New York: An Indian-American White House Official has been enmeshed in the controversy over President Donald Trump's dealings with Ukraine that is the focus of the impeachment hearings against him.
House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff on Thursday named Kashyap Patel as a source providing information on Ukraine matters directly to Trump, bypassing the National Security Council (NSC) staffers in-charge of the country's matters.
Patel, a US-born-and-bred lawyer with roots in Vadodara, who is the senior director of counter terrorism in the NSC, is a political appointee caught in the crossfire between Trump loyalists and those taking on the president.
During the impeachment hearing testimony by Fiona Hill, the former NSC Senior Director dealing with Ukraine, Schiff said, "The indication is that Kash Patel provided some information directly to the president without your knowledge."
"That seems to be the indication," she replied.
To reinforce the Democratic line that there was an unofficial parallel foreign policy set up dealing with Ukraine, Schiff said that Trump thought an individual was the director of Ukraine in the NSC and asked her who it was.
Hill said that the person was referred to only as "Kash" and "I had to search my mind. The only Kash I knew at the National Security Agency was Kash Patel."
Schiff asked her if he worked on Ukraine and reported to her, and she replied that Lt Col Alexander Vindman, who testified on earlier, was the director for Ukraine and she did not oversee Patel.
In secret hearings last month Vindman had told the panel investigating Trump for impeachment that Patel had misrepresented his expertise on Ukraine to the president.
Because of this he had been prevented from attending a briefing for Trump, he said.
Patel had worked for the Intelligence Committee, when it was controlled by the Republicans and David Nunes was its chair.
As an aide to Trump's vociferous supporter Nunes, Patel raised questions about the credibility of the allegations against Trump of colluding with Russians, which led to the protracted inquiry by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who ultimately did not find such collusion.
Patel was the principal author of a memo issued by Nunes that accused the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department of bias against Trump and of abusing laws to get warrants to conduct surveillance of a Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.
The government could not find any grounds to prosecute Page.
Patel was also one of two Republican staffers on the committee who was dispatched to London in 2017 to try to make contact with the lawyers for dossier author Christopher Steele, without alerting the committee's Democrats, according to reports. Before joining the House Intelligence Committee in 2017, Patel was a lawyer working on counterterrorism cases in the Justice Department's National Security Division.
Kashyap Patel was born in New York City, grew up on Long Island and was schooled at the Garden City High School. He graduated from the University of Richmond in 2002 and got a certificate in international law from the University College London Faculty of Law in 2004 before graduating from Pace University's law school in 2005.
