Since taking office (less than two weeks ago), Donald Trump has pardoned, commuted sentences, and stopped prosecutions of more than 1,500 Americans convicted for their activities at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. His justice department, which has fired more than a dozen prosecutors who assisted Jack Smith (who resigned before Trump’s inauguration) in the January 6 and the classified documents cases, now has hundreds of FBI agents in its sights for an expected purge. The interim U.S. attorney for D.C. has launched a “special project” to investigate prosecutors in his office who charged 250 rioters with obstructing an official proceeding (under a law that the Roberts Court ruled 6-3 was not applicable).
The president has nominated as head of the FBI, Kash Patel, a man demonstrably loyal to Trump, rather than to the Constitution, the rule of law, or our nation’s security.
In the appendix of his book, Government Gangsters, Patel lists 60 members of the “deep state,” which Patel asserts is “a dangerous threat to democracy.” He denies this represents an enemies list, but the folks on it, and a number who are not on it, are not reassured as Patel edges toward a powerful position in Trump’s federal government.
Patel has promoted QAnon and is a 2020 election denier. Appearing on a podcast hosted by Steve Bannon, Patel promised retribution against folks who stole the 2020 election from Trump — inside government and outside:
We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.
Patel authored three children’s books (“The Plot Against the King” and two sequels) featuring Donald Trump as King and Kash, a wizard who fights to protect the king. Few of Trump’s followers have gone to such lengths to demonstrate their devotion to the man.
David French, writing in today’s New York Times, argues against Patel’s confirmation:
Patel was nominated for one reason and one reason only: He is one of Trump’s most zealous loyalists. But before they vote, Republican senators should take 10 minutes out of their day and read Alexander Hamilton’s words in Federalist No. 76.
If the Senate fulfills its responsibilities, Hamilton wrote, presidents would be both “ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations,” people who had no other qualification than being from the president’s state “or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.”
Yet loyalty and “insignificance” are Patel’s only qualifications for the job. He would never be considered for the position in the absence of his devotion to Trump, his vindictiveness and his malice.
I concur. The Senate should not confirm this nomination. But I’m not betting against it. I have no faith that even four Republican senators will take a principled stand against Trump’s dangerous pick.