By Barbara McQuade / For Bloomberg Opinion
FBI, as most Americans know, is short for Federal Bureau of Investigation. According to the agency’s official seal, the letters also stand for Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity.
One thing the letters don’t represent is vengeance.
But Kash Patel, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI director, seems prepared to use the nation’s premier law enforcement organization for just that.
Patel served in Trump’s first administration in various roles but has made his name mostly from his fierce loyalty to the 45th president. When Trump was accused of unlawfully retaining government documents after his presidency ended in 2021, Patel claimed to have witnessed Trump declassify them all.
In 2023, Patel produced the recording “Justice for All,” featuring Trump reciting the pledge of allegiance over voices of jailed Jan. 6 defendants singing the “Star-Spangled Banner,” an effort to normalize the attack on the U.S. Capitol as a patriotic protest.
Patel even penned a trilogy of children’s books called “The Plot Against the King.” The books feature a conspiracy against “King Donald” that is thwarted by a loyal wizard whose name is … “Kash.” Nothing subtle here. Volume 1 is all about how “Keeper Komey’s spying slugs” falsely accused King Donald of cheating to win the election by working with Russia. The reference to former FBI Director James Comey’s investigation into connections between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia is barely veiled.
In addition to Patel’s obsequious loyalty to Trump, he holds radical views about the agency he has been chosen to lead. Shortly after the November election, Patel said he would “shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state.”
Other disturbing ideas for the agency appear in another of Patel’s books, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy.” There, Patel suggests moving the agency out of Washington “to curb FBI leadership from engaging in political gamesmanship.”
As a former career prosecutor, I worked closely with the FBI for almost 20 years. I know from that experience that the FBI operates under its Domestic Investigations Operations Guide, which requires investigations to be predicated on credible allegations and forbids the agency from opening investigations based on politics or First Amendment-protected activity.
Patel proposes to turn that mission on its head. Patel once proposed using the law “criminally or civilly” against Trump’s political rivals. “We will go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media,” he told Steve Bannon on the “War Room” podcast.
Patel’s bad ideas don’t end there. The former public defender and prosecutor also wants to strip the FBI of its intelligence mission. Perhaps as payback for the investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election, Patel would eliminate the FBI’s role in counterintelligence investigations. Such a move would badly damage America’s national security. With the Central Intelligence Agency restricted to conducting operations outside the United States, the FBI is the only agency that protects American interests from spy operations conducted within our borders by Russia, Iran, China and other hostile foreign adversaries.
Patel has also written that he wants to shrink the FBI’s office of general counsel, the agency’s in-house lawyers. The FISA warrant of Trump campaign aide Carter Page, which the Justice Department’s inspector general found included a false statement by an FBI lawyer, was a black eye for the office, but certainly no reason to eliminate it. Patel argues incorrectly that the office engages in “prosecutorial decision-making.” In fact, only the prosecutors at the Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office have the authority to file criminal charges. Instead, the general counsel’s office provides legal advice to agents to ensure compliance with law and policy on matters such as wiretaps, searches and arrests. If anything, the office needs more lawyers to ensure appropriate rigor in reviewing documents.
One hopes the Senate takes seriously its advice and consent role regarding a nominee as dangerous as Patel. Senators would do well to heed the advice of William Barr, who served as attorney general during Trump’s first term. Barr wrote in his memoir that he opposed Patel’s appointment then even as the FBI’s deputy director. Barr said he told White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that the appointment of Patel would occur over his “dead body.” Patel, Barr wrote, had “virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency” and that even considering him for the No. 2 job showed a “shocking detachment from reality.”
It may be that Trump is simply using Patel for the anchoring effect his nomination will have. By setting expectations so low, any other candidate will look good by comparison. Just as the nomination and withdrawal of Matt Gaetz for attorney general may have softened up the Senate for the eventual appointment of Pam Bondi, perhaps Patel is just there to pave the way for the nominee who comes next. Let’s hope it is someone who shares the values of fidelity, bravery and integrity.
Barbara McQuade is a professor at the University of Michigan Law school, a former U.S. attorney and author of “Attack from Within: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America.” More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion. ©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
