No Politicization Politicization

The good news is that Kash Patel

President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, insisted to deeply skeptical Democrats on Thursday that he did not have an “enemies list” and that the bureau under his leadership would not seek retribution against the president’s adversaries or launch investigations for political purposes.

“I have no interest, no desire and will not, if confirmed, go backwards,” Patel said at a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing at which support for the nominee broke along starkly partisan lines. “There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken.”

The reassurances were aimed at blunting a persistent line of attack from Democrats, who throughout the hearing confronted Patel with a vast catalog of prior incendiary statements on topics that they said made him unfit for the director’s job and raised alarming questions about his belief in conspiracy theories and loyalty to the president. Patel, for his part, sought to distance himself from his own words, accusing Democrats of taking them out of context, highlighting only snippets or misunderstanding his point.

The bad news is that President Trump's choice to be FBI director has a very bad memory. Ranking member Dick Durbin of Illinois asked Patel whether he is "familiar with Stew Peters," an alt-right, podcaster and "prolific anti-Semite.". After the nominee responed "not off the top of my head," Durbin reminded him that he he had "made eight separtae appearances on his podcast" and that Peters "promoted outrageous conspiracy theories and worked with a prominent neo-Nazi." Alas, Durbin failed to jog the memory of the nominee, who referred to "appearing on the media over a thousand times."

And Patel did not renounce or denounce his enemies list, which Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar conceded Patel did not label as an "enemies list." Rather, in the appendix of his 2022 Government Gansters, Patel described  "Members of the Executive Branch Deep State" as being "a cabal of unelected tyrants" and "the most dangerous threat to our democracy." In December, Timothy Noah of The New Republic explained

The term “deep state” is most often used to disparage the civil service, which Patel more or less wishes to eliminate. In addition to reinstituting Schedule F, which would strip many civil service protections from government workers, Patel favors legislation that allows the president to fire civil servants directly. But almost all the people on Patel’s enemies list are political appointees.

The Definitely-Not-Enemies-List, according to Noah, includes

Michael Atkinson (former inspector general of the intelligence community)

Lloyd Austin (defense secretary under President Joe Biden)

Brian Auten (supervisory intelligence analyst, FBI)

James Baker (not the former secretary of state; this James Baker is former general counsel for the FBI and former deputy general counsel at Twitter)

Bill Barr (former attorney general under Trump)

John Bolton (former national security adviser under Trump)

Stephen Boyd (former chief of legislative affairs, FBI)

Joe Biden (president of the United States)

John Brennan (former CIA director under President Barack Obama)

John Carlin (acting deputy attorney general, previously ran DOJ’s national security division under Trump)

Eric Ciaramella (former National Security Council staffer, Obama and Trump administrations)

Pat Cippolone (former White House counsel under Trump)

James Clapper (Obama’s director of national intelligence)

Hillary Clinton (former secretary of state and presidential candidate)

James Comey (former FBI director)

Elizabeth Dibble (former deputy chief of mission, U.S. Embassy, London)

Mark Esper (former secretary of defense under Trump)

Alyssa Farah (former director of strategic communications under Trump)

Evelyn Farkas (former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia under Obama)

Sarah Isgur Flores (former DOJ head of communications under Trump)

Merrick Garland (attorney general under Biden)

Stephanie Grisham (former press secretary under Trump)

Kamala Harris (vice president under Biden; former presidential candidate)

Gina Haspel (CIA director under Trump)

Fiona Hill (former staffer on the National Security Council)

Curtis Heide (FBI agent)

Eric Holder (former attorney general under Obama)*

Robert Hur (special counsel who investigated Biden over mishandling of classified documents)

Cassidy Hutchinson (aide to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows)

Nina Jankowicz (former executive director, Disinformation Governance Board, under Biden)

Lois Lerner (former IRS director under Obama)

Loretta Lynch (former attorney general under Obama)

Charles Kupperman (former deputy national security adviser under Trump)

Gen. Kenneth Mackenzie, retired (former commander of United States Central Command)

Andrew McCabe (former FBI deputy director under Trump)

Ryan McCarthy (former secretary of the Army under Trump)

Mary McCord (former acting assistant attorney general for national security under Obama)

Denis McDonough (former chief of staff for Obama, secretary of veterans affairs under Biden)

Gen. Mark Milley, retired (former chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff)

Lisa Monaco (deputy attorney general under Biden)

Sally Myer (former supervisory attorney, FBI)

Robert Mueller (former FBI director, special counsel for Russiagate)

Bruce Ohr (former associate deputy attorney general under Obama and Trump)

Nellie Ohr (wife of Bruce Ohr and former CIA employee)

Lisa Page (former legal counsel for Deputy Director Andrew McCabe at FBI under Obama and Trump; exchanged texts about Trump with Peter Strzok)

Pat Philbin (former deputy White House counsel under Trump)

John Podesta (former counselor to Obama; senior adviser to Biden on climate policy)

Samatha Power (former ambassador to the United Nations under Obama, administrator of AID under Biden)

Bill Priestap (former assistant director for counterintelligence, FBI, under Obama)

Susan Rice (former national security adviser under Obama, director of the Domestic Policy Council under Biden)

Rod Rosenstein (former deputy attorney general under Trump)

Peter Strzok (former deputy assistant director for counterintelligence, FBI, under Obama and Trump; exchanged texts about Trump with Lisa Page)

Jake Sullivan (national security adviser under President Joe Biden)

Michael Sussman (former legal representative, Democratic National Committee)

Miles Taylor (former DHS official under Trump; penned New York Times op-ed critical of Trump under the byline, “Anonymous”)

Timothy Thibault (former assistant special agent, FBI)

Andrew Weissman (Mueller’s deputy in Russiagate probe)

Alexander Vindman (former National Security Council director for European affairs)

Christopher Wray (FBI director under Trump and Biden; Trump nominated Patel to replace him even though Wray’s term doesn’t expire until August 2027)

Sally Yates (former deputy attorney general under Obama and, briefly, acting attorney general under Trump)

"It's nevr a good time to bow down to a dictator," asserted Jim Acosta on Tuesday in his sign-off from CNN. Nor to his prsoanl FBI director, he might have added.

 

 

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Clear and Present Danger

This I cannot disagree with:

FETTERMAN: “I’m not rooting against [Trump] because if you're rooting against the President, you are rooting against the nation.”pic.twitter.com/pnmGvWOR0y

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) December 22, 2024

However, on This Week With George Stephanopoulos with Jonathan Karl, Jonathan Karl spoke to Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman about Donald Trummp's nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel.  Karl noted "he's talked about going after Trump's enemies" and Fetterman responded

Yeah, and I've -- and we -- we've had conversations, but we -- we had, you know, all of, all of these -- all of these interviews were all off the record and -- and those things. So I'm not going to go into detail, but -- but he absolutely, I -- is that, that's -- you know, that's never going to happen, you know, like he was -- he was very looking forward to that.

So Karl asked "he's not going to use the FBI to go after Trump's enemies?" and Fetterman replied "yeah- no, that's not it."  Seconds later, he added 

and I found out, you know,his family's origin story and immigration... and we talked about that, and my wife, my family immigration and things.  And so I- I learned things about him. I never knew that he was a public defender.

It shouldn't be so easy for a nominee to play a United States senator. However, this guy Patel is no dummy. MSNBC (video below). Timothy Noah writes that in his (in) famous book Government Gangsters

Patel includes on his enemies list the last three Democratic nominees for president: Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton. Former President Barack Obama, for some reason, is left off the list, even though Obama’s chief of staff John Podesta is on it.

Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris are losers. Joe Biden is blamed by some Democrats, especially the elites, for holding out so long that Kamala Harris had insufficient opportunity to sell herself to the public. (This is specious argument but unfortunately gaining traction, especially as a means to avoid blaming the candidate herself.) Moreover, there is no prosecution that would rile up Democratic voters, especially the Democratic base,  more than prosecuting the first- and thus far only- black person to be elected President.

More telling

Patel may be “fiery,” as newspaper euphemism puts it, but he’s also opportunistic, which probably explains why no member of Congress made his enemies list (excepting Senator-elect Adam Schiff and Representative Eric Swalwell, whom he mentions as numbering among those “other corrupt actors of the first order” he regrets leaving out). When he compiled this list, Patel knew that in a future Trump administration he might score a Cabinet or sub-Cabinet nomination requiring Senate confirmation; that obstacle course now lies before him.

Of course, at the time the book was written and published, "Senator-elect" Schiff was United States Representative Adam Schiff, not Senator Adam Schiff, who will be eligible to vote on the nomination of Patel. It is unclear whether the nominee would have named the Californian had he been psychic and was aware that the latter would be a U.S. Senator with an opportunity to turn thumbs down on Patel.

Fetterman may be getting fooled. Not so naive, but very dangerous, is the ex-con and prime Trump ally: 

“Kash didn’t try to hide the football. Steve Bannon didn’t try,” Bannon asserted, speaking in the third person during a one-on-one interview with The Bulwark following his speech to Americafest, a yearly gathering of MAGA diehards hosted by Turning Point USA.

“He made a fucking movie that’s called Government Gangsters and the first guy is Merrick Garland, okay. And Lisa Monaco’s in there, who the nation doesn’t know—we’re trying to make these people famous. So no. First of all, it has to happen. Number two, it’s going to happen.”

It's not clear whether John Fetterman will vote to to approve the nomination of Kash Patel to be director of the FBI. Nor is it clear that a Director Patel will go after Donald Trump's enemies. But it's an awfully good bet.

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