Ex-Trump DoD official reportedly vowed to publish classified documents

Weeks prior to the Federal Bureau of Investigation' (FBI) search of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, a former official for the U.S. Department of Defense vowed to publish classified documents, a new report reveals.

According to ABC News, Trump loyalist Kash Patel planned to "retrieve classified documents from the National Archives and publish them on his website."

On June 22, Patel appeared on a far-right podcast where he made the remarks. "I've never told anyone this because it just happened," Patel said during the podcast interview. "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."

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However, Patel failed to explain how he would be able to legally obtain copies of those records. "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.

A report published around the same time also indicated that Trump had penned a letter instructing the National Archives to grant access to concealed administration records. Access to those records was to be granted to Patel along with conservative journalist John Solomon.

In addition to the June 22 interview, Patel had also spoken about classified documents on other occasions insisting Trump had declassified a substantial amount of "Russiagate documents" during his final days in office.

"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."

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In wake of the latest report, Erica Knight, a spokesperson for Patel, spoke to ABC News as she insisted that the former DoD official 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," Knight said, "which Patel is in full cooperation with."

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