Ekaterina Girnyk10:15, 08.02.25

Last year, Patel received 25,000 from a pro-Putin director.

President Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, has received money from a film company owned by a director known for his “deep state” conspiracy theories and anti-Western views.

Last year, Patel received $25,000 from Global Tree Pictures, a Los Angeles-based company run by Igor Lopatenok, a filmmaker known for pro-Russian propaganda projects financed by a foundation set up by Vladimir Putin, The Washington Post reported .

According to the publication, Patel was paid to appear in the documentary “All the President’s Men: The Plot to Destroy Trump,” which aired in November on Tucker Carlson’s online network. In the six-part series, Patel, along with other Trump administration officials, appeared as “victims of a conspiracy” that “ruined the lives of Trump associates in an attempt to remove the democratically elected president from office.”

Others featured in the documentary included former Trump campaign adviser Stephen K. Bannon, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who resigned in early 2017 after making false claims about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

“If Patel is confirmed, the agency responsible for protecting against Russian spy operations inside the United States will be headed by a man who took money from a supposed Kremlin ally months earlier,” WP writes.

The publication recalls that the Judiciary Committee’s vote on Patel’s nomination, scheduled for this week, was postponed until next week due to objections from Democratic members of the committee. Democrats generally opposed Patel’s nomination, calling him an extremist with insufficient leadership experience who would use the FBI to retaliate against people he and Trump consider opponents.

Igor Lopatenok, a native of Ukraine, moved from Russia to Los Angeles in 2008. According to his social media posts, Lopatenok traveled to Moscow at least three times between 2012 and 2014 and publicly criticized the 2014 protests in Kyiv.

In March 2023, Lopatenok was appointed artistic director of a Russian influence campaign that received about $31,000 in funding from a fund created by Putin for cultural initiatives. The campaign, called “To Russia With Love,” countered Western media portrayals of “how terrible it is to live in Russia and how good it is to move to the West.”

(c)UNIAN 2025