Victor Davis Hanson
Kash Patel/FBI Director
There are four “controversial” Trump nominees that the Left has gone DefCon1 on, in order to swing an anticipated 3-4 Rhino Republican senators—and thus, block them by a 1-2 vote margin: Kash Patel (FBI), Pete Hegseth (DOD), Tulsi Gabbard (DNI), and RFK, Jr. (HHS).
Yet the hits against Kash Patel are strategically different from those aimed at the other three candidates, given Patel’s resume is, by the Left’s own government-service standards, well beyond reproach.
Legally and in terms of investigative experience, Patel is as impressive as any his age for a major agency intelligence/investigative directorship (e.g. former Chief of Staff to Acting Secretary of Defense; Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council; Principal Deputy to the Acting Director of National Intelligence; National Security Advisor and Senior Counsel for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; terrorism prosecutor at the Department of Justice, DOJ Liaison Officer to Joint Special Operations Command public defender, BA/JD).
So, what then are the three areas of leftwing attack on the Patel nomination?
One, he has never worked for the FBI.
Two, he has never worked in law enforcement per se.
Three, he is a “rabid” Trump supporter and thus supposedly has been indiscreet in his views on the controversial reforms needed at the FBI, especially given that the agency reportedly earlier had tried to monitor stealthily Patel’s own communications when he worked for the House Intelligence Committee under the directorship of the chairman, former Rep. Devin Nunes.
Let us examine the complaints, juxtapositioned with the standards established by former FBI Directors that might have shed light on the Patel nomination.
One, remember what the FBI has done during the last eight years: hired foreign national Christopher Steele as a paid informant to compile dirt on Donald Trump under the aegis of a supposed Crossfire Hurricane investigation of (bogus) “Russian collusion.”
It conspired with social media such as Facebook and Twitter to suppress news stories that were felt to be unfavorable to the FBI and the Biden 2020 candidacy.
The prior three of the last four FBI Directors have either lied under federal oath or stonewalled Congress.
Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating the “Russian Collusion” hoax, claimed he knew nothing about the Steele Dossier and its author, or Fusion GPS—much less their respective roles in crafting the entire collusion ruse. Yet the claims of the fraudulent dossier and the sinister role of Fusion GPS prompted the very appointment of Mueller as special counsel.
His denials under oath were laughable.
His successor James Comey misinformed, deliberately, the President that he was not a subject of an FBI investigation, when in fact he certainly was. Comey memorialized a private one-on-one conversation with the President on FBI devices. And then he deliberately leaked its confidential contents to the New York Times, via a third party to disguise his own role, which was frankly despicable for an FBI Director.
Comey’s interim successor Andrew McCabe infamously was referenced by paramour agents Lisa Page and Peter Strzok as knee-deep in the Crossfire Hurricane effort to ensure the 2016 Trump candidacy failed.
Or as Strozk assured Page, “I want to believe the path you threw out in Andy’s [McCabe’s] office—that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take the risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”
In other words, Page, Strzok, and McCabe were scheming to use the FBI to ensure “there’s no way he gets elected.” And that plan apparently meant ginning up “collusion,” hiring the charlatan Christopher Steele, and legitimatizing Hillary Clinton’s effort to lie that Trump was a Russian asset by lending the FBI imprimatur to such nonsense.
Clinton found natural allies in Comey/McCabe FBI culture. In 2016 she had blasted Trump supporters as irredeemables and “deplorables”. And in the Page-Strzok correspondence, Strozk characterized rural Northern Virginians as “ignorant hillbillies” and in addition wrote to his paramour Page, “Just went to a Southern Virginia Walmart. I could smell the Trump support.”
On Patel’s nomination, Andrew McCabe just weighed calling his nomination “a terrible development,” and blasted him as a disrupter who will use the FBI as a tool for a “political agenda.”
Project much, Mr. McCabe?
Do you mean that you fear Patel might use the agency to go after a presidential campaign by fabricating false charges that it was controlled by Russia while hiring a discredited foreign agent to manufacture evidence?
Quid rides? Mutato nomine et de te fabula narrator.
Why do you laugh? Change only the name and this story is about you.
To be continued…
Discussion (2)
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DemoRATS and lefties will do or say anything for power, even eat their own.
One has to wonder if this is 4D chess on Trump's part. Play to the fact that the Left has little to no emotional self-discipline and give them Cabinet choices who would be effective if confirmed but will evoke from them extreme responses and expenditure of pollitical capital to defeat them. So when Trump rolls out the people he intended for the jobs, they're tired and spent. Trump has to realize that every successful defeat emboldens his foes to defeat the next one. But nobody can sustain a constant stream of freakouts, certainly not the RINOs the Democrats need.