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It’s largely passing unnoticed, but Republicans are quietly laying the groundwork to give their full blessing to one of Donald Trump’s more corrupt schemes: Unleashing law enforcement on his political enemies without cause once he’s sworn in again next year. That capitulation is already underway, with an argument they’re beginning to put forward to smooth the path for Trump’s nominee to head the FBI, Kash Patel.
The New York Times has a big piece reporting that Senate Republicans are growing “warm” to Patel, who has explicitly declared that in Trump’s second term, a range of enemies of Trump should be prosecuted for no discernible legal reason whatsoever.
Why are they warming to Patel despite the obvious threat he poses? The Times reports that Republicans now harbor a “deep distrust” of the FBI, that they see it as “rotted by corruption and partisanship,” and that all this has become a new “Republican orthodoxy”:
Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma claims that Patel will “clean out the FBI.” And Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina insists he’lll restore the bureau’s “integrity.” In short, we’re meant to believe GOP senators back Patel because he will reform a badly corrupted agency in a way that will better serve our country.
Here’s the thing: All of that is nonsense. Most Republicans don’t actually think those things about the FBI, and they don’t actually believe Trump picked Patel to reform the bureau to address those alleged problems. Nor is there any reason to treat this as any kind of sincere, momentous ideological shift.
We should treat that very idea—that Republicans have in some principled sense begun to deeply question the FBI’s institutional role—as itself being spin. If anything, the GOP embrace of Patel carries echoes of the corrupted, secretive, intrusive FBI of the pre-Watergate days, and the new reformist pose is being hatched as fake cover to support Patel later despite what Republicans all know to be true—that Trump has selected him to transform the agency into a weapon against his enemies.
The evidence for this reading is everywhere. First, Trump already tried to wield law enforcement against political enemies during his first term (do you recall Republicans objecting at the time?) and Trump has explicitly threatened this to a far greater extent this time around. Republicans know all this. Take Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, who murmured something to The Times about Patel bringing “transparency” to the agency. Do you think Ernst actually believes Trump picked him to realize some sort of substantive, far-reaching vision of reform? Of course she doesn’t.
Second, just look at Patel’s enemies list. Of the 60 names on it, over two-thirds of them are former Trump officials who went public with criticism of him; critics of Trump with prominent media profiles; government officials who carried out their duty to investigate Trump’s malfeasance; high-profile Democratic politicians; or former senior officials under Democratic presidents.
As TNR’s Timothy Noah notes, many of the latter ones are political appointees, so by definition, they are not members of the “deep state.” That’s the permanent, all-powerful bureaucracy that Trump is supposed to be targeting by picking nominees like Patel, giving the move superficial justification. But as this list suggests, Trump wants an FBI director primarily committed to persecuting people for being Democrats or telling the truth about Trump in public.
Third, consider the critique of the FBI from Republicans now pretending Trump wants to genuinely reform the agency.
Note that those allegations all concern alleged mistreatment of—or unfairness to—Trump himself. They, too, are nonsense: While some irregularities did take place during the Russia investigation, they were investigated and exposed by the Justice Department inspector general—as is supposed to happen when the system works as it should—and they fell far short of the systemic corruption MAGA claimed. The Biden Justice Department didn’t exactly refrain from investigating or prosecuting the Biden family. The search of Mar-a-Lago was approved by a judge who was persuaded by hard evidence.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/gop-senators-secretly-getting-ready-110000467.html
The New York Times has a big piece reporting that Senate Republicans are growing “warm” to Patel, who has explicitly declared that in Trump’s second term, a range of enemies of Trump should be prosecuted for no discernible legal reason whatsoever.
Why are they warming to Patel despite the obvious threat he poses? The Times reports that Republicans now harbor a “deep distrust” of the FBI, that they see it as “rotted by corruption and partisanship,” and that all this has become a new “Republican orthodoxy”:
Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma claims that Patel will “clean out the FBI.” And Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina insists he’lll restore the bureau’s “integrity.” In short, we’re meant to believe GOP senators back Patel because he will reform a badly corrupted agency in a way that will better serve our country.
Here’s the thing: All of that is nonsense. Most Republicans don’t actually think those things about the FBI, and they don’t actually believe Trump picked Patel to reform the bureau to address those alleged problems. Nor is there any reason to treat this as any kind of sincere, momentous ideological shift.
We should treat that very idea—that Republicans have in some principled sense begun to deeply question the FBI’s institutional role—as itself being spin. If anything, the GOP embrace of Patel carries echoes of the corrupted, secretive, intrusive FBI of the pre-Watergate days, and the new reformist pose is being hatched as fake cover to support Patel later despite what Republicans all know to be true—that Trump has selected him to transform the agency into a weapon against his enemies.
The evidence for this reading is everywhere. First, Trump already tried to wield law enforcement against political enemies during his first term (do you recall Republicans objecting at the time?) and Trump has explicitly threatened this to a far greater extent this time around. Republicans know all this. Take Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, who murmured something to The Times about Patel bringing “transparency” to the agency. Do you think Ernst actually believes Trump picked him to realize some sort of substantive, far-reaching vision of reform? Of course she doesn’t.
Second, just look at Patel’s enemies list. Of the 60 names on it, over two-thirds of them are former Trump officials who went public with criticism of him; critics of Trump with prominent media profiles; government officials who carried out their duty to investigate Trump’s malfeasance; high-profile Democratic politicians; or former senior officials under Democratic presidents.
As TNR’s Timothy Noah notes, many of the latter ones are political appointees, so by definition, they are not members of the “deep state.” That’s the permanent, all-powerful bureaucracy that Trump is supposed to be targeting by picking nominees like Patel, giving the move superficial justification. But as this list suggests, Trump wants an FBI director primarily committed to persecuting people for being Democrats or telling the truth about Trump in public.
Third, consider the critique of the FBI from Republicans now pretending Trump wants to genuinely reform the agency.
Note that those allegations all concern alleged mistreatment of—or unfairness to—Trump himself. They, too, are nonsense: While some irregularities did take place during the Russia investigation, they were investigated and exposed by the Justice Department inspector general—as is supposed to happen when the system works as it should—and they fell far short of the systemic corruption MAGA claimed. The Biden Justice Department didn’t exactly refrain from investigating or prosecuting the Biden family. The search of Mar-a-Lago was approved by a judge who was persuaded by hard evidence.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/gop-senators-secretly-getting-ready-110000467.html
