On Thursday, america Senate narrowly confirmed Kash Patel to guide the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Patel is a loyalist to President Donald Trump who has incessantly expressed a want to make use of the Division of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI to focus on the commander-in-chief’s political opponents.
Each Democratic and impartial senator — plus two Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — voted against Patel. In a press release earlier than the vote, Collins mentioned she couldn’t assist Patel’s nomination as a result of he wasn’t an “apolitical” selection to guide the company.
“Mr. Patel’s latest political profile undermines his skill to serve,” Collins said.
Regardless of bipartisan opposition towards him, the remaining 51 Republican senators backed Patel to guide the FBI, thereby confirming him.
Patel has previously worked as a DOJ lawyer, a congressional staffer, chief of employees for the Division of Protection, and as a counterterrorism adviser throughout the Nationwide Safety Council throughout Trump’s first time period. He has frequently promulgated conspiracy theories, together with these falsely alleging {that a} “deep state” is working towards Trump.
Following his affirmation vote, Patel wrote on social media that he would use his place to go after “those that search to hurt Individuals” and to pursue an agenda that he described as “America all the time.”
“We are going to hunt you down in each nook of this planet,” he mentioned, directing his assertion to a obscure set of “enemies,” which, in his previous statements, have included these in opposition to Trump.
Patel has a protracted historical past of controversy throughout his career.
Whereas working within the authorities, for instance, he broke protocol by publicly commenting “with out authorization” on a hostage negotiation relating to two Individuals being held captive in Yemen, an incident that might have value these people their lives, consultants mentioned.
Patel’s loyalty to Trump appears to haven’t any bounds. He falsely claimed, for instance, that Trump, as an outgoing president, was allowed to switch tons of of categorized paperwork to his private, unsecured Mar-a-Lago property, citing the Presidential Records Act. The legislation doesn’t give ex-presidents that authority.
“Whenever you’re president and you allow, you possibly can take no matter you need. And whenever you take it, whether or not it’s categorized or not, it’s yours,” Patel claimed in 2023.
Patel additionally wrote a collection of kids’s books known as “The Plot Towards the King,” that includes a personality that appeared and acted like Trump. (Notably, Trump described himself as a “king” in a social media put up earlier this week.)
And in a 2022 e-book entitled “Authorities Gangsters,” Patel listed dozens of people, principally Democratic Celebration officers or figures who in any other case opposed Trump, who he believed should be targeted by a future Trump administration. Many consultants have described the record as Patel’s “enemies record.”
Questioned on these and different controversies throughout his nomination listening to earlier than the Senate, Patel largely avoided answering at all.
Critics lambasted Senate Republicans for pushing by means of Patel’s nomination.
“We can not give Trump’s henchmen the good thing about the doubt — particularly once they’re in full management of federal legislation enforcement. … Patel’s affirmation places our fundamental rights and nationwide safety in danger,” mentioned Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin.
Joyce Vance, a former U.S. Legal professional who’s at the moment a legislation professor on the College of Alabama, noted that “Patel’s main qualification for the job is his loyalty to Donald Trump.”
She added:
Now that we have now a president who rejects a rule of legislation system of presidency, anybody may discover themself past the due course of protections the legislation provides us from unjust remedy. Solely the courts and Congress can examine the president, and so they have to be keen to take action. The Senate failed at that right this moment once they confirmed Kash Patel.
Maya Wiley, president and CEO of The Management Convention on Civil and Human Rights, additionally condemned Patel’s affirmation, recognizing that Patel would possible keep on the FBI’s lengthy custom of weaponizing investigations.
“As a civil rights group, we all know firsthand what it was prefer to have an ideological FBI that surveilled and infiltrated the civil rights motion and its leaders — most notably by means of its COINTELPRO operation that famously and shamefully focused Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., scholar activists, and folks combating poverty,” Wiley said. “Identify-calling, driving concern, and concentrating on the victims of crimes due to their viewpoints is a darkish a part of our previous. We can not permit it to once more turn into our actuality.”
“Based mostly on Mr. Patel’s file and what we have now already seen on the FBI in latest weeks, it’s clear that the agenda of this administration is to hunt retribution towards perceived foes and goal weak communities,” Wiley added.
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