Kash Patel, Trump’s latest nominee, is just another toady

President-elect Donald Trump’s latest nomination announcement is a shocker.

Trump says he intends to appoint MAGA henchman Kash Patel as FBI Director. The news is frightening. Hopefully, Patel will fail to achieve Senate confirmation.

Trump and the Republican Senate have indicated they may skip the traditional FBI background check process for cabinet nominees. It might be argued that they don’t need background checks. The proclivities of the Trump loyalists whose names he has put forward are well known. And the results are astounding.

Accused sex offenders? No problem. People with no relevant experience? No problem. People advocating the dismemberment of the agencies they might head? No problem at all. A pro-Putin security risk to be director of National Intelligence? Petty criticism. A health minister who is anti-vax and anti-science? Bring it on. A budget director who would destroy the government by firing 50,000 civil servants? Just what we wanted.

Fealty to Trump is the common thread — the only indispensable qualification for these picks.

It has been the modern practice of American government that the law enforcement and defense establishments not be politicized. Although the Constitution puts the president in administrative charge of the executive departments, cabinet members have — at least since Watergate — been expected to execute their offices in observance of the Constitution, without regard to partisan politics.

The Kremlin understands the importance of the “power ministries,” which are the government’s teeth. In our country, this would include the Justice Department, the Defense Department, the FBI and the intelligence community.

Trump knows that these departments are where the real power lies. They must have total allegiance to him, not to the Constitution. Trump’s former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper disagreed, and Trump promptly fired him for disloyalty.

Trump has now named toadies to lead each of these institutions, a move that fosters his frequently expressed desire to use the armed forces, federal law-enforcement agents and intelligence community to deal with his political enemies. He has said it before; we know now that he means it.

Trump took a hard blow when Republican senators panned his initial choice of former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) as attorney general. He was quick to replace Gaetz with Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general and a longtime Trump loyalist.

But in naming Patel, Trump has stunned the law enforcement community. Tom Nichols argues in the Atlantic that Trump may have held off on Patel until he felt he had squeezed out enough outrage (and exhaustion) with his other nominations. But, as we know, “one swallow does not a summer make.”

The FBI already has a director, Christopher Wray, whom Trump appointed to a 10-year term only seven years ago. Trump would have to fire Wray almost immediately to make way for Patel. Trump has not concealed his hatred for Wray and would relish pushing him out the door.

Patel as FBI director would not act independently of the president. In announcing the selection on Truth Social, Trump acknowledged that Patel is a fervent believer in the “deep state,” writing, “He played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution.”

Earlier this month, Patel said, “I’d shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen the next day as a museum of the deep state. And I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals.”

The sad thing is, he was being serious.

Trump may have nominated Patel just to have him go the way of Gaetz, only to appoint him the deputy director, a position not requiring Senate confirmation. Trump’s last attorney general, Bill Barr, rejected Patel for a possible role as deputy director of the FBI, saying that Patel would be appointed “over my dead body.”

Patel appears to be precisely what Trump wants — a seasoned loyalist. When the FBI investigated Trump’s mishandling of classified documents in 2022, Patel told the tall tale that he had been present when Trump orally declassified scores of documents before he left the White House. Other officials said they knew of no such order. When Special Counsel Jack Smith pressed him on this before a federal grand jury, Patel took the Fifth.

Patel is a conspiracy theorist. A former public defender, he worked in the Justice Department’s National Security Division. Last year, Patel told Steve Bannon, one of his big supporters, that they could find conspirators in government and the media who helped Biden rig elections. He talked about both criminal prosecutions and civil actions against the “enemy within.” Can this be America?

Patel is the perfect nominee to prove that Trump doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. He takes his election victory as a mandate to turn the awesome power of the FBI over to an unqualified sycophant. He has made clear how much he hates the FBI, and he has convinced his MAGA base that it’s a cesspool of political corruption. If Trump’s goal is to destroy the FBI, Patel is the perfect nominee.

The Bureau may continue to fight crime and engage in counter-intelligence. But it would become an instrument of revenge against anyone Trump or Patel identifies as an internal enemy. If, like Trump, you wanted to be an autocrat for a day, this is exactly how you would put together the infrastructure of your authoritarian government.

It falls now to the Republican members of the Senate to fulfill their constitutional advise and consent duty and filter whether Trump can impose pernicious Patel on the nation.

James D. Zirin, author and legal analyst, is a former federal prosecutor in New York’s Southern District. He is also the host of the public television talk show and podcast Conversations with Jim Zirin.