As Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, appears Thursday for his Senate confirmation hearing, some of the rhetoric he has espoused for years to defend Trump and promote Trump’s reelection is sure to elicit sharp questions about whether he is fit to lead one of the nation’s premiere law enforcement agencies.
Patel has derided the FBI as the “Federal Bureau of Insanity.” He’s announced “a mission to annihilate the ‘Deep State'” — what he calls a “cabal of unelected tyrants” inside government, undermining Trump. He’s said the conspiracy theory QAnon, claiming a secret global plot to traffic children and take down Trump, is right in many ways and “should get credit for all the things” it has accomplished.
And he once promised to “come after” and prosecute “the conspirators not just in government, but in the media” who “helped Joe Biden rig the presidential election.”
On a podcast two years ago, Trump adviser Roger Stone told Patel his critics are right about one thing: “You are a Trump loyalist.”
Patel chuckled and nodded affirmatively.
But that’s just what Democrats — and even some Republicans — on the Senate Judiciary Committee may wonder about most: If confirmed, is Patel so loyal to Trump that he would use the FBI to push Trump’s political agenda and target Trump’s perceived enemies?
