A dangerous and unqualified choice for the FBI

 

A dangerous and unqualified choice for the FBI

Senators must do their constitutional duty once again by rejecting Trump’s nomination of loyalist Kash Patel.

 

By Ruth Marcus

December 1, 2024 at 11:26 a.m. EST

 

President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of uber-loyalist Kash Patel to be FBI director is a hair-on-fire moment. Trump is poised to install a team of toadies at the Justice Department — a flotilla of his criminal defense lawyers but most ominously an attorney general, Pam Bondi, who has vowed that “the prosecutors will be prosecuted,” and now, with Patel, an FBI director who would add journalists to that list.

 

“Yes, 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 of Trump’s plans in a 2023 podcast with Trump ally Stephen K. Bannon. “We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly — we’ll figure that out.”

 

This is not normal.

 

Republican senators — enough of them, anyway — did their constitutional duty in balking at former congressman Matt Gaetz, Trump’s clownish first choice to serve as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. Now, unpleasant and politically perilous as it might be, they must stand up to Trump again.

 

The Senate, and the country, needs to hear Bondi and Patel explain themselves, because responsible law enforcement officials do not talk like this, with claims of criminal retribution against their perceived enemies. “The investigators will be investigated,” Bondi told Fox News last year.

 

Patel is particularly worrisome. Don’t listen to me; listen to Trump’s former attorney general, William P. Barr, who objected to Trump’s first-term efforts to install Patel in the No. 2 job at the FBI. In his memoir, Barr said he told then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that Patel would get the deputy job “over my dead body.”

 

Patel, Barr wrote, “had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency. The very idea of moving Patel into a role like this showed a shocking detachment from reality.”

 

Patel debuted in Trumpland when, as an adviser to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-California), he wrote a memo arguing that the FBI’s investigation into Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 election was politically motivated. Subsequently, he held various roles in the first Trump administration, from serving on the National Security Council to advising both the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense.

 

Now this.

 

It’s important to understand that a new president picking the FBI director of his preference is not the norm — it is an aberration, and a dangerous one. Presidents are generally entitled to political appointees of their choosing, but the FBI director is supposed to be insulated from politics. That is one reason the director is appointed to a single 10-year term, spanning two administrations.

 

A president can fire the FBI director, but until Trump, that had happened only once, when President Bill Clinton removed William S. Sessions in 1993 over ethics lapses. The circumstances of that removal underscore its extraordinary nature: It occurred only after the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility concluded a lengthy report, released at the end of George H.W. Bush’s presidency, and only after months of the new administration agonizing over how to deal with Sessions.

 

In announcing the move, Clinton said he and Attorney General Janet Reno “agreed that, in the normal course of events, the director of the FBI should not be changed just because administrations change … perhaps even especially when there’s a change of political party in the White House.”

 

Even then, the action triggered criticism. Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kansas) called the firing “a potentially worrisome precedent” that “should concern every American who values the political independence of our nation’s top law enforcement agencies.”

 

Then came Trump, who, four months into his first term, fired James B. Comey in the midst of the bureau’s investigation into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 presidential election. Trump’s action came after a private dinner with Comey a week after the inauguration at which, Comey wrote in his memoir, the new president told the director, “I need loyalty. I expect loyalty.”

 

Trump replaced Comey with Christopher A. Wray, who, predictably, incurred Trump’s ire during his first term and who — after having been kept on by President Joe Biden — Trump now plans to remove if Wray does not leave on his own.

 

Welcome to life under Trump: What once was shocking now seems ordinary.

 

Never in the history of the FBI — it was created in 1908 as the Bureau of Investigation — has there been a director anything like Patel. He poses a double threat: both a crony of the president and an unstinting critic of the institution he has been tapped to lead.

 

“Unstinting” might be understated. In his 2023 book, “Government Gangsters,” Patel wrote, “The rot at the core of the FBI isn’t just scandalous, it’s an existential threat to our republican form of government.” He calls the bureau “one of the most cunning and powerful arms of the Deep State” and a “tool of surveillance and suppression of American citizens.” Patel describes “the political jackals at the FBI” and recommends getting rid of its headquarters. Putting someone like Patel at the helm of the FBI would be beyond reckless. Patel’s book includes a helpful appendix listing 60 members of the deep state — “not including the entire fake news mafia press corps.”

 

Couple that with Patel’s allegiance to Trump. “Even in an administration full of loyalists, Patel was exceptional in his devotion,” the Atlantic’s Elaina Plott Calabro wrote in an August profile. “We’re blessed by God to have Donald Trump be our juggernaut of justice, to be our leader, to be our continued warrior in the arena,” Patel told the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. He was a presence on the campaign trail.

 

Meantime, Patel is doing well by serving Trump. He sits on the board of the company that owns Truth Social and has received more than $300,000 in consulting fees from Trump’s leadership PAC, along with $145,000 for fundraising consulting for Gaetz in 2021.

 

In her Atlantic piece, Calabro quoted a longtime Trump adviser about the president-elect’s views of Patel: “A lot of people say he’s crazy,” Trump had said, according to the adviser. “I think he’s kind of crazy. But sometimes you need a little crazy.”

 

No. Not at the FBI. Senators, do your jobs.

Trump and His Team Are ‘Laughing’ at Biden’s Commitment to Decorum

 

Trump and His Team Are ‘Laughing’ at Biden’s Commitment to Decorum

Biden called Trump a fascist. Now his White House is ensuring an orderly transfer of power — and staging photo ops with the president-elect

By 

Asawin Suebsaeng, Nikki McCann Ramirez

December 1, 2024

 

Donald Trump and his incoming administration officials think Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are suckers. They’re not shy about saying it.

Within the past month, Biden, Harris, and the current administration have repeatedly vowed an orderly, peaceful, fully cooperative transfer of power between Biden and Trump — a twice-impeached former president and convicted felon whom the president, vice president, and Democratic leaders regularly denounced as a “fascist” tyrant and clear threat to the constitutional order. 

It hasn’t just been the legal transfer and procedures to which Democrats have committed themselves. Biden has promised to attend Trump’s 2025 inauguration, even though Trump refused to grant him the same grace after the 2020 election. Of course, then-President Trump actively sought to overturn Biden’s 2020 election victory and even helped foment a violent coup at the U.S. Capitol as part of his months-long effort to cling to power.

Not long after the election this early November, Biden hosted Trump at the White House for a pleasant photo opportunity. The president and vice president congratulated Trump, and Biden told him “welcome back” to his face, as the two men sat down for the news cameras, as if they were old pals who had just resolved a mildly heated argument.

These actions are all far, far above and beyond what Trump and his first administration were willing to do during the last U.S. presidential transition for Biden — including in its commitment to basic decorum and photo ops that don’t even technically affect the legal transfer of power. 

And — in the same way that top Trump adviser Stephen Miller privately found it funny that Biden actually preserved some of his and Trump’s preferred immigration crackdown methods — members of Team Trump find this asymmetrical level of commitment to norms, well, funny. 

“Some of us have been laughing about it,” an incoming Trump administration official tells Rolling Stone. “[Democrats] spend all this time calling Donald Trump a Nazi and Hitler, and now it’s just: ‘Smile for the camera!’”

These sentiments of gleefully rejoicing and sneering at, as one close Trump ally puts it, the Democrats’ almost performative “capitulation” to Trump — who campaigned on a grossly authoritarian platform that includes wielding the federal apparatus to exact revenge operations on prominent political enemies — are widely shared in Trumpland, according to four sources close to the president-elect or working on the Trump transition.

In recent weeks, according to a source familiar with the matter, Trump himself has privately mocked Biden for being so “nice” after Harris lost the election, with the president-elect sarcastically joking that he would have done the same thing for his Democratic opponents.

Throughout his campaign, Trump regularly winked and nodded at the possibility that — should he not win a decisive victory in the general election — he would fall back on his 2020 playbook and reject the will of the voters this year, too. 

Fomenting an attempted coup against the certification of the Electoral College was already a clear enough signal of Trump’s intentions, but in the aftermath of his 2020 defeat, Trump was also openly uncooperative with transition officials and the incoming Biden administration.

The now president-elect waited until almost two months after the election to officially concede that he would not be returning to the White House. He fled D.C. — which was left in a state of outright militarization following the attack on the Capitol — and refused to attend any events related to the transition of power, including the inauguration. 

Trump’s campaign waited seven weeks before beginning the most rudimentary discussions about a transition. Biden was denied the standard books typically authorized for incoming presidents, including access to daily national security briefings, funds to run the transition, and office space to begin staging the new administration. Even as it became crystal clear that Trump had no legitimate claim to a second term, the White House continued to vet potential nominees and appointees as if they would remain in power. 

By contrast, the Biden administration has seemingly bent over backward to avoid giving the incoming Trump administration any opening to claim they are obstructing his return to power. Earlier this month the two met at the White House to discuss the logistics of the transfer. Special Counsel Jack Smith — who headed the now defunct federal prosecutions against Trump — has even begun shuttering his own criminal cases into Trump, saving Trump some time from following through on his campaign promise to fire Smith upon retaking the White House. 

If there’s anything that will slow Trump’s transition, it’s his own camp’s refusal to sign the standard financial and ethics agreements required for agencies involved in the transition to begin authorizing the release of resources for the incoming administration. His team finally relented to some extent last week.  

Earlier this year, Trump said it was “ridiculous” that he had to leave the White House. In November, days before the election, Trump said outright, “I shouldn’t have left.” 

The difference here is that — pleasant or not — the outgoing administration has a democratic and legal and civic responsibility to not be like Trump and his loyalists. The peaceful transfer of power tradition is a central pillar of the democratic process, and messing with it poses a destabilizing blow to the American experiment. 

On the other hand, nobody is legally or morally obligated to attend January’s celebratory inauguration in Washington, D.C., or cheese for a photo op, or act publicly chummy with someone who their political party had (correctly) diagnosed as a bloodthirsty, wannabe authoritarian — and a threat to basic rights, vulnerable communities, and the democratic order and health of the nation. 

Should Biden refuse to grant Trump his physical participation in the performance of the inauguration pageantry, the outgoing president would be far more justified in his reasoning than his predecessor.

 

The Hammer of the Oligarchy What did you expect, America? Charlie Sykes Dec 1 Kash Patel, Trump’s pick for FBI director. What could go wrong? I was pretty happy with "enshittification" as the word of the year, though we may have to go with "kakistocracy." But even that doesn’t fully capture the dazzling craptacularity of this moment. Last night, DJT named his father-in-law, a convicted felon he pardoned in 2020, to be ambassador to France. And then followed it up with the Gaetz-like FU appointment of MAGA conspiracy theorist Kash Patel to be the director of the FBI. Meanwhile, his pick to run the Pentagon is called a skeevy chode — by his own mom. But, of course, these are all merely footnotes to history, a mere gloss on the voters’ decision to elect a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist to the presidency. If only they had been warned. The fear is the point. The idea that a fanatic like Kash Patel will run the FBI is genuinely scary. But that’s the point, isn’t it? Other presidents (with mixed success) may have tried to sell hope or unity; they’ve promised the return of happy days; called the nation to higher purpose; even made pleas to the better angels of our nature. Trump is selling fear. And it’s working. Watch as they all kiss the ring (a euphemism for the actual rituals of abasement performed nightly at Mar-a-Lago). Instilling fear is the point of Trump’s (ill-fated) appointment of Matt Gaetz as AG and of Patel to run FBI. It’s the message that Trump’s best-buddy-cum-co-president, Elon Musk sends out in a steady stream on social media: Be afraid. We are coming after you. We are the law now. Musk, who has a weird psycho-sexual fascination with the comic book character, Judge Dredd, repeatedly invokes the character — who has the power to arrest, convict, and execute miscreants — to describe his fetish for retribution. Expressing his enthusiasm for Gaetz, Musk posted on X that the former congressman had “three critical assets that are needed for the AG role: a big brain, a spine of steel and an axe to grind. He is the Judge Dredd America needs to clean up a corrupt system and put powerful bad actors in prison.” Since the election he has repeatedly posted threats against critics of Trump, warning that “The Hammer of Justice is coming.” So, he is predictably tumescent over the prospect of Patel taking on the same role at the FBI. This weekend, we saw what the oligarch’s resentment and retribution looks like: Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man and President-elect Donald Trump’s “first buddy,” took to his social media platform X to ominously accuse [Alexander Vindman] the key witness in Trump’s first impeachment of treason while calling for him to “pay the appropriate penalty.” The appropriate penalty? 18 U.S. Code § 2381 - Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States. Vindman responded on X: “Elon, here you go again making false and completely unfounded accusations without providing any specifics.” That’s the kind of response one would expect from a conspiracy theorist. What oligarch? What treason? Let me help you out with the facts: I don’t take/have never taken money from any money from oligarchs Ukrainian or other otherwise.” “You, Elon, appear to believe you can act with impunity and are attempting to silence your critics. I’m not intimidated.”¹ Senator Tim Kaine had his own message to Musk— “The Vindman family embodies patriotism and public service. You know nothing about either.” Here’s Kara Swisher: Joyce Vance puts this into context: “Musk’s words are just words,” she wrote, “But they highlight the irregularity and danger of what’s to come.” By tradition, presidents don’t comment on ongoing criminal cases, so there can be no argument on appeal that they might have influenced a jury. If it comes to revenge prosecutions, it’s enormously unlikely Trump would honor that norm. And even if he did, his buddy would be there to do his bidding. ** If any doubts lingered about the Musk-Trump agenda, it was erased by his selection of Patel to replace (Trump appointee) Chris Wray atop the FBI. Nota Bene: Ruth Marcus: Kash Patel is a dangerous and unqualified pick for the FBI - The Washington Post “Kash Patel Will Do Anything for Trump” - The Atlantic “A New Trump Administration Will ‘Come After’ the Media, Says Kash Patel - The New York Times Why Kash Patel May Be Trump's Scariest Pick Yet — Rolling Stone Tom Nichols: Donald Trump’s choice for FBI director speaks volumes about his real second-term agenda. For Trump, naming Patel to the post serves several purposes. First, Trump is taking his razor-thin election win as a mandate to rule as he pleases, and Patel is the perfect nominee to prove that he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. Even knowing what they know, Americans chose to return Trump to office, and he has taken their decision as a license to do whatever he wants—including giving immense power to someone like Patel. Second, Trump wants to show that the objections of senior elected Republicans are of no consequence to him, and that he can politically flatten them at will. Some of his nominations seem like a trollish flex, a way to display his power by naming people to posts and daring others to stop him. Trump has always thought of the GOP as his fiefdom and GOP leaders as his vassals—and if the Senate folds on Patel and others, he may be proved right on both counts. Exit take: I posted on Bluesky last night that there is an underappreciated angle to the appointments of Patel, Gaetz, Bondi & Co. They are, of course, a massive Fuq U to institutions like the DOJ and FBI. But they are also a huge FU to the Supreme Court, because Trump doesn’t think they will be a check on his campaign of lawless retribution. Nice work, John Roberts. Skeevy Chode Update Pete Hegseth is a pig. This is known. But it is one thing to be condemned by critics, quite another to be called out — in the most graphic and direct way possible — by your own mother. Clearly, she knew who and what her son was. Undoubtedly, you’ve seen the story — “Pete Hegseth’s Mother Accused Her Son of Mistreating Women for Years — but the actual details are dazzling. “On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say … get some help and take an honest look at yourself,” Penelope Hegseth wrote, stating that she still loved him... Mr. Hegseth’s mother, who is a longtime executive business coach, wrote her email three months before the final divorce decree. It began: “Son, I have tried to keep quiet about your character and behavior, but after listening to the way you made Samantha feel today, I cannot stay silent.”… “It’s time for someone (I wish it was a strong man) to stand up to your abusive behavior and call it out, especially against women,” she wrote. “We still love you, but we are broken by your behavior and lack of character.” If the email “damages our relationship further,” she added, “so be it.” She described his abusive behavior over the years as “dishonesty, sleeping around, betrayal, debasing, belittling” women. She told him not to bother to reply, because “you twist and abuse everything I say anyway.” Well, ooooooof.² ** On Earth 2.0, all of this [waves hands around] would be disqualifying. In the MAGAverse, it is just another opportunity to grift. Right on cue, I received a text message urging me to: SAVE PETE: PLEASE SAVE PETE HEGSETH! The plea for cash warns that “The Woke Mob will do whatever they can to REMOVE Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense from President Trump’s Cabinet.” And then it goes on to make this world-historic claim: If Pete is gone we can say GOODBYE to America as we know it. Perfect. Chef’s kiss perfect. ** But, wait there’s more. The fund-raising note says “Your contribution will benefit God, Family, and Country PAC.” Near the bottom, in the smaller print, there appears this box…. Which is pre-checked… committing Hegseth fans to “monthly recurring donations.” Exit take: Look elsewhere for expressions of sympathy for the dupes who actually think that if the randy Pete is gone, “we can say GOODBYE to America as we know it.” Justice, we think, is served. Update on the wretched hive of scum and villainy Trump Names Charles Kushner as Pick for Ambassador to France - The New York Times Mr. Kushner, 70, pleaded guilty in 2004 to 16 counts of tax evasion, a single count of retaliating against a federal witness and one of lying to the Federal Election Commission in a case that became a lasting source of embarrassment for the family. As part of the plea, Mr. Kushner admitted to hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, a witness in a federal campaign finance investigation, and sending a videotape of the encounter to his sister. David Frum notes on Bluesky that Kushner’s appointment is a “Huge break-the-glass-ceiling moment for the Convict American community.” David Rothkopf‬ ‪@djrothkopf.bsky.social‬: “The Charles Kushner appointment to be ambassador to France is a Trump trifecta: nepotism, criminality, and incompetence.…” Frum puts it into context: When making a MAGA cabinet, it's very important to strike a careful balance between billionaires, sex criminals, Russian assets, anti-vaxxers, and just plain unpleasant people. Mission accomplished. You may need a scorecard to keep track of Hegseth’s marital history and penchant for impregnating women not his wife. Mr. Hegseth married Meredith Schwarz [wife #1], his high school sweetheart, in 2004, one year after they both graduated from college. Ms. Schwarz sued for divorce less than five years after their wedding. The 2009 court judgment cited Mr. Hegseth’s infidelity as the reason for the breakdown of the marriage. The following year, Mr. Hegseth married Samantha [wife #2]. Within five years, they had three boys. By late 2016, Mr. Hegseth, a Fox News contributor and aspiring anchor, was having an affair with Jennifer Rauchet, an executive producer at Fox News…. Ms. Rauchet, who has three other children, delivered a baby girl in August 2017, one month before Samantha Hegseth filed for divorce. Mr. Hegseth married Ms. Rauchet [wife #3] in 2019 at a ceremony at Trump National Golf Club Colts Neck in New Jersey. The acrimonious divorce from Samantha took 10 months to finalize and led to the appointment of a parenting consultant to help negotiate disputes over dividing time with the children… You may recall that in 2017 — after impregnating the woman who would be his third wife — Hegseth was accused of raping another woman. He claims the sex was consensual.