Maddowblog-Why Kash Patel shouldn't (but might) be confirmed as FBI director

[LetMyPeopleVote]

The idea of Donald Trump and Senate Republicans putting Kash Patel in charge of the FBI isn't just wrong. It's also dangerous.

Link to tweet

https://bsky.app/profile/stevebenen.com/post/3lcd73psidc2b

Before we even get to the obscene absurdity of trying to put Kash Patel in charge of the FBI, there's an equally important detail:

Trump ousting an FBI director without cause — again — is its own scandal.

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/kash-patel-shouldnt-might-confirmed-fbi-director-rcna182405

In practice, Trump has learned nothing. An Axios report published over the weekend noted that people close to the president-elect “say he feels empowered and emboldened, vindicated and validated, and eager to stretch the boundaries of power.” The evidence to bolster the observation is overwhelming. My MSNBC colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim reported on Saturday:

President-elect Donald Trump has picked MAGA loyalist Kash Patel as FBI director, signaling his intention to overhaul the intelligence agency he has long criticized. Patel is expected to face an uphill battle for Senate confirmation. ... Patel is known as a diehard Trump loyalist who has echoed the president-elect’s grievances — and threats — against the intelligence community. During Trump’s first term, Patel served on the National Security Council and as chief of staff to the acting defense secretary.

As regular readers might recall, Patel first came to national attention during Trump’s first impeachment scandal. Fiona Hill, the former top Russia expert at the White House National Security Council, told Congress that she discovered that the then-president was ignoring the NSC’s Ukraine expert, choosing instead to listen to Patel — which struck Hill as quite odd.....

1. What about Chris Wray?

Implicit in Trump’s Saturday announcement was the fact that he’s replacing Chris Wray, the current FBI director whom Trump tapped for the job seven years ago, after the scandalous firing of James Comey. While casual observers might see this as somehow routine — presidents get to pick members of their team — the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation isn’t a member of the White House cabinet.

On the contrary, FBI directors serve 10-year terms, overlapping presidential administrations, to prevent the kind of politicized abuses that Trump is eager to engage in.

Indeed, before we even get to Patel’s lack of qualifications, it’s enormously important to appreciate the fact that the incoming American president is poised to oust an FBI director, without cause, again. Under normal circumstances in a healthy political environment, this alone would be the basis for a major, presidency-defining controversy......

3. Would a Patel nomination undermine democracy?

The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols wrote in response to Trump’s announcement about the broader concerns surrounding such a choice.

The Russians speak of “power ministries,” the departments that have significant legal and coercive capacity. In the United States, those include the Justice Department, the Defense Department, the FBI, and the intelligence community. Trump has now named sycophants to lead each of these institutions, a move that eliminates important obstacles to his frequently expressed desires to use the armed forces, federal law-enforcement agents, intelligence professionals, and government lawyers as he chooses, unbounded by the law or the Constitution. If you want to assemble the infrastructure of an authoritarian government, this is how you do it.

....That said, as of this writing, exactly zero GOP senators have publicly condemned the choice, and quite a few Senate Republicans spent the weekend praising Patel, even going so far as to endorse his looming nomination ahead of next year’s confirmation hearings.