Kash Patel's nomination signals how bad things can get
The worst timeline comes into view.
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We wrote a few weeks ago in this newsletter that it would be hard for Trump to sink lower than nominating a guy who was recently under investigation for sex trafficking to be the nation’s top law enforcement official. Well, the president-elect has been on a mission to prove us wrong, with this weekend providing the latest demonstration.
On Saturday night, Trump announced he intends to make notorious conspiracy theorist and obsequious lickspittle Kash Patel the next FBI director. Trump’s announcement is abnormal for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that Chris Wray, the current FBI director, still has more than two years left on his term.
Wray, you might recall, was hand-picked by Trump to replace Jim Comey, who quickly got on Trump’s bad side by refusing to close an investigation of his campaign. The president firing an FBI director in those circumstances was so abnormal back then that it sparked serious calls for Trump’s impeachment just moths into his presidency. But nearly eight years later, we’re long past norms meaning much of anything, so Trump will now have the dubious distinction of firing the last two FBI directors.
Patel is considered unqualified for the post even by staunch Trump-supporting conservatives. He’s made it clear he intends to use his power to attack the “deep state,” which he frames as a needed populist purge of a corrupt establishment. But in reality, Patel is poised to use the resources of the FBI to target Trump’s political opponents and criminalize resistance.
Rather than reforming the FBI, Patel and Trump are promising to embrace the worst of the bureau’s legacy, extending its use as an authoritarian cudgel to pursue grudges and crush dissent. The FBI, with its often ugly history, is a blunt instrument that Trump is intent on weaponizing — a goal that mostly eluded him during his first term when he failed to completely bend the bureau to his will.
When you’ve lost Bill Barr …
Patel’s primary qualification for running the FBI is a spotless record of doing whatever Trump wants him to do. He was an undistinguished Florida defense attorney and DOJ staffer until 2017, when he was hired to work for the House Permanent Select Committee, which at the time was led by MAGA flunky Devin Nunes.
Patel headed the committee’s investigation of Russian interference on behalf of Trump in the 2016 campaign. He was the main author of the “Nunes memo,” a partisan attack on the Justice Department intended to obscure links between Trump’s campaign and Russia. Trump was delighted by Patel’s open hackery and declassified the document despite Justice Department objections.
Pleased by his work with Nunes, Trump began to boost Patel into more and more powerful positions. He became a National Security Council staffer, then a top adviser to the acting director of national intelligence. In 2019, Trump tried to install Patel as a “political executioner,” vetting White House aides and firing those who weren’t loyal enough to him. But White House legal advisors convinced Trump that this scheme was impractical and possibly illegal, and it was scrapped.
Patel was appointed chief of staff to acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller in November 2020, as Trump schemed to overturn his election loss. Trump also wanted to appoint Patel as deputy director at the FBI or CIA, but Director Gina Haspel threatened to resign if he followed through. Along similar lines, Attorney General Bill Barr told Trump’s chief of staff that Patel would be appointed to FBI leadership “over my dead body.” Barr said that Trump’s effort to appoint Patel “showed a shocking detachment from reality.”
Toady in waiting
Following Trump’s reluctant departure from office, Patel continued to serve as a willing and eager jack-of-all-lies.
Patel failed to show up for at least one deposition before the January 6 Committee, which wanted to talk to him about his role in Trump’s coup plotting. Trump gave Patel access to his presidential records, supposedly to write an account of his term that denied Russian collusion in the 2016 election. When it became clear that Trump had improperly removed some classified presidential records, Patel rushed to his defense, claiming in an interview with Breitbart that Trump had magically declassified everything. But other Trump administration officials disputed that, and Patel ended up testifying before a grand jury in return for immunity.
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Patel also enthusiastically threw himself into the MAGA-to-grifter pipeline, monetizing his Trump-y bona fides with a bewildering array of products. Sales supposedly supported J6 defendants, though exact details of charitable contributions are sparse.
On Truth Social, Patel promotes pills which supposedly combat the (imagined) deleterious effects of covid vaccines and advertises a Christian payment processor. He wrote a book published in January 2023 titled “Government Gangsters,” which Trump said would be used as a “roadmap to end the Deep State's Reign.”
Patel has made sure to stay in Trump’s orbit. He’s been a national security advisor for Trump’s campaign, and he’s been a consultant for Truth Social. In that capacity, he said in 2022 that the social media company was trying to boost QAnon conspiracy theories “into our overall messaging scheme to capture audiences.” QAnon conspiracists falsely claim leading Democrats are child predators and have inspired numerous acts of violence, including a plot to attack vote-counting centers.
What will Patel do?
Patel, then, is a sycophantic conspiracy theorist and election denier motivated by some mixture of sincere belief and naked careerism. He’s willing to do virtually anything to protect Trump and harm his enemies.
What would that mean in practice if Patel became FBI director?
Patel has postured as a kind of populist hero who would purge and cut back an overreaching department. He’s boasted that he would “shut down the FBI Hoover building on day one and turn it into a museum of the deep state.”
But this promise to fight for limited government is obviously a lie. Trump’s appointment of Patel is in itself a major executive branch power grab.
When Patel talks about what he plans to do, it’s clear he wants to give the agency more power, not less. He’s promised to “go out and find the conspirators [against Trump] not just in government, but in the media.”
“Yes, we're going to come after people in the media … who helped Joe Biden rig elections,” Patel told Steve Bannon late last year. “We’re putting you all on notice.” (Watch below.)
Against the backdrop of Trump’s calls for investigations and/or prosecutions of just about everyone who has ever crossed him, Patel’s comments are a chilling preview of what’s likely in store for the country if he’s confirmed (or even if he merely serves temporarily in an acting capacity after Wray is fired).
Weaponization on steroids
Patel’s threats to use the FBI as a tool to crush dissent is credible and frightening in part because this is exactly how the FBI has been used during some of the bleakest moments in America’s past.
J. Edgar Hoover, FBI director from 1924-1972, wielded the FBI as Trump intends to — as a weapon to destroy political and ideological enemies and prosecute his grudges.
Hoover was a racist who loathed the civil rights movement and constantly attempted to undermine it. The FBI investigated Martin Luther King Jr.; uncovering evidence of King’s extramarital affairs, the bureau sent him an anonymous letter urging him to kill himself. It also launched a massive counterintelligence operation against the Black Panthers, infiltrating the group with informers who encouraged acts of violence.
Hoover’s FBI also investigated journalists who it claimed were communists during the red scare. Hoover’s harassment forced journalists to resign rather than face the humiliation of having to testify before congressional committees. Just as ominously, Hoover kept files of embarrassing information on politicians, which he could use to shore up his own position and prevent his removal.
It’s obvious that Patel would have no objections to using the bureau to smear Trump’s enemies — with lies or truths. Recall that Trump tried to coerce the Ukrainian government into helping him smear Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election, culminating in his first impeachment. It’s hardly paranoid to suggest that a Patel-led FBI would open investigations into any politician who challenges MAGA’s dear leader.
Trump and Patel say that they want to bridle the FBI and reform it. But when they talk about their concrete plans, it’s clear they want to reprise the agency’s worst abuses, turning the DOJ into an authoritarian police force committed to doing Trump’s bidding.
The nomination of Patel is one of Trump’s most open bids to destroy American democracy. He is manifestly unfit. In a sane world, senators would laugh him out of the room. But sanity is now in the rearview mirror and receding from view.
That’s it for today
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Thanks for reading.
I don't think another word should be written about what the dems did wrong. When you are living in an insane world, the odds are overwhelmingly against sanity no matter how it is presented.
Of course if we choose a gangster president, he is going to pick gangster myrmidons who will choose to staff their own gangster myrmidons.
Aside from Patel's gross unfitness:
"When Patel talks about what he plans to do, it’s clear he wants to give the agency more power, not less. He’s promised to “go out and find the conspirators [against Trump] not just in government, but in the media.”
Question one- Did Trump lose the 2020 election? What can a liar say that would be believed?
But this is a time when people are exhausted and looking close to home to celebrate the holidays. Trump has a list of gangster loyalists to propose apparently and Senators will get tired. He's probably counting on this. People in a recent polls APPROVED of Trump and his transition.
(Think what you will of polls, what else do we have?)
https://www.axios.com/2024/11/25/trump-transition-cabinet-approval-rating-poll
People do not pay attention, do not know who these nominees-to-be are. They do not know this: https://campaignlegal.org/update/trump-stalling-his-presidential-transition-unprecedented-ethics-stalemate
So I am hearing "apres moi le deluge" from some who are just exhausted.
Trump should not ever get near the most powerful position, perhaps in the world. We cannot exist as a democracy like this despite all the warnings too many ears are elsewhere, shoulders shrugging.
People, a good number of them, seem to want dictatorship. The pushback has to be a lot harder than in the grooves of the channels we have dug. Trump is savvy. But some say he's old and won't last, that these folks will do themselves in. "it can't happen here". 🤷🏼