This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 16 episode of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”
There was no shortage of explosive moments during FBI Director Kash Patel’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. But one of the most telling moments came when Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island asked Patel about his so-called enemies list.
In the appendix of his 2023 book, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” Patel listed 60 people he said were “Members of the Executive Branch Deep State.”
The only thing that has changed about the administration’s enemies list is that it’s gotten longer.
During his questioning, Whitehouse noted that the administration had already taken “adverse actions of various kinds” against about 20 of the 60 people on that list. In response, Patel said that was “an entirely inaccurate presupposition” and claimed he did “not have an enemies list.”
It wasn’t the loudest or most viral moment of Tuesday’s hearing, but it was one of Patel’s most brazen. Because, nine months into this administration, it is definitely not an “inaccurate presupposition” that the Justice Department is targeting Donald Trump’s enemies.
The list in question includes people such as former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey, both of whom are now being investigated by Trump’s Justice Department. It includes former Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor, whom Trump ordered the Justice Department to investigate. It also includes Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, whose home was searched by the FBI last month.
The only thing that has changed about the administration’s enemies list is that it has gotten longer — far longer than the 60 people Patel named publicly in a book.
It has grown to include everyone from career civil servants who publish data Trump doesn’t like, to members of the Federal Reserve Board who won’t act like the president’s puppets, to late-night TV hosts who have made fun of Trump. Every day, Trump seems to be adding more and more names to the list of enemies he wants to single out for retaliation.
And now, the Trump administration is taking new steps to make that list even broader and to include basically anyone to the left of Trump and his administration.
On Monday, in response to the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Vice President JD Vance said political violence is “not a both-sides problem” and claimed that “people on the left are much likelier to defend and celebrate political violence.”
But that’s simply not true. In fact, until recently, you could go to the Justice Department’s own website and read a study that found that “far-right attacks continue to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.” But Tuesday, 404media was the first to report that the Justice Department has now quietly removed that study from its website.
It doesn’t take a lot of speculation to figure out why. It appears the Trump administration wants to use Kirk’s death as a pretext to target even broader swaths of those it deems “the political left.” It is already telling us how it will choose its new targets. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the administration will “absolutely target” anyone for alleged “hate speech.”
Now, trying to stop the spread of actual hate speech in this country is not necessarily a bad goal in and of itself. But for years, conservatives have actually been the ones arguing that the government should not police hate speech. Even Kirk himself was on record expressing that very opinion.
So the question is: How does the administration define the kind of “hate speech” that it suddenly wants to outlaw? Well, according to Trump, it seems anyone whom he deems as treating him “unfairly” could earn a spot on the enemies list.








