Senior figures in the Washington, D.C. political establishment are raising alarms that Donald Trump’s new push to install MAGA loyalist Kash Patel as director of the FBI confirms designs to use federal agents to target political enemies and carry out ‘retribution.’
Among those blasting the pick is former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was himself a target of Trump’s wrath when he got fired amid the Russia probe. Patel has pledged to root out people he calls ‘government gangsters’ and target members of the media in his war on what he terms ‘deep state’ corruption.
McCabe said the move ‘can only possibly be a plan to disrupt, to dismantle, to distract the FBI and to possibly use it as a tool for the President’s political agenda.’
He said it could bring the bureau back to the time of J. Edgar Hoover, telling CNN the ‘FBI struck fear in the hearts of Americans across the spectrum, of politicians, people in entertainment, people in the civil rights community, because the director operated at the direction of presidents to collect political intelligence and to utilize the legal authorities, the investigative authorities of the FBI, to terrorize and intimidate Americans.’
‘So the question is, is that where we’re going back to with this nomination? I would argue that Kash Patel, would be the perfect person for Donald Trump to nominate if that’s, in fact, his intent for the FBI,’ he said, in comments that went viral.
Said CNN national security analyst Juliette Kayyem, ‘The only reason why Trump would have done this pick is for his retribution campaign. There is almost no other reason to explain this. Everyone who has followed this president elect and who he wants to put in knows that this particular position and this particular person is being chosen for what is essentially the retribution campaign.’
Amid the fury and panic, the White House and a senior Republican senator talked up FBI Director Chris Wray Sunday, a day after Donald Trump announced his decision to try to install Patel atop the agency.
Wray serves a 10-year term, so putting in an ultra-loyalist like Patel would require firing him, just as Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey during his first term.
Republican Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said Sunday that the president ‘gets the benefit of the doubt on a nomination.’
He noted that Wray was nominated to a 10-year term – he was first appointed in 2017.
‘I think the President picked a very good man to be the Director of the FBI when he did that in his first term. When we meet with him behind closed doors, I had no objections to the way that he’s handled himself,’ Rounds told ABC’s ‘This Week.’
‘And once again, the President has the on the right to make nominations, but normally these are for a 10 year term, we’ll see what his process is and whether he actually makes that nomination,’ he said, mentioning the Senate‘s ‘advise and consent’ role in confirming nomination.
White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan is defending the merits of an independent FBI, amid fears Trump would use the agency as part of his public call for ‘retribution’ against political enemies. But he did so while trying not to weigh in on nominations and praising the transition to the new administraton.
‘We inherited an FBI director who actually had been appointed by President Trump, Director Chris Wray, who has continued to serve in that role through the four years of the Biden administration, and served with distinction, served entirely insulated from politics or the partisan preferences of the current, sitting president in the United States,’ Sullivan told ‘This Week.’
‘This is a good, deep, bipartisan tradition that President Biden adhered to, and that’s really all I can say.’
Patel told Steve Bannon’s ‘War Room Pandemic’ podcast last year, ‘We will go out and find the conspirators. Not just in government, but in the media. We’re going to come after you whether it’s criminally or civilly.’
Getting behind the nomination Sunday was Sen. Bill Hagerty, the former ambassador to Japan under Trump. He said agents ‘conspired’ to keep Trump out of office, telling NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ efforts to suppress reports about the Hunter Biden laptop allowed President Biden to ‘fool the American public.’
‘This entire agency needs to be cleaned out. It’s not doing its job. And if you look at what happened, the politicization that took place back in 2016 when senior leaders of the FBI collaborated and conspired to try to keep President Trump out of office, and when he came into office, they put together this fake Russia-gate investigation that hindered the Trump administration for first several years,’ he said.
Then Hagerty attributed Biden’s win over Trump to the FBI and Big Tech. ‘Look at 2020. Look at what happened there with the fake, fake Hunter Biden story that, you know, the FBI leadership worked together with big tech to censor the Hunter Biden laptop that allowed President Biden to basically fool the American public and come into office,’ he said.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) called Patel a ‘very strong nominee,’ telling CBS ‘Face the Nation’ he should come in and ‘clean out the corrupted partisans.’ He said it was ‘no secret to anyone’ that Wray would not continue to serve as head of the FBI.
Taking a more nuanced position was Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). ‘Chris Wray has failed at fundamental duties of FBI Dir He’s showed disdain for cong oversight & hasn’t lived up to his promises It’s time 2 chart a new course 4 TRANSPARENCY +ACCOUNTABILITY at FBI,’ Grassley posted on X. ‘Kash Patel must prove to Congress he will reform &restore public trust in FBI,’ he wrote.
Trump’s expected nomination is certain to provoke blowback in the Senate. When he considered naming Patel as deputy director of the FBI late in his first Term, former AG Bill Barr said it would happen ‘over my dead body,’ he wrote.
WATCH: Republican Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota calls Chris Wray "a very good man" and says that "I don’t have any complaints about the way that he’s done his job right now." pic.twitter.com/YS1bpP6cli
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) December 1, 2024
He said Patel had ‘virtually no experience’ that would qualify him for the post, and said he had a ‘shocking detachment from reality.’
Patel has accompanied Trump during his legal defenses, testified before a grand jury in the classified documents case, has taken up the cause of January 6 defendants, and wrote a children’s book ‘The Plot Against the King’ that was an allegory about ‘deep state’ villains.
In a sign of the confirmation fight to come, the Trump transition blasted out a Washington Times story quoting former FBI officials speaking highly of Patel.
Trump revealed his pick on Saturday on his social media platform Truth Social, describing Patel as ‘a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and “American First” fighter.’
Jamie Raskin says he has not seen any proof that the FBI has been weaponized against a political party. pic.twitter.com/qvrnD7C4Gz
— Kevin Sorbo (@ksorbs) December 1, 2024
Patel had been competing for the job with former FBI agent and congressman Mike Rogers, before Rogers was dismissed as a candidate last week after he was opposed by several MAGA Republicans in Trump’s orbit.
As he announced Patel for the top intelligence job, Trump praised the MAGA loyalist as a ‘fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People.’
‘He played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution,’ Trump wrote.
‘Kash did an incredible job during my First Term, where he served as Chief of Staff at the Department of Defense, Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council.
