FBI Director Kash Patel dropped a bombshell last week, confirming what many conservatives have long suspected: the FBI deliberately protected Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election and buried damaging information about her email scandal — all while the bureau helped ignite the phony Russia collusion hoax to sabotage then-candidate Donald J. Trump.

In a revealing sit-down with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo, Patel — now leading efforts to reform the embattled agency — accused former FBI Director James Comey of hijacking the Department of Justice’s authority and making political decisions that protected Clinton and undermined the integrity of the bureau.

“The previous FBI usurped the constitutional responsibilities held by the Department of Justice and the Attorney General,” Patel said. “Comey decided for himself what cases to prosecute and what not to.”

Patel called out Comey for staging a bizarre press conference in July 2016 where he laid out evidence that Clinton had mishandled classified information — but then declared that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring charges. It was a stunning abuse of discretion that stunned legal experts at the time.

The scandal centered on Clinton’s illegal use of a private email server while serving as Secretary of State — a server that stored classified and sensitive government communications — and her subsequent deletion of over 30,000 emails before the FBI could review them.

Comey’s actions, according to Patel, were more than just bad judgment. They were deliberate attempts to hide and distort information:

“He intentionally omitted investigation information or distorted prosecution decisions during his tenure as FBI Director,” Patel said.

Just ten days before the 2016 election, Comey briefly reopened the Clinton email probe — a move many Democrats later blamed for her loss — but it ultimately led nowhere, just as he intended. The fix was in.

Patel also shed new light on Comey’s central role in launching the baseless “Trump-Russia collusion” narrative, which was later exposed as a fabrication rooted in opposition research funded by the Clinton campaign.

“New details have been uncovered,” Patel noted, “Comey maliciously and brutally distorted the procedures of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and lied to the American people… He concealed relevant documents and hid them in places that cannot be found.”

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, who joined Patel in the Fox News interview, revealed that hidden documents from the Comey era were recently uncovered in a previously inaccessible storage room.

“I wouldn’t call it hidden, but hidden from us at least… We found stuff in there, and a lot of it’s from the Comey era,” Bongino said on Fox & Friends. “We are working our damndest right now to declassify.”

He continued:

“Some of it was not processed through the normal procedure… We found it in bags hiding under Jim Comey’s FBI. And you’re going to be stunned.”

Although Bongino didn’t release the specific contents, he emphasized that many of the materials bypassed standard FBI recordkeeping protocols — another sign of how far Comey’s FBI strayed from transparency and accountability.

Adding to the intrigue, Comey recently posted a cryptic Instagram image of seashells spelling out “8647,” widely believed to be a veiled reference to eliminating Trump as the 47th President. The number “86” is slang for “get rid of” or “eliminate.”

“The shell photo? That wasn’t subtle,” said one senior Trump official. “These people are bitter, and they’re terrified of what Patel is uncovering.”

While Kash Patel and Dan Bongino push to declassify what’s been hidden, the message is clear: the Deep State is running out of places to hide.