December 3, 2024
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On Saturday, President-elect Trump confirmed it: his choice for the new FBI director is none other than the brilliant and eminently qualified Kash Patel, who has made it clear that he would work to dismantle the bureaucracy, saying, “I’d shut down the Hoover FBI Building on Day 1 and reopen it as a museum of the Deep State.”
https://x.com/TrumpDailyPosts/status/1863007459788628379
Of course, this also confirms that current Director Christopher Wray is being given the boot. There’s no need at this point to expound on why that resounding kick out the door and down the steps is so richly deserved on his part.
(To those without a clue who’ve actually said, “But Wray is a Republican who was appointed by Trump,” we’d simply reply that he’s made it clear through his actions and his total lack of transparency that he’s a “Republican” only in the sense that Liz Cheney or his own predecessor James Comey is one. Keep in mind, Wray got that job because he was recommended to DC-neophyte President Trump by Chris Christie, who should forever hang his head in shame for such a lousy suggestion. As time passed and Biden took the White House, Wray just happened to fit right in with the Biden administration’s goals, fulfilling Attorney General Merrick Garland’s dictums as diligently and opaquely as any Democrat might have done.)
If you’d like a refresher on Wray, here’s a scathing reminder from Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who’s in line to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee in the next Senate term, to our good fortune...
But enough about Wray. Does someone as perfect for the job as Patel have any hope of actually being confirmed by the new Senate? Texas Sen. Ted Cruz predicts he will be, along with Trump’s other nominees. He quickly runs through Patel’s outstanding qualifications.
“I gotta say,” Cruz continues, “all of the weeping and gnashing of teeth, all of the people pulling their hair out, are exactly the people who are dismayed about having a real reformer come into the FBI and clean out the corrupted partisans who sadly have burrowed into senior career positions at the FBI.”
The clip is just a little over a minute long. News analysts at CBS’s FACE THE NATION must have loved hearing this from Sen. Cruz...
Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty concurs that Patel “represents the type of change that we need to see in the FBI.” Here he is on NBC’s MEET THE PRESS, whose host was probably every bit as thrilled to hear this as the folks at CBS were, meaning not. (Read her solemn expression at the end to see how she likely felt.) Mainstream “journalists” must be profoundly dismayed at the prospect of losing their leaky FBI “anonymous sources.” Again, just a brief, must-see clip...
Kash Patel is SO highly qualified for the job of FBI director that anyone who criticizes him on this score is really saying, in the words of commentator J. D. Rucker, “Holy c**p! Kash Patel’s gonna catch us all!”
Rucker also posted in more detail on X that this is why they’re going to come after him “with all they’ve got.” It’s a must-read. Surely both President Trump and Patel himself are aware of what’s ahead for the confirmation process. Those desperate enough, with enough to lose, will try anything and everything, just as they have with President Trump. (Oh, no, are we all going to be subjected again to the Democrats “trotting out the women”?)
https://x.com/JDRucker/status/1863247098969546850
Patel’s name had previously been floated as the possible nominee for DEPUTY director, which doesn’t require Senate confirmation. But Trump apparently is feeling confident that Patel will get through, as he should. Pam Bondi, as U.S. Attorney General, will be his boss.
https://dailycaller.com/2024/11/30/donald-trump-kash-patel-fbi-director/
We hope that together, Bondi and Patel can rid the “justice” system of politicized actions such as this…
At this point, you’ve seen plenty from Patel’s stellar resume. But some are noting that former Attorney General Bill Barr said this about Patel in his 2022 book:
“I categorically opposed making Patel deputy FBI director. I told Mark Meadows it would happen ‘over my dead body.’ In the first place, all the leadership positions in the bureau, except the director, have always been FBI agents. They've all gone through the same agent training and have had broad experience in the field and at headquarters. Someone with no background as an agent would never be able to command the respect necessary to run the day-to-day operations of the bureau. Furthermore, Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency.”
Bonchie at REDSTATE wryly comments: “I can’t think of a better endorsement for Patel to serve as FBI director than that.”
He also notes David Frum’s post on X: “We are headed toward a US constitutional crisis vastly bigger than Watergate.” (What, by appointing people who are not career bureaucrats? Seems as though that would make the framers of the Constitution very happy!) As Bonchie points out, “No, we are not heading for a ‘constitutional crisis,’ because the FBI is not a constitutional agency. It is a bloated, corrupt bureaucracy under the direct leadership of the President and one in desperate need of a house cleaning.” Thomas Jefferson, in his day, would likely have been so fed up that he’d call for much more drastic action than what Trump is taking, which is simply to follow the authority given him under the Constitution to make his own appointments, subject to Senate approval.
But, anyway, get ready for a lot more hysterical nonsense like that.
Here’s REDSTATE’s Nick Arama, commenting on the screams coming from former deputy FBI Director (and current MSNBC contributor) Andrew McCabe’s corner. Delightful to behold!
Becca Lower at REDSTATE points out two more whose jaws are sore from all the teeth-gnashing: former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton and Biden National Security Advisor (and Russia hoaxer) Jake Sullivan. Be sure to read her piece for the quote from Sen. Hagerty about how Biden appointees such as Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who organized the now-infamous “classic earmarks” letter about Hunter Biden’s laptop, “qualified” for their jobs and security clearances
Susie Moore, also at REDSTATE, points out that while former top officials are having a fit, former FBI agents seem quite pleased and even ecstatic about Patel…
In more from REDSTATE, Streiff notes that Bolton actually compared Patel to Lavrenty Beria, a Stalin loyalist who became head of the secret police. According to Streiff at REDSTATE, Beria “carried out the purges of the 30s, ran the gulag system, and kept the Red Army in the field during the trying 1940-1942 period through the use of political commissars, blocking units and summary executions.” Streiff calls Bolton’s statement “mind-bogglingly stupid” and considers it to be quite a solid endorsement of Patel.
FBI agent-turned-whistleblower Steve Friend has some recommendations for the new FBI director. “Director Patel should immediately dissolve the FBI case quota system and Intelligence Branch,” he told PJ MEDIA’S Catherine Salgado. “These protocols have contributed to the bureau’s devolution into a politicized secret police force.”
In the “case quota system,” as explained by Friend, offices and agents are supposed to log a specific number of cases in specific categories, and their promotions rest in their ability to fulfill these. (Think January 6.) Did you even know they had this? On its face, this is a terrible system. It induces agents to create crimes that don’t even exist, and to ignore other types of crimes that aren’t at the top of the priority list, in order to reach arbitrary statistical goals. Patel should retire this system on Day 1.
Over the weekend (before the Patel nomination was announced), legal analyst Andrew C. McCarthy wrote an unfortunate piece for NATIONAL REVIEW called “Trump Needs to End Lawfare,” in which he lamented the thought of Trump using the legal system to go after what he admits were “bad prosecutions.” He found it disturbing that Trump would echo Steve Bannon’s “battle cry for lawfare.” Read it if you’d like…
https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/11/trump-needs-to-end-lawfare/
...but what really is a must-read is Julie Kelly’s response, in which she absolutely takes his argument apart. She’s THE preeminent January 6 expert, and her piece is so masterful, we’ll just give her the floor and encourage you to offer her your undivided attention.
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