Trump's Indian-American 'loyalist' sues Politico over impeachment lies

New York, March 24

Former US President Donald Trump's Indian-American aide Kash Patel has filed a $23 million defamation case against Politico for falsely claiming he misrepresented himself as a Ukraine expert, a media report said.

According to The New York Post, the Virginia-based newspaper also claimed that Patel fed lies to Trump about Ukraine, which resulted in the then-president's impeachment.

Patel in his lawsuit filed in Henrico Circuit Court called Adam Schiff, who was then chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, a "congenital liar and inveterate leaker (and) a demagogue with an axe to grind against President Trump (and) Kash".

He said Politico knew that Schiff was "a wholly unreliable source".

The suit further alleged that impeachment witnesses Alexander Vinman and Fiona Hill helped push Schiff's lie that Patel was Trump's "Ukraine whisperer", The Post reported.

"Victory here is not the end result. It is to expose the fraudulent reporting by so many in the mainstream media and the only way to do that is expose their corrupt sources and that is what the judge has granted us permission to do," Patel told The Post.

Patel, the former Russiagate investigator for the House Intelligence Committee, has also named Schiff's Democratic colleague Eric Swalwell, his "whistleblower" Eric Ciaramella, former national security adviser John Bolton, and the author of the Politico article, Natasha Bertrand in his lawsuit.

Prior to this, Patel had sued The New York Times in 2019 seeking $44.9 million in damages, claiming the newspaper falsely accused him of being a White House back channel to Ukraine.

In a statement to CBS News on December 4, 2019, Patel said he was "never a back channel to President Trump on Ukraine matters, at all, ever".

In 2022, the Trump loyalist had appeared before a grand jury investigating the former president's taking thousands of government records with him to Mar-a-Lago after leaving office.