How Trump Rolled Out this Kash Patel Pick Is Part of Spinning False Claims about Rule of Law

I was busy serving Thanksgiving Dinner and watching Irish election returns yesterday when Trump announced Kash Patel as his pick to be FBI Director. I’ve long been assuming that, wherever Patel ended up, he would have access to any files at FBI (look to John Solomon and Catherine Herridge to have a lot of inside tracks on propaganda). So the question was just a matter of how Trump gave Patel access to politicize FBI. By picking Patel as the Director rather than Deputy Director (only the former of which requires confirmation), Trump did so in the maximally confrontational way.

Here are four thoughts on how that confrontation plays out.

First, by picking Kash and including false claims about the Deep State in his announcement, Trump forces journalists to address his false claims. Here’s how Devlin Barrett and Maggie Haberman chose to replicate Trump’s false claims with no correction, for example.

Mr. Patel has been closely aligned with Mr. Trump’s belief that much of the nation’s law enforcement and national security establishment needs to be purged of bias and held accountable for what they see as unjustified investigations and prosecutions of Mr. Trump and his allies.

Mr. Patel “played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability and the Constitution,” Mr. Trump said in announcing his choice in a social media post.

He called Mr. Patel “a brilliant lawyer, investigator and ‘America First’ fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American people.”

Mr. Patel, a favorite of Mr. Trump’s political base, has worked as a federal prosecutor and a public defender, but has little of the law enforcement and management experience typical of F.B.I. directors.

It is provably false that the investigations into Trump were partisan. There were three investigations of Hillary during the 2016 election (the server investigation, the Clinton Foundation investigation predicated off of right wing oppo research, and a third that was probably the Emirates’ effort to cozy up to her campaign). Joe Biden was investigated for retaining classified documents, just like Trump was. Thousands of other people were investigated for January 6.

Your choice to describe Trump’s false claim (and describing it as a belief, which you cannot know) without correction is simply participation in propaganda. (Politico at least called out Patel for “perpetuating conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.”)

And what Trump calls a hoax resulted in judgments that Trump’s Coffee Boy, National Security Adviser, campaign manager, personal lawyer, and rat-fucker all lied to cover up what really happened with Russia in the 2016 election. Journalists could choose to state that every time Trump calls it a hoax. NYT has almost never chosen to do that, which is how Trump’s propaganda works so well.

But longtime FBI journalists like Barrett will offer some other reason why Patel is a terrible pick — here, insinuating he doesn’t have the experience to do the job. I don’t know: After babysitting Ric Grenell at ODNI, Kash babysat Christopher Miller at DOD. That’s high level — if brief — experience.

Others — like CNN — look to the 10-year term set by statute to suggest Patel’s appointment is problematic.

FBI directors serve 10-year terms in part to shield the bureau’s leader from political pressure. FBI directors serve decadelong terms as the result of a post-Watergate law passed in response to J. Edgar Hoover’s controversial 48-year leadership of the agency.

The breaking of this norm is not new for Trump, who fired Comey shortly after taking office in 2017. Comey, who helmed the FBI during the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election as well as the Hillary Clinton email controversy, was fired by Trump in May 2017 after serving in the position for over three years.

It’s true there’s a 10-year term. But I looked: Only William Webster served 10 and only 10 years. Robert Mueller was kept overtime, in part because he had authorized surveillance programs that were under fire. Louis Freeh resigned in the midst of scandals, leaving the seat open in advance of 9/11. Comey, of course, was fired because he wouldn’t kill the investigation into Mike Flynn before Mike Flynn confessed to lying to cover up his calls with Russia’s ambassador.

I raise that point because the question of whether Kash’s politicization of the Bureau would be so detrimental that it would lead to threats against the US going undisturbed should be the key issue in this confirmation fight. Undoubtedly, corruption (including in the form of Jared’s father being appointed to be Ambassador to France, which Trump also announced yesterday) will start to erode US remaining integrity, up and down government and the economy. It’s certainly possible that counterintelligence and hacking threats will go ignored; already in the first Trump Administration, people with expertise on Russia were driven out, and that would presumably continue. Mis- and disinformation would be protected.

Are those who oppose a Kash appointment able to explain those risks, which is what has really driven Director’s terms?

The Kash appointment heightens my interest in what DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz will do going forward. Trump has threatened to fire the Inspectors General and Horowitz is the most prominent — but Chuck Grassley has pushed back. That said, Horowitz has survived where he is by catering to Republican demands. So I’m wondering not just whether Horowitz could survive in the job, which would serve as a strong check on Patel. But also whether we’ll get two reports that will expose Trump’s past politicization in ways important to a potential Patel pick.

The report on January 6, for example, will lay out how Jeffrey Clark tried to take over DOJ to make it into an object of Trump’s reelection. It will also describe how FBI’s treatment of right wing extremists as informants undermined DOJ’s ability to anticipate January 6. Horowitz has committed to try to release this report by inauguration, but if he does, it could precipitate his firing.

There’s also a report on the investigation of journalists and Members of Congress to find sources for anti-Trump coverage in the first Trump term. This is precisely the kind of politicized investigation that Kash has promised (he has specifically promised to go after people who accurately report on things like the Hunter Biden laptop). The report is badly overdue, but it also threatens to trigger a backlash.

Finally, consider two aspects of the timing of this pick. First, by announcing it now, Trump has made Chris Wray a lame duck. Anyone investigating something that might implicate Trump — such as those investigating Polymarket CEO Shane Coplan — will know that they will have no top cover in a matter of weeks. That was already true, mind you: Pam Bondi would see to that. Plus, it was already clear that Trump was going to replace Wray. Still, this could have a chilling effect on ongoing investigations — or it could create very interesting martyrs at the beginning of Trump’s term.

Then there’s another aspect to the timing. Trump announced this pick — as he did the decision implanting all his defense attorneys at DOJ — while Jack Smith’s prosecutors are working on their report. And Kash should show up in that report, at least to lay out his false public claims that Trump had declassified all the documents he took with him (and possibly even his demand that he got immunity before giving that testimony). I’m not sure how central that will be to a report. But Trump had a choice about how confrontational to be with how he installed Kash in a place to dismantle the so-called Deep State, and his choice to be maximally confrontational may have a tie to this report.

People are currently thinking of all the other ways Kash has helped serve Trump’s false claims in the past — the false claim that the Russian investigation was predicated on the Steele dossier, efforts to override Ukraine experts during that impeachment, attempts to misrepresent the Russian investigation. But the Smith report may well explain that Trump’s FBI Director nominee played a more central role in Trump’s effort to spin Trump’s efforts to take hundreds of classified documents home. So when Kash gets a confirmation hearing, it will put the veracity of the Smith report centrally at issue. If Senators find the report convincing, they should have renewed cause to reject Patel’s nomination, but Trump has almost without exception forced GOP Senators to believe his false claims to avoid scary confrontations with him, so I wouldn’t bet against Trump and Kash.

Trump has spent eight years sowing propaganda about his own corruption and crimes. Not just Patel’s nomination to a position in which he could thoroughly politicize rule of law, but also the means by which Trump made that nomination, is part of that same project.

We have a brief two months to try to reverse eight years of propaganda, propaganda often assisted by journalists playing data mule for Trump’s Truth Social propaganda or exhibiting laziness about correcting his false claims. If Trump succeeds, it will grow far more difficult to sort out truth from crime anymore.

That was always going to be true. But the means by which Trump is conducting his effort is all part of the propaganda campaign.

Update: Roger Parloff linked the 302 interview with someone who is likely Eric Herschmann describing someone who is almost certainly Kash Patel lying about having a standing declassification order.

Also, LOLGOP re-released our Ball of Thread episode that focuses closely on Patel’s propaganda about Crossfire Hurricane.

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41 replies
  1. Ewan Woodsend says:

    “Your choice..” you meant “NYT’s choice” or “Maggie Haberman’s choice” perhaps.

  2. Joberly1954 says:

    Who better to help us understand the pick of Patel for FBI director than EW? We’ll have to study up on the history of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s 2016 investigation of Russian intelligence and the Trump campaign. In the last few days of the Trump Administration in January 2021, Patel was busy with Trump and Mark Meadows in declassifying FBI Crossfire Hurricane records. Presumably, any Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on a prospective Patel nomination will explore Trump’s handling of classified documents, both in and out of office. How, for example, did Trump’s Jan 17, 2021 declassification order relating to Crossfire Hurricane records became Patel’s June 2022 claim that everything taken to Mar-a-Lago on January 20, 2021 was declassified because Trump had a “standing order” about documents taken to Trump’s residence(s). I wonder if Patel will be able to keep his many stories straight?

  3. Twaspawarednot says:

    It is my understanding that declassification requires records of declassification, including the well defined stamps and multiple signatures on the cover page. Knowing this is part of the brief given when a person is given security clearance.

    • boloboffin says:

      This was likely the case before US v Trump. If classification and declassification is not part of the President’s core constitutional duties (for which he cannot even be questioned), he will certainly enjoy presumptive immunity for any such actions he takes or claims to have taken. With the current Supreme Court, the bar for removing that presumptive immunity will be high.

      I would be happy to be wrong about this.

      • Twaspawarednot says:

        Without the proper process and signatures and marking they cannot claim the documents were declassified. Whether he can be held accountable is another issue.

  4. JustAPerson says:

    All I can say is, Patel is just another fine kleptocratic kakistocratic asshole to join the Trump junta.
    Gotta love it [sarcasm]. America in steep decline that I doubt from which we will never recover.

  5. wa_rickf says:

    Trump Admin 2.0 will be corrupt AF. It’s sad for me to see our great country be subjected to this kind of absurdity as Trump’s proposed picks are. But, this is what the very narrow majority of voters wanted.

    Trump picking Jared Kushner’s pardoned felon father as Ambassador to France, now Kash Patel as FBI director – actually ALL of Trump’s picks – are simply nauseating

    .

    • Konny_2022 says:

      And after that, according to Huffpost: “Trump Taps A Second In-Law For Key Government Position. On Sunday, the president-elect announced plans to appoint Massad Boulos, the father of Tiffany Trump’s husband, to serve as his senior adviser on Arab affairs.”

  6. Sussex Trafalgar says:

    Outstanding piece, especially considering it was completed over a holiday and local elections!

    Like many people, I believe Trump and his Administration will degrade the Federal government’s institutions and rule of law. That will also negatively affect many states, especially Democratic Party controlled states that he will specifically target.

    The House of Representatives is completely dysfunctional—Republican Leadership and the rank and file Republicans will give Trump everything he wants.

    A handful of Senate Republicans may push back against Trump if each of them believes Trump can’t hurt them now or in the future. I wouldn’t depend, however, on Senate Republicans putting in place guard rails to keep Trump within the Rule of Law and the Constitution.

    I do, however, believe Justices Amy Coney Barrett, John Roberts and, perhaps to a lesser extent, Brett Kavanaugh, will form a majority when needed to keep Trump from destroying the Constitutions and the Rule of Law.

    I think what concerns Trump the most, however, is that he knows his presidential control over the military is weak at best because he’s such an arse and many in the military find him despicable, gross and disgusting. The US military has been a pretty steady operating institution since the founding of the nation. And it is a large institution.

    It’s going to get real ugly and downright bad over the next four years of Trump being in office. And perhaps that’s what it will take for many of the voters who switched from voting for Biden in 2020 to voting for Trump in 2024, to
    realize he or she made a huge mistake voting for him. These voters, however, will need to feel real pain, both economically and emotionally, to arrive at that conclusion.

    And if it gets real bad and ugly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the military decides to take action against Trump to protect the Constitution and the Rule of Law.

    • bgThenNOw says:

      Does anyone seriously believe these SC members will push back? I want to hope so, but I won’t hold my breath. After all Roberts and Co. gave Him immunity. Do you think Roberts actually wants a ChristoFascist state? It is hard not to think he has been working on this for decades with his various movidas.

    • Troutwaxer says:

      And if it gets real bad and ugly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the military decides to take action against Trump to protect the Constitution and the Rule of Law.

      However much someone might wish for that – and I do understand the wish – such military interventions don’t, historically, create an honest, uncorrupt government. Instead, they are, historically, an ‘ordinary’ part of the decline of a once uncorrupt state.

  7. bgthenNow says:

    I hope there will be some reporting somewhere about which of the R Senators might be able to stand for the Constitution on confirmation of any/all of these bad actors. Marcy/commenters, when you think of the media environment, are there outlets we might be able to push to also defend the Constitution? Threats from the likes of KP are daunting with some vulnerable outlets, though I am sure there will be some that will take their chances. I will increase my donation to ACLU. And if we can organize in our own communities, perhaps we can motivate some collective action on these. I am promoting the idea of organizing “peoples congresses” to join forces under some kind of pro-democracy umbrella.

    • Nessnessess says:

      But what would prevent Trump from declaring the ACLU a terrorist organization, an enemy of the people and the state?

    • Harry Eagar says:

      Perhaps there should be an emptywheel Legal Defense Fund.

      As for the press, I note that this morning Ken Dilanian at MSNBC repeatedly called Patel a conspiracy theorist, cited to the Senate Republicans on the authenticity of Russia, Russia, Russia and generally took a forthright position.

      But my reading of press history suggests that when fascism is on the march, the press is a minor obstacle. Edgar Ansel Mowrer was sounding th alarm about Hitler in the then-influential Chicago Daily News even before Hitler became shancellor; and in Europe the leading political journalist Winston Churchill had a continent-wide readership without much apparent impact.

  8. Matt Foley says:

    “Your choice to describe Trump’s false claim (and describing it as a belief, which you cannot know) without correction is simply participation in propaganda.”

    Thank you for pointing this out. They label their lies as “beliefs” or “concerns” or “just asking questions” etc. This way they can falsely claim that pointing out their lies is an attack on their freedom of speech and even freedom of thought. To them the truth is secondary. The most disturbing thing to me about Trump and MAGAs is how violently they defend their lies (election fraud, vaccines, etc.) in the name of freedom.

    • Peterr says:

      It is the ultimate in “he said/she said” pseudo-journalism. Boiling it down, they are saying “Our job is to report what both sides said, not to sort out who is lying and who is telling the truth.”

  9. earlofhuntingdon says:

    But the former frontrunner for the job, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, flunked his Mar-a-Lago meeting with Trump. Bailey “looked the part” but “just didn’t have the presence in the room,” we’re told.

    That framing is a tad credulous. Of course Axios was told that, but it should know better. Even a passing familiarity with Recruiting 101 would suggest that having or not having “presence in the room,” for a particular job is readily apparent, and did not require a trip to MAL.

    If Bailey was ever under serious consideration and “blew it,” it was not because he lacked presence. If he failed, it’s more probable that he refused to confirm zealously enough that, as FBI Director, he would follow Trump’s demands to the letter, and, indeed, anticipate them.

    But it seems more likely that Bailey was a stalking horse for the Patel appointment Trump wanted to make all along, and that someone on Trump’s staff had sufficient juice to stage manage it better than usual.

    https://www.axios.com/2024/12/01/trump-cabinet-kash-patel-fbi

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      The St. Louis Post-Dispatch keeps a running tally of Andrew Bailey’s abuses of power — in his less than two years as state AG — but it’s paywalled. There are a few non-paywalled summaries of it. They support why Bailey might have been shortlisted to be Trump’s FBI Director. But they don’t support the notion that he lacks “presence in the room.” If anything, he has too much presence, which wouldn’t fit Trump’s personality at all. Patel is as ambitious, but more obsequious.

      The St. Louis Post-Dispatch maintains The Bailey Tally, “[a] running count of the many instances in which Missouri’s official lawyer has abused the legal process, refused to do his job and/or engaged in blatant conflicts of interest, all in service to an extremist right-wing agenda.”

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Bailey_(politician)
      https://www.bishop-accountability.org/2024/05/the-bailey-tally-punting-on-christian-boarding-school-abuse/1

      • Peterr says:

        If you scroll through the list of the press releases from Bailey’s office, you will see page after page after page of Bailey using his position to advance Trump’s positions and pet causes.

        For instance, last March he breathlessly announced “Attorney General Bailey Demands DOJ Turn Over Documents Relating to Prosecutions of President Trump”:

        Today, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey demanded that the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) turn over any communications relating to the investigation or prosecutions of President Trump. His request for communications – documents, calendar appointments, meeting minutes and agendas – includes those between the DOJ and the offices of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, New York Attorney General Leticia James, and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

        That “demand” was an ordinary FOIA request.

        Bailey has been pushing to get a senior position in the Trump Administration from the day he took office as MO AG. I have no doubt Trump likes Bailey, but Bailey doesn’t know DC and the DOJ the way Patel or Bondi do.

        Total wild guess here: Watch for Bailey to show up on a list of judicial nominations announced by the Trump press secretary. I can easily see Trump telling Bailey at the Mar-a-Lago chit-chat, “Andrew, you’re a nice guy, and while you might be good at DOJ or FBI, what I’d really like to do is put you on on the federal bench. But for now, let’s keep this between the two of us, OK?”

        • earlofhuntingdon says:

          I was hoping you had additional background on Bailey. He’s a Trumpy, just not the one who’ll run the FBI. There will be a host of good slots open to him. Apart from being a federal judge, somebody has to become Kash Patel’s Clyde Tolson.

        • Mart7890 says:

          Nothing but the best AG’s in Missouri. 2016 Josh Hawley. 2020 Eric Schmitt. Both MAGA Senators. Now we have another weird creepy hater, Andrew Bailey. Hawley bugs me the most though Bailey seems the nastiest.

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      Yes, we discussed that here at the time. Patel was flown down to the Texas border to “watch” a real trial. He apparently had no brief, no instructions, other than to watch.

      He wasn’t dressed for court, wasn’t on the DoJ team, wasn’t admitted in Texas and had no other connection to it, and no experience in the subject matter of the trial. He had no explanation for his presence, which the judge considered a poor use of overstretched DoJ resources.

      That pretty much describes Patel’s introduction to every govt job he’s ever had, except his eight years as a FPD. Patel was also the guy Devin Nunes flew to London, unannounced, to blindside former MI6 employee, Chris Steele – and the UK govt – in hopes that he could get him to admit something incriminating, which Nunes’s House committee could use. A futile embarrassing exercise from the start, but Patel didn’t hesitate to do it. He’s a coffee boy who can actually make coffee.

  10. Savage Librarian says:

    Hello, Martyr

    Hello martyr, hi defrauder,
    Here we are with Swamp Non Grata
    Swamp is very pre-ordaining
    And they say when it’s all done
    it’s self-sustaining

    Law abiding now IC dicey
    Constitution’s screwed devisee
    You remember B. F. Skinner
    Now the domain intrusion
    redefines a winner

    All the Senators fear dictators
    Half of them are abdicators
    As they spew their hypocrisies
    MAGAts seek revenge
    because it’s an own disease

    Now I don’t want this should scare ya
    But we’re looking like Bulgaria
    This republic, so foolhardy
    It’s now time to send out
    a damn searching party

    Stockholm Syndrome, martyr, defrauder
    Stockholm Syndrome, Swamp Non Grata
    Don’t abandon our republic
    where it might get beaten by no care

    Dear defrauder, darling martyr,
    Will no one stop this nonstarter
    What say you, you wordsmithy
    Will you throw it all away
    with something pithy

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWK30bo6itE

    “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah (Piano Accompaniment G Major) by Sherman & Busch”

  11. bloopie2 says:

    How does one disabuse a conspiracy theorist of their incorrect notions? Not necessarily Patel, but generally. There were those sixty years ago who diligently believed that the JFK assassination was more than the act of a lone gunman. Is there research on the subject that would point one in the right direction? Or do they just end up saying, “You’re hiding the real evidence”, as a second layer of conspiracy”?

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      You keep them out of govt. And you probably need a different example. (Whatever happened to JFK, it would be hard to read underneath the layers of whitewash in the Warren Report.)

      If you can’t keep a zealot and conspiracy theorist out of govt, you fasten your seat belt, learn to defend your personal and digital space, keep a close hold on your family, friends and network, and respond as best you can when one of them is threatened. We’re in for a long haul.

    • Matt___B says:

      You don’t. It’s the same as disabusing a cult member of their adherence to the cult and leader. Their own cognitive dissonance level has to become very high and personally uncomfortable for a change in POV to even become possible.

      IMHO.

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