Kash Patel Is Perfect For FBI Director Because He Already Fought The Deep State And Won
Should the Senate confirm Kash Patel as FBI director, it will have clinched the second of perhaps the two most vital nominations President Donald Trump will make, alongside Tulsi Gabbard. These are the two individuals after Trump with the near-singular ability to prevent us from devolving into a total police state of the kind that has already targeted them.
President Trump was elected in no small part as a rebuke to a national security apparatus and intelligence agencies that have been weaponized and politicized against dissenters from ruling-class orthodoxy. From Russiagate and the fostering of the Censorship-Industrial Complex, to the first Trump impeachment and the Jan. 6 inquisition, to the targeting of all from faithful Christians to pro-life activists and parents concerned about their kids being indoctrinated in Marxism in school, increasingly our deep state has operated like our political foes’ secret police.
As I recently reported at RealClearInvestigations, the evidence shows that at least at the FBI, whistleblowers exposing this misconduct have had their careers and lives destroyed. Those defending them have faced retaliation too.
The turning of America’s cops and spies on the American people is the death knell of the republic, not to mention ultimately a boon to our adversaries. After all, from their perspective, what could be better than seeing the U.S. destroy itself from within by eviscerating liberty and justice in targeting domestic wrongthinkers? We effectively run information operations on ourselves via politicizing intelligence, while diverting precious resources from pursuing our actual foreign enemies.
Simply put, police states cannot be free states.
Patel, like Gabbard, knows this well because he has extensive experience within the national security apparatus — and has found himself in its crosshairs. That makes him, like Gabbard, uniquely equipped to take it on.
Patel’s bona fides speak for themselves. He was a public defender, prosecutor, staff member at the Justice Department, and, during the first Trump administration, senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council, principal deputy to the acting director of national intelligence, and chief of staff to the acting secretary of defense.
But perhaps most importantly, Patel was the exposer par excellence of the Russia-collusion hoax at its height while serving as a top investigator on the House Intelligence Committee. There, he helped lead the drafting of the “Nunes memo” that revealed the fraud perpetrated on the FISA court used to spy on the Trump campaign by way of adviser Carter Page — efforts he would later continue by working to declassify and release Russiagate documents under then-Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell. Little could better illustrate Patel’s courage and ability to take on a weaponized and hyper-politicized deep state.
In the weeks before issuing the memo, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein reportedly threatened to subpoena Patel’s communications, as well as those of his colleagues. Unbeknownst to the investigator, the Justice Department was already collecting those communications records under subpoena, per requests covering data from as early as Dec. 1, 2016. The same DOJ whose misconduct Patel was investigating was spying on him — and on absurd grounds, as Inspector General Michael Horowitz would reveal.
In responding to a question from Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, regarding this episode during his confirmation hearing, Patel said:
Senator, this may be one of the scenarios that most uniquely qualifies me to take command at the FBI. Having been the victim of government overreach and a weaponized system of justice and law enforcement, I know what it feels like to have the full weight of the United States government barreling down on you. And as the Biden inspector general [Horowitz] determined, those activities by the FBI and DOJ were wholly improper and not predicated upon law and facts. I will ensure, if confirmed, that no American is subjected to that kind of torment, to that kind of cost, financially and personally.
Gabbard likewise had stellar on-paper credentials, having spent more than two decades in uniform including deploying to Iraq and serving on the Homeland Security, Foreign Affairs, and Armed Services Committees in Congress.
But while devoting her career to defending our country against jihadists and other foreign foes, and consuming and evaluating intelligence in connection therewith, perhaps the best test of her mettle and merit for securing the position of director of national intelligence came in her trenchant critique of the deep state she would oversee. Namely, she has shined a light on how the government has trained its awesome powers on the American people in the name of safety and security, violating our civil liberties. And she has broken from the national security and foreign policy establishment on a slew of issues — at great cost.
The Democrat Party left Gabbard by becoming the champion of the security state and foreign policy blob. She, like Patel, paid a price for daring to cross it. Twenty-four hours after criticizing regime-chosen candidate Kamala Harris and her nomination, as Gabbard noted in her confirmation hearing testimony, she “was placed on a secret domestic terror watch list” in the TSA’s Quiet Skies program.
That targeting is a testament to the fact that the deep state fears she might have the guts and ability to reform it. As she noted in her testimony, “What truly unsettles my political opponents is I refuse to be their puppet.”
Patel and Gabbard have been targeted not due to lack of qualifications, demonstrated valor, or patriotism, but precisely because they have the qualifications, valor, and patriotism required to challenge the deep state and restore Americans’ control over it. They have vowed to root out its weaponization, corruption, and politicization and to restore the national security and intelligence apparatus to its actual, legitimate mission.
Perhaps their most important shared trait is that they are not captured by the entities they would lead. Rather, they have the scars illustrating how those entities have strayed from their missions and the smarts and tenacity to restore them.
The Senate showed it knew what time it was when it recently confirmed Gabbard. This week it must further validate that statement and confirm Kash Patel. Little could be more important for the future of this country.
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