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Kash Patel - A Dangerous Ideologue

As Donald Trump continues to roll out his nominees for cabinet positions and other critical governmental positions, two things define many of these nominees: (i) they are totally unqualified for the positions for which they have been tapped, and (ii) they are extreme ideologues who have sworn fealty Trump over all else. One can only hope that enough spineless Republicans will find themselves unable to hold their noses and cast votes for Trump's frightening nominees.  Among the most dangerous are Pete Hegseth, Tuli Gabbards, and Kash Patel, the latter being Trump's pick to head the FBI.  A long piece at Politico Magazine looks at Patel who is known for his dishonesty even among former Trump officials and his willingness to use the FBI to enact revenge against anyone Trump doesn't like, including federal prosecutors and members of the media. As FBI head, Patel would be reminiscent of J. Edgar Hoover who misused his office, except Patel would likely be worse and could wreak significant damage to the FBI and individual Americas.  Here are article excerpts:

Some key pieces appear to be snapping neatly into place for Donald Trump’s much-feared prosecutorial revenge tour as the year draws to a close.

Trump’s new nominee to lead the Justice Department, Pam Bondi, is a staunch loyalist who predicted last year that after Trump’s reelection, “the prosecutors will be prosecuted — the bad ones.”

And his plan to install Kash Patel as FBI director was made easier after Christopher Wray, himself a Trump appointee, . . . . has proven particularly controversial, since his principal qualification appears to be his sycophancy toward Trump. (A Trump transition spokesperson said, “Kash Patel has served in key national security positions throughout the government. He is beyond qualified to lead the FBI and will make a fantastic director.”)

Many observers, including former federal law enforcement officials, oppose Patel’s nomination on the grounds that he would likely use the FBI to pursue Trump’s political opponents and that he might substantially corrupt the culture and professionalism of the bureau. To some, Patel calls to mind the specter of J. Edgar Hoover, the infamous FBI director whose nearly 50-year stint running the agency until 1972 was marked by egregious abuses of power — including illegal surveillance, blackmail and the harassment of political dissidents.

Patel clearly lacks the qualifications, experience and temperament to lead the agency. But how worried should the American public really be about him at the helm of the FBI? . . . He will indeed face some constraints because of the culture and bureaucracy of the FBI. But they may not contain him. And he will have plenty of opportunity to damage the bureau and its work — and to use and abuse the FBI for political ends. His nomination poses a considerable and unjustifiable risk to the country.

On paper, there is no way to justify Patel’s ascension. He spent a few years as a federal prosecutor focused on national security and was an aide in Congress and the first Trump administration on intelligence and national security issues. Even setting aside the decidedly mixed and often controversial results of that work (more on that below), Patel has no experience managing anything remotely like the FBI’s sprawling bureaucracy — 35,000 employees, 55 field offices throughout the country and more than 60 offices overseas.

What he does have is years spent endorsing Trump’s conspiracy theories and railing against many of Trump’s perceived enemies in the “deep state” — often in deeply unserious appearances on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, on other conservative media outlets and on the campaign trail.

Those appearances — replete with comments from Patel that would disqualify him from consideration for the post in pretty much any other era — have since become a central part of the case against him.

He has frequently denigrated the employees he hopes to lead — perhaps most infamously, when he said he would “shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen [it] the next day as a museum of the deep state” and “take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals.” He has accused the FBI and Justice Department of “politicizing targets and manufacturing crimes” and questioned “how Americans can have any faith in this FBI anymore.” . . . . he describes the FBI as “an existential threat to our republican form of government.”

The fear that Patel would use the FBI to go after Trump’s political opponents is also well-founded given Patel’s own public statements. Perhaps most notably, he has threatened to “go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media … who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.” He added, “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.”

Patel has also previously publicly zeroed in on some of Trump’s most prominent antagonists. Among others, he has suggested that Attorney General Merrick Garland, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and Anthony Fauci should be investigated or potentially arrested. So far as I can tell from the rhetoric, the legal theories underlying Patel’s claims are at best highly dubious, if not transparently ridiculous.

Despite these sorts of guardrails, the risks of Patel’s nomination remain real.

For one thing — and it is no small thing — many of Patel’s former colleagues in the first Trump administration describe him as dishonest and unsuited for a top law enforcement post.

“He’s absolutely unqualified for this job. He’s untrustworthy,” Charles Kupperman, Trump’s deputy national security adviser and Patel’s former supervisor, recently told The Wall Street Journal. “It’s an absolute disgrace to American citizens to even consider an individual of this nature,” he said.

During Trump’s first term, former Attorney General William Barr blocked Patel’s appointment by Trump to serve as deputy FBI director. “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 in his book. Likewise, when Trump considered installing Patel as the deputy CIA director during his first term, Gina Haspel, who was then leading the agency, reportedly threatened to resign. Another former Trump DOJ official who worked with Patel recently described the prospect of him running the bureau as “terrifying.” Again, these aren’t liberal activists: They are Trump officials.

There is also opportunity for abuse even in ostensibly straightforward areas, notwithstanding the legal and bureaucratic constraints on the FBI director.

It would be an extraordinary — but not necessarily shocking — move, but Patel could waive the DIOG requirements and order investigations despite the requirements and procedures laid out in bureau guidelines. Patel could also recruit politically sympathetic FBI agents and prosecutors to help on particularly controversial or dubious cases. The process would likely be easier with the help of Bondi at the Justice Department.

Patel would also be empowered to punish agents who worked on cases that he disfavors on political grounds — like the Trump prosecutions and cases targeting far-right extremists.

It is also possible to start dubious investigations and to then try to trip people up based on alleged process crimes — like lying to the FBI — even if there was no underlying misconduct to begin with. Here too, we saw troubling precursors during the first Trump administration. . . .

There’s one other, perhaps unlikely, episode from the first Trump administration to draw on when thinking about Patel: the family separation saga.

Trump officials at the time tried to implement an illegal and immoral crackdown at the southern border, and they were aided by federal agents and prosecutors. The effort ultimately came to a halt after bureaucratic chaos, public blowback and a ruling from a federal judge, but in the relatively short period of time during which the policy was in place, the government managed to separate over 5,000 children from their families, inflicting incalculable harm on them in the process. Hundreds of them have still not been reunited.

There is a grim but essential lesson here as the Senate weighs Patel’s nomination to lead America’s top law enforcement agency: Malicious and powerful government officials can cause incredible harm — even if they are incompetent, and even if they are eventually stopped.

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