Trump's top Indian-origin ally says his admin will target media if re-elected

Washington, Dec 7 (IANS) A top Indian-origin aide to Donald Trump has threatened action against people in the media -- "criminally or civilly" -- if the former president storms back to power in 2024.

Kashyap 'Kash' Patel, who was Trump's counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council and chief of staff to the acting secretary of defence, made the remarks on Steve Bannon's War Room podcast.

"We will go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media," Patel, who may reportedly serve in a senior national security role in any new Trump administration, said, referring to the 2020 election in which Biden trounced Trump.

"We're going to come after you whether it's criminally or civilly... "We'll figure that out," the former Defence Department official said.

Patel clarified that they are going to use the Constitution to "prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.”

However, the Trump campaign has distanced itself from Patel's comments, saying that proclamations "like this have nothing to do with" them, according to 'The Guardian'.

Patel's comments come as the former president faces 91 felony counts across four different court cases to which he has pleaded not guilty, saying that he is being prosecuted for political reasons.

The charges against Trump include unlawfully trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

In September this year, Patel released a book, which he said "exposes the corruption of the Deep State".

"A sinister cabal of corrupt law enforcement personnel, intelligence agents, and military officials at the highest levels of government plotted to overthrow a President," the synopsis of the book read.

Patel said in his book that corrupt officials have continued to secretly pull the levers of power without any accountability to the American people.

In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, Trump said: "The biggest problem we have? The media. The media is fake... I came up with the term a long time ago, and they won’t talk about it."

During his tenure, Trump has had an uneasy relationship with the media with him blocking CNN, Politico and the New York Times from White House media briefing.

He has called news outlets as "fake news" and the "enemy of the people" in the past.

Leading the Republican presidential race with a huge margin, Trump has also reportedly promised to use the Justice Department to "go after" his political adversaries.