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A Trump attack dog will head up the FBI

I've been wondering where the preposterous Kash Patel would land, and now we know: He's going to be director of the FBI.

Aside from being a fanatic Trump loyalist, Patel naturally has precisely no qualifications for the job. He's worked as a trial attorney, and then as Devin Nunes' attack dog, and that's it. He's 44 years old and has never had the remotest connection to law enforcement. On the other hand, he's written a book explaining that he passionately hates the FBI. And he said this 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. We'll figure that out.

What could possibly go wrong?

86 thoughts on “A Trump attack dog will head up the FBI

      1. chumpchaser

        Dude, you are the biggest racist piece of shit here. We see you, motherfucker. Now go beat off to that Trump cutout, like a good little Nazi bootlicker.

        1. Joel

          With the chaos and resentment in the FBI caused by Patel's appointment, I suspect some in the FBI will stand down and stand by instead of discovering assassination conspiracies.

  1. raoul

    Well the good news is that hiring someone so manifestly incompetent that he really cannot accomplish much. I doubt he would be confirmed though.

    1. Dr Brando

      I was about to say that I don't think many of these picks will be able to withstand questions that come with a confirmation hearing, but then I remembered Brett Kavanaugh squealing about how he likes beer then still getting the votes.

      1. jte21

        The Senate GOP will find some way to weasel out of having to hold hearings or be held accountable in any way for this shitstorm. Shamelessness is their superpower.

      2. KawSunflower

        Worse, didn't he threaten to get even with Democrats? Not bothering to search for his exact phrasing, the Roberts court & what happiest is so appalling.

    2. Yehouda

      "Well the good news is that hiring someone so manifestly incompetent that he really cannot accomplish much. "

      It is not him that is supposed to achieve anything. It is the people "underneath" him, who will work directly with Trump's people.

  2. jte21

    The point of nominating Patel, like Hegseth at DOD, is to make the career staffers and veteran agents so disgusted and outraged that they all quit en mass and can be replaced with MAGA lickspittles. And so begins the MAGA-militiafication of federal law enforcement.

  3. ProgressOne

    Man, we sure are counting on the Senate rejecting the worst of Trump's nominees. Fortunately, only a simple majority is needed to reject. I guess "counting on" means that at least four Republicans cross over and join Democrats to reject the worst of Trump's nominees. Are there four left who will refuse to be cowed by Trump?

    It’s hard to grasp that almost all Republicans will vote to confirm people like Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr., and Kash Patel. But I assume they will.

    1. Jasper_in_Boston

      But I assume they will.

      They waylaid one nomination already. I doubt they have the stomach or stones to block multiple nominations. I'll make an exception for Tulsi: that's the one I predict gets blocked, if any further nominations are stopped.

      1. KenSchulz

        I’m expecting RFK Jr. to be rejected because he’s on record supporting abortion choice. Right wing R’s will do him in.

      2. iamr4man

        I think that Gaetz was unique in that he was, apparently, hated by just about everyone in Congress. I’m not sure what that was about, but I don’t think it was just about his bragging and sharing pictures of his sexual exploits. I suspect it has something to do with Madison Cawthorn’s claims of drug fuled sex parties but that’s just speculation.

        1. Dave_MB32

          He singlehandedly bumped Kevin McCarthy from speaker of the house. They changed the rules so that a single vote could call for a new election for Speaker.

          He caused a lot of chaos and made the entire caucus look foolish.

          ....moreso than usual.

  4. kenalovell

    Does he have to have a reason to fire Wray? Or to put it another way, could Wray resist being fired? On my understanding the whole rationale for a 10-year term for FBI Directors was to avoid the position being politicised.

    1. Austin

      Just another norm. And if it’s not, SCOTUS will rule that whatever law dictates 10 year terms for the FBI are unconstitutional now.

      1. MF

        Unitary executive.

        Given the Constitutional set up of three separate branches, any limitations on how the president manages the executive branch are on very shaky Constitutional ground.

        1. aldoushickman

          "any limitations on how the president manages the executive branch are on very shaky Constitutional ground."

          That's complete nonsese. The three branches are not three separate sovereigns--they are areas of governmental emphasis, with each having multiple overlapping checkpoints on the others.

          FFS, the Senate has to approve any appointments the Prez makes to his/her own cabinet. And Congress as a whole creates, funds, and sets the parameters for every employee of the executive not specifically otherwise delineated in the Constitution. It's horseshit to claim that just because something is labeled "executive" the president gets to act like a king.

    2. Jasper_in_Boston

      Or to put it another way, could Wray resist being fired?

      No. Norms mean nothing to these people. By law the FBI director serves at the pleasure of the head of the executive branch.

  5. gvahut

    Don't think he'll make it past the Senate. The party of "law and order" still has a few responsible types. Not many, but a few.

    1. Jasper_in_Boston

      I fervently hope you're right. But I fear Trump shrewdly calculated he could use Gaetz as a stalking horse, to ease the path for the rest of his Star Wars pub cabinet.

      We shall see.

        1. Jasper_in_Boston

          I dunno. He's not book-smart or well-educated in the sense that term is usually understood. He's obviously very poorly read and is bereft of policy knowledge in wide areas. He's unqualified for the US presidency, for sure.

          But I do think Donald Trump possesses some kind of basic, animalistic criminal shrewdness. He intuits the psychology of competitive politics pretty well, and he honed this aptitude through years of running a sprawling criminal conspiracy (and he interned with one Roy Cohn, if the recent biopic is anything to go by).

          1. FrankM

            I would say cunning more aptly describes it. It seems more instinctive to me. "Shrewdly calculated" implies a sort of 3-dimensional chess that is beyond his capability. If there's any shrewd calculation going on, I'm pretty sure someone else is doing it. Roy Cohn was smart, but he couldn't pass those smarts on to the Donald.

            1. Josef

              He is cunning. But these appointments are solely rewards for loyalty. The only thing he wants from Patel is revenge. I doubt he cares much about anything else. Revenge and doing exactly what he's told to do without question. I think he'll find out that unquestioning devotion to Trump won't end well. Just ask Cohen and Giuliani among others.

            2. aldoushickman

              "Roy Cohn was smart"

              Please, please, please, can we retire this stupid canard? Cohn was an asshole and a mean sonofabitch, but he was not some clever mastermind. He died penniless and disbarred (after stealing funds from a client)--calling him smart is akin to calling somebody who steals from the tipjar at the coffeeshop "smart" on the theory that nobody else thinks to do it, rather than just recognizing it as reckless dickish behavior that's likely to land you in a lot of trouble.

    2. megarajusticemachine

      I think that's a rather thin hope. One or three people stand up and say no and Trump will be all over them on all the media.

      Remember what happened to Liz Cheney.

    3. kkseattle

      “The party of "law and order" still has a few responsible types. Not many, but a few.”

      All of them kiss Trump’s ass, except perhaps Lisa Murkowski.

  6. Jasper_in_Boston

    I wonder if Republican senators realize the FBI plays the dominant role in protecting our country from foreign spies from places like, uh, Russia and China.

    1. Austin

      Assumes they care. But if they’re all being paid by the Russians/Chinese, or the Russians/Chinese have kompromat on them, they’ll happily sell out the country’s security.

    2. Yehouda

      Protection from China and Russia is not the relevant issue here. The issue is that Trump wants to use the FBI to harass any opposition, and that is the point of appointing someone like Patel.

      The senators obviously know that. The question is whether they are brave enoough to stand in the way. They did it (easily) in 2017, when Trump tried the same manuever, but the situation is different now.

    1. Srho

      It's the shirt you're wearing when the Protection Squadron rouses you from your bed and hauls you away to the Trump University reeducation camp. 😢

  7. Dana Decker

    Two people I've been concerned about since the beginning, and who have mostly escaped being in the public eye, are: Boris Epshteyn and Kash Patel.

    The Patel news, along with Gabbard's selection, is a means of destroying the nation. Not all at once, but from small fractures leading to total collapse.

    Oh, and whatever Trump IS (agent, collaborator, sympathizer, amoral narcissist, useful idiot), he is taking actions that please Putin.

      1. Crissa

        He's against vaccines as they exist in his head - none of the current vaccines have the risks he ascribes to them. Thimerosal has been phased out (not that it was associated with any risk). We have no live measles vaccine anymore. His complaints are out of date and often fantastical.

  8. Justin

    I don’t even know what to say about these “activists” anymore. Bless their naive little brains.

    “A new legal petition filed by more than 170 top environmental groups demands that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) begin monitoring for microplastics in drinking water, an essential first step to reining in pollution viewed as one of the nation’s most pressing public health threats.”

    These are the “Groups” Drum and Klein wrote about. They just put another target on their backs. Let the working class choke on their plastic crap.
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/01/microplastics-epa-monitoring

  9. Salamander

    There has been talk of either

    (1) Preferable: the entire slate of Deplorables gets confirmed "by acclamation" by the Senate; no hearings necessary, because "it's customary to give a New President the appointees he wants" or

    (2) Recess appointments for all, which makes them even easier to replace when "The Best People" suddenly become "The Worst!!"

    I would suggest it's time to start talking to Republican Senators to convince them to put up a little resistance. They may typically vote as a bloc, but they are in fact individuals with their own motivations and philosophies. This is the very basis of "politics."

    1. Salamander

      Second bite at the apple (sorry!):

      (1) Of course only applies to Republican Presidents. That goes without saying, so I forgot to say it.

      (2) Depends on entire Congress adjourning for something like a fortnight or longer, which technically requires both House and Senate approval. However, the Constitution lets the President do this unilaterally. If Congress dared to call itself back into session, he could just do it again and again and again and again... But only because he's a Republican.

      Coda: Since the once-Supreme Court has ruled that this partiular guy an do any darned thing he wants to, any confirmations at all may be irrelevant.

      But in the event candidates do come up for confirmation, best we talk to our Democratic Senators, too, so they don't adopt the "New Presidents are Entitled to WhoeverThey Want" cop out. There has been far too much of that in the last half century

  10. D_Ohrk_E1

    There's probably enough Republicans who detest Kash to block him, but I think it'd be rather positive if they chickened out, then let us all watch the system collapse onto itself with the FBI affirmatively tied to far-right kooks and all cred lost across the country.

  11. D_Ohrk_E1

    Think about it this way: If Kash is confirmed, all those tech bros are going to rapidly push E2EE and inherent privacy into their products.

  12. rich1812

    I am not optimistic about stopping even the worst nominees. But there is one factor that works in favor of that outcome. Senators of both parties highly value their perogatives like blue slips. Giving anything up - even when it's in their party's best interest from a policy perspective - generally doesn't happen. That could lead to more deflections from being rubber-stamps than I expect. They also know that Trump is a lame duck and might feel that could insulate them somewhat over a longer term. Optimistic? No. But wondering what factors might impede potential doom.

    1. Yehouda

      The main reason to hope for resistance from Republican congress people is that appointing Trump nominees will give him the power to harass opposition, and the first people he is going to harass will be Republican congress people themselves, to give him more powers.

      They know that, so the question is how brave they are.

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