President-elect Trump’s nomination of Kash Patel as FBI director has sparked a frenzy of outrage from the fake news media. I’m sure none of this surprises Kash, who has faced it all before.
Fake news outlets don’t typically attack congressional staffers by name, but years ago they made an exception for Kash. At the time, he was my lead staff investigator on the House Intelligence Committee as we examined allegations that President Trump had colluded with Russia to hack the 2016 presidential election.
We quickly began uncovering evidence that the entire Russia collusion narrative was a hoax funded by the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign and weaponized by our own intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Shockingly, the abuses included the Department of Justice and FBI providing false information to a secret court to get a warrant to spy on Trump campaign associate Carter Page.
Back then, Kash was an outstanding sleuth and a bulldog investigator who drew on his own experience as a DOJ prosecutor to figure out what misdeeds these corrupt officials were committing. To get the evidence, we had to overcome their ceaseless stonewalling, over-classification of documents, and countless other tricks and maneuvers they employed to bury the truth.
Fake news reporters and ‘resistance’ bureaucrats understood the evidence we found undermined their hoax narrative, so they launched an all-out jihad against Kash, with anonymous sources accusing him of committing every conceivable atrocity known to man.
The attacks on Kash went beyond these information warfare operations—in a face-to-face meeting with us, top DOJ officials, who apparently didn’t appreciate their dirty laundry being aired, threatened to subpoena Kash’s communications. What we only found out years later was that they had already seized Kash’s emails, along with those of other congressional staffers investigating the collusion hoax, including staffers for Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
In sum, the DOJ secretly spied on their own constitutionally mandated overseers to find out what we knew and how we knew it.
You can imagine how intimidating it would be for a staffer to be directly threatened by top-level Department of Justice officials. But Kash could not be bullied. He was fearless, methodical, and intelligent, and ultimately played a decisive role in exposing the most consequential and damaging hoax in American history.
In light of the Russia collusion hoax, the politicized January 6 investigations, assorted surveillance abuses, the misuse of confidential human informants for political purposes, pressure on Big Tech to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story, the investigation of parent protesters at school board meetings, and countless other manipulations, the FBI and DOJ clearly need drastic, fundamental reform.
Tinkering around the edges isn’t enough – the entire culture of these institutions needs to be revamped, and their workforces must be decentralized so they refocus on fighting criminals and terrorists instead of politics.
To successfully execute that mission at the FBI, the bureau needs a director who understands the problems and how to fix them. Crucially, this person must have the guts to do it notwithstanding the wailing from the media and the whole galaxy of left-wing interest groups alongside the bitter opposition of the upper echelons of the FBI’s own workforce.
Kash has an extensive record of distinguished government service as a public defender, terrorism prosecutor, senior staff member at the Office of National Intelligence and the National Security Council, and chief of staff to the Department of Defense. But his record at the House Intelligence Committee alone shows Kash has the courage and commitment to reform the FBI.
It’s amusing to watch discredited former officials leap on cable news shows to decry Kash’s nomination like it heralds the end of the republic. After all, those who abused, politicized, and discredited the FBI, and those who tried to cover up those abuses, have a lot to lose if Kash is confirmed.
Imagine if these people could no longer rely on the FBI to investigate and arrest everyday Americans with dissenting political opinions, leak false information against their political opponents, and actively undermine presidents whom they are supposed to be serving.
Kash understands surveillance abuses and intimidation tactics because he experienced them himself – and he never backed down.
If you want an FBI director who will go along to get along, you’re better off with someone else. If you want a director who will follow the Constitution and transform the bureau into an impartial, trustworthy law enforcement agency that zealously goes after criminals instead of political targets, then Kash is, bar none, the right man for the job.
