Patel at FBI: Proof of Death for the American Experiment
Kash Patel at FBI would represent an apex of the Kremlin's efforts to capture the United States, transforming the bureau into a police force in the service of the President.
Kashyap "Kash" Patel has been nominated to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation. If he is installed, and I believe he will be, it will mark the end of the American experiment as we have known it.
Those of us who have been trying everything in our power to block the capture of the United States by hostile foreign powers have had Patel and his compact network of co-conspirators on our radar since the last administration. It was obvious then that he represented an extreme and visible tip of a spear designed to destabilize and capture our institutions and the country.
For a full taste of the inverted, paranoid network around Patel, simply watch the conspiracy film The Plot Against the President (2020) by Amanda Milius. It documents the bizarro-world machinations inside the Trump-Putin axis at the time when this same network of people was, in fact, planning to subvert the election result in 2020. Patel now sells a children's book called The Plot Against the King which revisits the same themes and, tellingly, says the quiet part out loud.
Patel, along with Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi, will become a lawless duo bent on exacting revenge from perceived enemies. Patel would have full access to the FBI's files and should be expected to rummage through them looking to weaponize information on anyone who opposed them.
They will use spurious charges to persecute their enemies, and where that isn't workable, expect them to selectively leak sensitive intelligence and targeting information to domestic terrorist groups bent on extrajudicial killings of political opponents and journalists. We needn't speculate; this is already underway.
Ashleigh Fields
Obviously, there is some chance Patel will not be confirmed. Matt Gaetz withdrew his name for consideration as Attorney General, as he was becoming a distraction. His name is, however, now being floated for a Special Counsel role, in which he could presumably help persecute enemies. But the goal with the Patel nomination is to wear out the opposition and make clear that this is happening whether all Republicans want it or not.
KASH TIME!!
— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) December 1, 2024
Russell Vought, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and friends have been gaming this out and will do whatever is necessary to extract compliance from their party. The question we are left with is not whether Patel will be confirmed, but rather what they must do to ensure he will be. The answers are uniformly terrifying.
Update: Current reports indicate that current FBI Director Wray, who has three years remaining on his ten year term, will be fired, and Patel will be installed as interim director, giving him a long time window during which he can inflict damage and also alter any calculus surrounding his eventual confirmation. Previous reporting already speculated that Wray might resign as part of a second Trump term.
There is a cohort of conflict entrepreneurs that has spent the last eight years offering hopium in the form of stories about how and on what terms this might all be magically reversed. I have never operated in this mode, and I consider my work to stop American capture a matter of personal and civic obligation. At this late hour I advise that everyone put down the hopium pipes and focus on how to preserve American values for use on the other side of what is likely to be a devastating reckoning. No one is coming to save us. Brace for impact.
