Kash Patel to the FBI
Speaking of inexperienced cronies...
Via the AP: Trump taps Kash Patel for FBI director, an ally who would aid in his effort to upend law enforcement.
President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate Kash Patelto serve as FBI director, turning to a fierce ally to upend America’s premier law enforcement agency and rid the government of perceived “conspirators.” It’s the latest bombshell Trump has thrown at the Washington establishment and a test for how far Senate Republicans will go in confirming his nominees.
The selection is in keeping with Trump’s view that the government’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies require a radical transformation and his stated desire for retribution against supposed adversaries. It shows how Trump, still fuming over years of federal investigations that shadowed his first administration and later led to his indictment, is moving to place atop the FBI and Justice Department close allies he believes will protect rather than scrutinize him.
So, I am not going to get into a discussion here of regime types and what to call this aside to point out that Trump is very much trying to subvert federal law enforcement to his will and is looking to use it to his personal and political ends. As gross as appointing Charles Kushner to be ambassador to France is, placing Patel at the FBI is another ballgame entirely.
It also shows that Trump did, in fact, learn some very bad lessons from his previous stint in office, as when he ousted Comey he nominated a qualified replacement, Christopher Wray. Of course, he didn’t get he loyalty he needed from Wray so he won’t make that mistake this time.
The announcement means current FBI director Christopher Wray must either resign or be fired after Trump takes office on Jan. 20. Wray had previously been named by Trump and began the 10-year term — a length meant to insulate the agency from the political influence of changing administrations — in 2017, after Trump fired his predecessor, James Comey.
Some additional background:
In his final months in office, Trump unsuccessfully pushed the idea of installing Patel as the deputy director at either the FBI or CIA in an effort to strengthen the president’s control of the intelligence community. William Barr, Trump’s attorney general, wrote in his memoir that he told then-chief of staff Mark Meadows that an appointment to Patel as deputy FBI director would happen “over my dead body.”
“Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency,” Barr wrote.
Patel’s past proposals, if carried out, would lead to convulsive change for an agency tasked not only with investigating violations of federal law but also protecting the country from terrorist attacks, foreign espionage and other threats.
He’s called for dramatically reducing the agency’s footprint, a perspective that sets him apart from earlier directors who have sought additional resources for the bureau, and has suggested closing down the bureau’s headquarters in Washington and “reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state” — Trump’s pejorative catch-all for the federal bureaucracy.
So, you know, a Very Serious Person indeed.
And an AG Bondi will not stand in Trump’s way the way Barr did. Barr was a hack, but he was an institutionalist hack.
In terms of using law enforcement politically,
And though the Justice Department in 2021 halted the practice of secretly seizing reporters’ phone records during leak investigations, Patel has said he intends to aggressively hunt down government officials who leak information to reporters and change the law to make it easier to sue journalists.
During an interview with Steve Bannon last December, Patel said he and others “will go out and find the conspirators not just in government but in the media.”
“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel said, referring to the 2020 presidential election in which Biden, the Democratic challenger, defeated Trump. “We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly. We’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.”
George Conway on Bluesky: Oh Lord, not Himmler— …. I mean, not him
Elections have consequences. I have no doubt that a fair number of FBI personnel voted for Trump.
Good luck to them.
This is all going to go very, very badly.
Contains gift link to Tom Nichols re Kash Patel at Atlantic:
https://bsky.app/profile/radiofreetom.bsky.social/post/3lc7mxzmhu22j
@charontwo:
The Nichols piece is, as usual, very good.
When you adopt the framework “it’s only using law enforcement politically if Republican law-breaking is being investigated” then this makes sense.
Here’s a funny line from noted comedian Mitch McConnell…
And it gets funnier every passing day.
How is Kash Patel at FBI not the natural conclusion of a trajectory that was launched when McConnell and his merry team of Senate GOP collaborators acquitted Trump in the second impeachment. With that act of cowardice, they accepted that POTUS was above the law. All that has followed, including the SCOTUS immunity decision, has been a manifestation of “Wilhoit’s Law:” “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
Us versus Them isn’t just for fascists. It was too much to ask the American voters to save us from this. It is simply too easy to convince the uninformed voter that they are part of the in-group.
BTW
Barr was an “institutionalist hack” who championed the Unitary Executive Theory that would convey unchecked power in the Presidency. Barr’s problem with Trump isn’t that The Donald is a wannabe dictator. The problem was Trump being so obviously egotistical about it, while Barr preferred the same imperial powers in the office that could still be defended as institutionally valid.
At least this time Trump’s kooky affirmative action pick isn’t a known drug addict or sex criminal. I’m not selfish enough to want to see the FBI implode, so I will only say that deserve this.