Kash Patel is just the hand grenade that needs to land in the J. Edgar Hoover Building. From John Kiriakou at consortiumnews.com:
After all the bureau’s crimes, Americans need somebody who is willing to tear this organization down to its bare studs.
Kash Patel at the 2022 AmericaFest n Phoenix. (Gage Skidmore, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
On the surface of things, Kash Patel is the kind of person most of us would want to keep out of government.
A MAGA true believer, and Donald Trump’s choice to head the F.B.I., he’s the tip of the spear of Trump’s apparent effort to use the courts to go after his perceived enemies in the media and on Capitol Hill.
The mainstream Democratic-oriented press is apoplectic about the appointment. The Christian Science Monitor said it most clearly when it wrote that,
“Democrats invoke (the notorious late F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover) as they warn about Mr. Patel, suggesting he will target political enemies. Republicans, though, compare Hoover’s tenure to what they say is a modern ‘deep state” resisting and harassing Mr. Trump.”
That’s the bottom line. Democrats compare him to Hoover while Republicans argue that he’s the anti-Hoover.
I’m here to argue that Kash Patel is exactly what Americans need right now at the F.B.I. We need somebody with the guts and the political authority to burn the F.B.I. down, at least figuratively.
First, I’m under no illusions that Kash Patel is a good guy. According to former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, Patel is “salivating” at the opportunity to investigate and, apparently, charge former Rep. Liz Cheney with some sort of crime because of her work on the Jan. 6 Committee.
This is not only wrong, it also ignores the fact that Cheney had congressional immunity for her work because she was serving in an official capacity for the committee. Nothing will come of any investigation.
The press also has opined that Patel will target police officers who arrested protestors at the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol for investigation. Again, the police have qualified immunity, and nothing will come of the idea.
