his hearing, Patel repeatedly dismissed questions about his own troubling rhetoric by saying that he didn’t have the quotes in front of him, or that they were taken out of context and represented “gross mischaracterizations” of his positions. Let’s hope the senators push for actual responses in writing to Patel’s well-documented assertions, such has his claim during a speech at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference that the mainstream media is “the most powerful enemy that the United States has ever seen.” In what possible context does that not signal a dire threat to freedom of the press from an FBI director taking orders from Donald Trump?

As Democratic senators pointed out at the hearing, a number of high-level Republicans who worked with Patel have opposed his confirmation. So have many civil and human rights organizations.  You can sign People For the American Way’s petition in opposition here.