After his narrow Feb. 20 confirmation, FBI Director Kash Patel stormed into office with a laundry list of sweeping promises, from purging the FBI of “woke” agents to prosecuting Donald Trump’s extensive list of political enemies. Optimists hoped that Patel might prove more bravado than bureaucrat. No such luck this time.
Patel represents something truly dangerous in a Trump administration weighed down by fools and sycophants. Patel merges a genuine, fundamentalist zeal for MAGA ideology with an effective administrative mind. He’s also one of the few allies Trump considers a personal friend. While Trump left most of his Cabinet nominees to fend for themselves during tough confirmation battles, he took the unusual step of vouching for Patel early and often.
The FBI is facing an existential crisis, and it isn’t clear if Congress (or anyone else) can stop Patel from turning the bureau’s nearly 14,000 special agents into Trump’s personal secret police. Democrats now face a long-term hostile relationship with an FBI director who could become the most powerful bureau leader since J. Edgar Hoover.
Buckle up.
Patel’s first days birthed a flurry of orders that chart a dark new relationship between the FBI and the American people. In one shocking move, Patel announced a new investigation into former FBI director and prominent Trump critic James Comey. Its purpose? To discredit the FBI’s prior investigation into misconduct on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
In another bizarre decision during his already bizarre first weekly call, Patel announced his plan to launch a formal relationship between the FBI and Dana White’s UFC mixed martial arts league, though “it’s not exactly clear what Patel would want the UFC to do,” ABC News reports.
Trump also moved to centralize even more law enforcement power under Patel last week—by making him acting chief of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. The gun lobby couldn’t wait to congratulate Patel on his new job, mostly because Patel shares their extreme view that even current federal gun laws are too restrictive.
Trump’s decision to plant Patel atop both the FBI and ATF is an intentional decision designed to hobble both organizations. Most of the ATF’s work involves issuing permits for guns and ensuring proper tax collection on things like cigarettes and Bacardi. As The Dispatch writes, the ATF is a tax collector. That’s a world apart from the FBI’s day-to-day work of managing criminal investigations. By merging FBI and ATF duties under one roof and then slashing staff, Trump guarantees both agencies will be too overwhelmed to effectively coordinate. What a gift to Big Vice!
Patel’s staffing decisions also point to the FBI embracing its transformation into the president’s private police force. Last week Patel announced that former Fox News commentator and current protein powder pitchman Dan Bongino would assume the role of deputy FBI director despite promising otherwise to the Bureau’s active duty agents. The decision sparked understandable fury at the FBI, an agency Bongino once dismissed as “irredeemably corrupt."
Dan Bongino
Even congressional Republicans are struggling to back Bongino without laughing. Bongino’s appeal has always been his unwavering Trump support and his eagerness to rationalize whatever orders Patel and Trump hand down. Bongino isn’t much of a thinker, but he’s useful in an FBI that’s about to require a whole lot of enthusiastic thugs.
Last weekend, Patel flexed some of his newfound political muscles after Elon Musk sent a mass email to federal workers demanding that they justify their jobs. Despite the heavy deference most Trump appointees initially showed Musk’s offensive order, Patel replied all with his version of an “I don’t work for you” email.
“FBI personnel may have received an email from OPM requesting information,” Patel wrote on Sunday. “The FBI, through the Office of the Director, is in charge of all of our review processes, and will conduct reviews in accordance with FBI procedures.”
While Musk’s effort to audit the entire federal workforce via email ultimately flopped, Patel’s ability to stand up to Trump’s co-president caught the notice of some of Musk’s Republican critics. Patel’s early victories are also drawing notice inside the White House, where Trump delights in rewarding “winners” and scolding “losers.”
Normally it would fall to Congress to hold the FBI director accountable, but that obviously isn’t an option. Even the few remaining Trump-skeptical GOP lawmakers lost faith in the bureau a decade ago, to the point of celebrating Chris Wray’s forced resignation in January. Those lawmakers see in Patel a chance to rebuild the FBI from the ground up into a partisan weapon. Don’t expect any tough questions when the Senate invites Patel down the street for their regular check-in.
Trump’s second term is still taking shape, but Patel is poised to be a major player not only at the FBI, but in shaping Trump’s crime and policing—with sweeping consequences for American law enforcement. If the new FBI director’s first week in office is any indication, we won’t need to wait long to feel them.
Campaign Action
