“I have no interest, no desire and will not, if confirmed, go backwards,” Patel said at a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing at which support for the nominee broke along starkly partisan lines. “There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken.”
The reassurances were aimed at blunting a persistent line of attack from Democrats, who throughout the hearing confronted Patel with a vast catalog of prior incendiary statements on topics that they said made him unfit for the director’s job and raised alarming questions about his belief in conspiracy theories and loyalty to the president. Patel, for his part, sought to distance himself from his own words, accusing Democrats of taking them out of context, highlighting only snippets or misunderstanding his point.
The bad news is that President Trump's choice to be FBI director has a very bad memory. Ranking member Dick Durbin of Illinois asked Patel whether he is "familiar with Stew Peters," an alt-right, podcaster and "prolific anti-Semite.". After the nominee responed "not off the top of my head," Durbin reminded him that he he had "made eight separtae appearances on his podcast" and that Peters "promoted outrageous conspiracy theories and worked with a prominent neo-Nazi." Alas, Durbin failed to jog the memory of the nominee, who referred to "appearing on the media over a thousand times."
And Patel did not renounce or denounce his enemies list, which Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar conceded Patel did not label as an "enemies list." Rather, in the appendix of his 2022 Government Gansters, Patel described "Members of the Executive Branch Deep State" as being "a cabal of unelected tyrants" and "the most dangerous threat to our democracy." In December, Timothy Noah of The New Republic explained
The term “deep state” is most often used to disparage the
civil service, which Patel more or less wishes to eliminate. In addition to
reinstituting Schedule F, which would strip many civil service protections from
government workers, Patel favors legislation that allows the president to fire
civil servants directly. But almost all the people on Patel’s enemies list are
political appointees.
The Definitely-Not-Enemies-List, according to Noah, includes
Michael Atkinson (former inspector general of the intelligence community)
Lloyd Austin (defense secretary under President Joe Biden)
Brian Auten (supervisory intelligence analyst, FBI)
James Baker (not the former secretary of state; this James
Baker is former general counsel for the FBI and former deputy general counsel
at Twitter)
Bill Barr (former attorney general under Trump)
John Bolton (former national security adviser under Trump)
Stephen Boyd (former chief of legislative affairs, FBI)
Joe Biden (president of the United States)
John Brennan (former CIA director under President Barack
Obama)
John Carlin (acting deputy attorney general, previously ran
DOJ’s national security division under Trump)
Eric Ciaramella (former National Security Council staffer,
Obama and Trump administrations)
Pat Cippolone (former White House counsel under Trump)
James Clapper (Obama’s director of national intelligence)
Hillary Clinton (former secretary of state and presidential
candidate)
James Comey (former FBI director)
Elizabeth Dibble (former deputy chief of mission, U.S.
Embassy, London)
Mark Esper (former secretary of defense under Trump)
Alyssa Farah (former director of strategic communications
under Trump)
Evelyn Farkas (former deputy assistant secretary of defense
for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia under Obama)
Sarah Isgur Flores (former DOJ head of communications under
Trump)
Merrick Garland (attorney general under Biden)
Stephanie Grisham (former press secretary under Trump)
Kamala Harris (vice president under Biden; former
presidential candidate)
Gina Haspel (CIA director under Trump)
Fiona Hill (former staffer on the National Security Council)
Curtis Heide (FBI agent)
Eric Holder (former attorney general under Obama)*
Robert Hur (special counsel who investigated Biden over
mishandling of classified documents)
Cassidy Hutchinson (aide to Trump chief of staff Mark
Meadows)
Nina Jankowicz (former executive director, Disinformation
Governance Board, under Biden)
Lois Lerner (former IRS director under Obama)
Loretta Lynch (former attorney general under Obama)
Charles Kupperman (former deputy national security adviser
under Trump)
Gen. Kenneth Mackenzie, retired (former commander of United
States Central Command)
Andrew McCabe (former FBI deputy director under Trump)
Ryan McCarthy (former secretary of the Army under Trump)
Mary McCord (former acting assistant attorney general for
national security under Obama)
Denis McDonough (former chief of staff for Obama, secretary
of veterans affairs under Biden)
Gen. Mark Milley, retired (former chairman, Joint Chiefs of
Staff)
Lisa Monaco (deputy attorney general under Biden)
Sally Myer (former supervisory attorney, FBI)
Robert Mueller (former FBI director, special counsel for
Russiagate)
Bruce Ohr (former associate deputy attorney general under
Obama and Trump)
Nellie Ohr (wife of Bruce Ohr and former CIA employee)
Lisa Page (former legal counsel for Deputy Director Andrew
McCabe at FBI under Obama and Trump; exchanged texts about Trump with Peter
Strzok)
Pat Philbin (former deputy White House counsel under Trump)
John Podesta (former counselor to Obama; senior adviser to
Biden on climate policy)
Samatha Power (former ambassador to the United Nations under
Obama, administrator of AID under Biden)
Bill Priestap (former assistant director for
counterintelligence, FBI, under Obama)
Susan Rice (former national security adviser under Obama,
director of the Domestic Policy Council under Biden)
Rod Rosenstein (former deputy attorney general under Trump)
Peter Strzok (former deputy assistant director for
counterintelligence, FBI, under Obama and Trump; exchanged texts about Trump
with Lisa Page)
Jake Sullivan (national security adviser under President Joe
Biden)
Michael Sussman (former legal representative, Democratic
National Committee)
Miles Taylor (former DHS official under Trump; penned New
York Times op-ed critical of Trump under the byline, “Anonymous”)
Timothy Thibault (former assistant special agent, FBI)
Andrew Weissman (Mueller’s deputy in Russiagate probe)
Alexander Vindman (former National Security Council director
for European affairs)
Christopher Wray (FBI director under Trump and Biden; Trump
nominated Patel to replace him even though Wray’s term doesn’t expire until
August 2027)
Sally Yates (former deputy attorney general under Obama and,
briefly, acting attorney general under Trump)
"It's nevr a good time to bow down to a dictator," asserted Jim Acosta on Tuesday in his sign-off from CNN. Nor to his prsoanl FBI director, he might have added.
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