A top pick to head the FBI for President-elect Donald Trump had a simple response for those criticizing him as a potential “danger” to the agency.
(Video Credit: Fox News)
After years spent growing a reputation as a weaponized arm of the federal government, alleged to have targeted parents, parishioners, and patriots, officials from the FBI and the Department of Justice were reportedly lawyering up ahead of Trump’s inauguration.
Amid the growing expectation of a reckoning for G-men, Kash Patel, the former chief of staff to then-acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, countered arguments from disgraced former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe that the agency would not be “safe” with his posting by calling for “proof.”
During an appearance on “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo,” the Fox News host presented Patel with the arguments made against his potential nomination to lead the FBI prompting a strong response.
“So if anyone has a complaint about that and questions my unwavering commitment to the Constitution, I’m happy to talk to them about it,” asserted Patel after rattling off his résumé following 16 years spent working for the government. “I’m especially happy to talk to the media about it. But you can look at my record, and those calling me a danger, let’s just ask them for proof, a piece of evidence that actually shows I’ve committed any constitutional violations or any ethical quandaries, and I’d love to hear their response to this.”
McCabe, who was fired in 2018 after an inspector general report accused him of lying about media leaks, only to have that outcome reversed under President Joe Biden, appeared on CNN where he contended to Kaitlan Collins, “No part of the FBI’s mission is safe with Kash Patel in any position of leadership in the FBI, and certainly not in the deputy director’s job.”
“So just as a — as an example, the deputy director job in the FBI is unique because, of course, the director is a political appointee and the deputy director is typically a senior FBI agent, somebody who spent their entire career learning about the FBI, understanding its people and doing its work. So the deputy director actually runs the FBI on a day-to-day basis,” he went on. “You’re essentially the chief operating officer.”
Like other narratives against nominations put forward by Trump over candidate qualifications, arguments leaned heavily into the disparity from the typical career bureaucrats rather than any lack of necessary experience.
McCabe went on to suggest, “If you enter into that position with nothing more than a desire to disrupt and destroy the organization, um, there is a lot of damage someone like Kash Patel could do in a position like deputy director at the FBI.”
Meanwhile, Patel, who highlighted his lead investigator role in exposing Russiagate, went on to speak to the expectations of voters who’d entrusted Trump to right the ship and emphatically drain the swamp.
“The people need to know that their FBI has been restored by knowing full well what they did to unlawfully surveil them. The people need to know that there’s been a de-weaponization, a defanging of the Department of Justice, and their houses of worship will no longer be raided, but they need to be shown the documents that said this was the reasoning they weaponized justice,” he told Bartiromo. “And that, in my opinion, is how Congress can most importantly secure the trust or re-secure the trust of these agencies and departments.”
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