LOS ANGELES.–President Donald Trump’s 44-year-old FBI Director nominee Kash Patel won approval on the Senate Judiciary Committee paving the way to a full Senate vote in the days ahead. Patel was demonized by Democrats and some Republicans for saying he would carry out Trump’s retribution of former Department of Justice or FBI officials that have played dirty cop for the last nine years against Trump, starting in the 2016 campaign with the Russian hoax. Things really heated up in the Biden White House with 72 former Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland appointing 55-year-old Special Counsel Jack Smith in 2022 to charge Trump with various felonies related to Jan. 6, 2021 and retaining classified docs at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Democrat and the press accuse Patel of doing Trump’s bidding to retaliate against current and former DOJ and FBI officials that prosecuted Trump.
Sen. Dick Durbin accused Patel of organizing a purge of several top Justice Department officials in the early days of the Trump administration. Republicans, holding a 53-47 majority, have all the clout in the Judiciary Committee and full senate to get Patel confirmed. During his Jan. 30 confirmation hearing, Patel faced blistering cross examination, all of which didn’t rattle or phase him one bit. Kash remained cool as a cucumber even with combative Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who accused Patel of taking the Fifth at a grand jury inquiry into Trump classified docs case. Schiff said he wanted to see Schiff grand jury testimony before proceeding to approve him for FBI director. Republicans didn’t buy Schiff’s delay tactics, going on to approve Patel under a party line vote in the Judiciary Committee. Patel talked circles around all the hostile Democrat cross examination.
Democrats gave every excuse under the sun why Patel should not be approved, saying he lacked administrative background managing a large government department. Democrats went after Patel’s comments for FBI agent handling the Jan. 6 riots calling them in a book, “government gangsters,” referring to convicted felons as “political prisoners.” Patel never bought the government’s case against most the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters, seeing them as making a political statement following months of Black Lives Matter riots in the summer of 2000. Patel was especially critical of DOJ prosecutors beefing up charges using the Enron-era, Sarbanes-Oxley Act to tack additional jail time on already long sentences. Patel looks to run the FBI without political bias, sticking to only the facts. When the FBI investigated Trump in 2016, they used former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s fake “Steele dossier.”
Patel has openly in his past books talked about the “deep state,” something Democrats and press deny its existence. Deep state operatives are career bureaucrats with a Democrat political agenda like harassing Republicans. Trump fired 64-year-old FBI Director James Comey May 8, 2017, prompting former Deputy DOJ Director Rod Rosenstein to appoint Special Counsel Robert Muller to investigate Trump and his 2016 campaign. Rosenstein knew—and so did Mueller—that Comey’s charges against Trump were based on Hillary bogus “dossier,” but went ahead launching as $40 million, 22-month investigation to find out March 23, 2019 that Trump was not guilty of Russian collusion. Yet Democrats and the press continue to smear Trump as a “Putin puppet.”
Patel replaces former FBI Director Christopher Wray who ordered Trump Mar-a-Lago estate raided Aug. 8, 2022. So, when Democrats and the press complain about Patel engange in retribution against former FBI officials, maybe FBI employees who broke the law, including Wray, should be held accountable for rogue prosecutions. Why should anyone abusing the FBI’s authority be given a free pass because Democrats and the press hold such animus against Trump? Patel doesn’t know what to do with members of the free press that fabricated articles against Trump for years about his alleged inappropriate ties to the Kremlin. What happens to newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post when they kept fabricating stories about Trump for his links to the Kremlin? Is a free U.S. press supposed to get away with egregious disinformation and propaganda?
Patel showed the kind of grace-under-pressure that you’d like to see for an FBI directory, not the kind of partisan hysteria seen under Comey and Wray. Patel will assure that FBI’s upper management keeps politics out of bureau, serving notice that federal law enforcement is not about politics but prosecuting criminals. When Kash was a prosecutor at the DOJ, he authored a memo that slammed the FBI for investigating Trump and his 2016 campaign. Since then, he was the right fit to return the FBI to respectability, though Democrats like it when they can abuse federal agencies to go after political opponents. When you listen to Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee like Schiff, you’d think that Patel is a career criminal looking to turn the FBI into Trump’s Mafia. With Pam Bondi as Atty. Gen. and Patel as FBI Director, Trump should be in good shape for the next four years.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
