Dem
47
GOP
53
So far, we have run items that group the past week's appointments together. But this one is so significant it deserves more attention. On Saturday evening, Donald Trump announced that he will fire FBI Director Christopher Wray and will nominate Kash Patel to lead the FBI. The FBI director is appointed for a 10-year term, specifically to keep the position (and the director) out of politics. Wray was appointed by Trump in Aug. 2017, so he should serve until Aug. 2027.
However, he is actually doing the job he is expected to do and not the job Trump wants him to do, namely get revenge on people who have crossed the President-elect one way or another. Legally, the director serves at the president's pleasure and can be fired for any reason or for no reason at all. The post-Watergate law could have specified that the director cannot be removed by the president and can only be removed by being impeached and convicted. But it didn't.
Remember, in his first term, Trump fired Jim Comey because Comey believed in the rule of law. Trump does not believe in that. He is (unwittingly) a fan of the Old Testament: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Or maybe two teeth. Or 10 teeth. People who have attacked him will get attacked right back. The fact that they were justified in attacking him because, for example, he broke the law, is not part of the equation.
Ethics-wise, Patel makes Pam Bondi look like Elliot Richardson. In her pre-Trumpy period, she mostly upheld Florida law and did what a Republican state AG was expected to do. Patel is in a different league. He once said this on Steve Bannon's podcast:
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. But yeah, we're putting you all on notice, and Steve, this is why they hate us. This is why we're tyrannical. This is why we're dictators.
And that remark was no slip of the tongue or one-off attempt to please Bannon's audience. In 2023, Patel published a book entitled Government Gangsters, in which he wrote "FBI has become so thoroughly compromised that it will remain a threat to the people unless drastic measures are taken."
Even Bondi hasn't gone this far. Which is worse, an FBI director who actively wants to end the rule of law and persecute Trump's perceived enemies or a secretary of HHS who might end vaccinations and cause hundreds of kids to die of measles? A Sophie's Choice, if we've ever seen one.
It is also worth noting that the "I" in FBI stands for "investigation." The FBI investigates alleged crimes and writes a report. It can't indict anyone. That decision will be up to the DoJ, and ultimately Bondi, if she is confirmed, which seems likely. Even rule-of-law Republican senators have to pick their fights carefully.
In case you have never seen Patel, here he is speaking at CPAC 2024:
In case you can't quite make it out, his sash reads "fightwithkash." Not surprisingly, Fightwithkash is the name of Patel's personal website. Here is a screenshot of it:
The first news item is about supply chains rooted in China (and why that is bad). The second and third speak for themselves. Also for the fact that the website is not updated terribly often.
Patel also has a charitable foundation. Here is its webpage:
The foundation's stated mission is to help veterans, provide education for the public in areas that the mainstream media refuse to cover, provide scholarships, and help with the legal defense of whistleblowers. However, we don't exactly see how these news stories fit the mission. But wait! Checking out the Hunter Biden story we find the sentence: "Mishandling classified information is a federal crime, period." Patel should have told Judge Aileen Cannon that. Sh**, she didn't know it. If only Patel had told her, he could have changed the course of history. With websites like these, it should be obvious why Trump picked Patel to run the FBI.
While it may be obvious to the casual reader why Patel was nominated, it may also be obvious to the senators, and so Patel's confirmation by the Senate is by no means assured. The confirmation battle in the Senate could be bruising. Trump could try for recess appointments, but that first requires the Senate to go into recess. That could also be a battle because both chambers have to agree to a recess and with the tiny Republican margin in the House, it could be tricky. Could Trump force Congress into a recess against its will? Oliver Cromwell used the British Army to disband Parliament in 1653, so there is vaguely precedent for this sort of thing.
Reactions to Patel's nomination were—how shall we put this gently?—mixed. Mike Flynn, who served as Trump's first NSA, lasting two full scaramuccis, tweeted: "Kash is America's choice as Director of the FBI. Accountability is coming. Congratulations and well deserved." Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) called Patel an "excellent pick."
However, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe had this to say: "It's a terrible development for the men and women of the FBI and also for the nation that depends on a highly functioning professional independent Federal Bureau of Investigation. The fact that Kash Patel is profoundly unqualified for this job is not even like a matter for debate. So I think what we should, what we should really be thinking about right now is what does this signal in terms of Donald Trump's intent for the FBI."
John Bolton was less charitable: "Trump has nominated Kash Patel to be his Lavrently Beria. Fortunately, the FBI is not the NKVD. The Senate should reject this nomination 100-0." The NKVD was the Soviet Union's secret police and Beria was the infamous director of it under Joseph Stalin and responsible for carrying out some of his worst crimes. Oh, and Beria raped scores of young girls.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) was a bit more careful. He defended Wray and didn't see any need for a replacement. The Senator told ABC News: "Chris Wray, who the president nominated the first time around—I think the president picked a very good man to be the director of the FBI when he did that in his first term." He then noted that any new nominee will have to go through the process and face the Senate. He didn't sound like a senator who would be happy to have Trump bypass the Senate with a recess appointment.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said: "We already have a FBI Director, Christopher Wray, and his term does not expire until 2027. President-elect Trump knows this, because he nominated Director Wray in 2017 after he fired the previous Director, James Comey, another lifelong Republican who failed Trump's loyalty test. President Biden kept Director Wray in office because the FBI is supposed to be insulated from partisanship." But Durbin is a Democrat, so his views don't matter. What matters is whether four Republican senators put their feet down and say: no.
The confirmation hearing should be, er, interesting, if it gets that far. (V)