Donald Trump has had plenty of time to come up with an explanation for why he wants to fire FBI Director Christopher Wray, whom he appointed to the job under scandalous circumstances seven years ago. So far, the president-elect hasn’t come up with much.
He nevertheless wants a manifestly unqualified Republican operative named Kash Patel to become the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation — and by all appearances, GOP senators appear prepared to go along with the idea, ignoring Democrats’ concerns about, among other things, Patel’s literal enemies list.
But it’d be a mistake to assume that the argument about Patel’s future falls neatly along partisan and ideological lines. It does not. In fact, some former Trump administration officials have stepped up with unambiguous condemnations of their own.
The Wall Street Journal, for example, published an op-ed this week from John Bolton, who served as Donald Trump’s White House national security adviser, under a headline that read, “Kash Patel Doesn’t Belong at the FBI.”
Bolton, who worked directly with Patel during his tenure, argued that the prospective FBI leader placed “obedience to Mr. Trump above other, higher considerations — most important, loyalty to the Constitution.”
To resolve questions over his integrity and fitness, a full-field FBI investigation, as prior nominees have undergone, is warranted. With more facts available and less rhetoric, the result will be clear. I regret I didn’t fully discern Mr. Patel’s threat immediately. But we are now all fairly warned. Senators won’t escape history’s judgment if they vote to confirm him.
If Bolton were alone, his concerns might be easier to put aside, but he’s not.
Charles Kupperman, Patel’s supervisor in the first Trump administration, also told The Wall Street Journal, in reference to the prospective FBI chief, “He’s absolutely unqualified for this job. He’s untrustworthy. … It’s an absolute disgrace to American citizens to even consider an individual of this nature.”
Former Attorney General William Barr, meanwhile, wrote in his memoir that Trump had considered making Patel the deputy director of the FBI in his first term, though Barr said he told the White House that would happen “over my dead body.”
In his book, Barr added that Patel “had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency. The very idea of moving Patel into a role like this showed a shocking detachment from reality.” Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper has also raised concerns about the likelihood of Patel politicizing federal law enforcement. As Bolton’s op-ed added, Olivia Troye, who served as counterterrorism adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, accused Patel of “making things up on operations.” To be sure, Patel has pushed back against his critics, and his lawyer sent a threatening letter to Troye about her accusations. The bottom line, however, remains the same: There are some prominent voices from the Trump administration, including some who worked with Patel directly, raising some serious red flags about his upcoming nomination to lead the FBI — which seems like the sort of thing that senators should take seriously.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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