Tangle - Trump picks Kash Patel to lead FBI.

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Quick hits.

1. South Korea’s opposition parties submitted a motion to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol one day after he declared martial law, which lawmakers voted to end hours later. (The motion)
2. Rep. John Duarte (R-CA) conceded to Adam Gray (D) in the final uncalled House race in California, giving Democrats a net gain of one seat in the chamber. Republicans will retain control of the House with 220 seats to Democrats’ 215. (The results)
3. President-elect Donald Trump's transition team signed a memorandum of understanding with the Justice Department, allowing the team to submit names of Trump appointees for background checks and security clearances. (The agreement)
4. China announced a ban on the export of certain rare minerals to the U.S. that have military and technological applications. The move follows a series of export controls on chip manufacturing equipment and software announced by the Biden administration earlier this week. (The ban)
5. Chad Chronister, sheriff of Hillsborough Country, Florida, withdrew himself from consideration as President-elect Trump's nominee to lead the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. (The withdrawal) Separately, Trump is reportedly considering replacing Pete Hegseth with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) as his pick for secretary of defense. (The report)

Today's topic.

Kash Patel’s nomination. On Saturday, President-elect Trump announced the nomination of Kashyap "Kash" Patel as the new director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Patel is a former federal prosecutor who served in the White House during Trump’s first term and is viewed as a strong ally of the president-elect. For Patel to take over the position, current FBI director Christopher Wray (who Trump also nominated) will either need to resign or be fired, as Wray is serving a 10-year appointment that began in 2017. Wray has not indicated whether he intends to resign. 

Patel began his career as a public defender before joining the National Security Division of the Justice Department, where he oversaw the prosecution of accused terrorists. He subsequently worked as an aide to former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), notably authoring a report that criticized the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. President-elect Trump praised Patel for this effort when announcing the nomination, posting on Truth Social, “He played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution.” Trump added that Patel would work with Pam Bondi, his nominee for attorney general, to reform the FBI. 

Patel held several positions toward the end of Trump’s first term, including chief of staff to acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller in November 2020, and was reportedly considered for deputy director of the FBI or Central Intelligence Agency. Additionally, he oversaw the Pentagon’s transition process between the Trump and Biden administrations. After Trump left office, Patel authored three pro-Trump children’s books and joined the board of directors for Trump Media Technology Group. 

Patel is also an outspoken critic of federal law enforcement, writing in his 2023 book Government Gangsters that the Justice Department requires a “comprehensive housecleaning” to address corruption and outlining a plan to fire “the top ranks of the FBI.” He also said he would “come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.” 

These comments have raised concerns among Democrats that Patel will target elected officials and media figures critical of Trump while weakening the FBI’s intelligence capabilities. While many Republican senators have publicly supported the nomination, others have said they intend to rigorously vet his qualifications before casting their vote. Patel will need at least 50 Republican votes (out of a possible 53) to be confirmed, assuming all Democrats vote against his nomination.  

Today, we’ll explore reactions to Patel’s nomination from the left and right. Then, my take.

What the left is saying.

• The left opposes the nomination, arguing Patel is a dangerous pick on multiple fronts. 
• Some frame Patel as a tool in Trump’s plans for retribution in his second term. 
• Others say Patel foreshadows how law enforcement agencies could change in the next four years.  

In The Washington Post, Ruth Marcus called Patel “a dangerous and unqualified choice for the FBI.”

“President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of uber-loyalist Kash Patel to be FBI director is a hair-on-fire moment. Trump is poised to install a team of toadies at the Justice Department — a flotilla of his criminal defense lawyers but most ominously an attorney general, Pam Bondi, who has vowed that ‘the prosecutors will be prosecuted,’ and now, with Patel, an FBI director who would add journalists to that list,” Marcus said. “Republican senators — enough of them, anyway — did their constitutional duty in balking at former congressman Matt Gaetz, Trump’s clownish first choice to serve as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. Now, unpleasant and politically perilous as it might be, they must stand up to Trump again.”

“It’s important to understand that a new president picking the FBI director of his preference is not the norm — it is an aberration, and a dangerous one. Presidents are generally entitled to political appointees of their choosing, but the FBI director is supposed to be insulated from politics,” Marcus wrote. “Never in the history of the FBI — it was created in 1908 as the Bureau of Investigation — has there been a director anything like Patel. He poses a double threat: both a crony of the president and an unstinting critic of the institution he has been tapped to lead.”

In Bloomberg, Barbara L McQuade said “Kash Patel would use the FBI for Trump’s revenge tour.”

“Patel served in Trump’s first administration in various roles but has made his name mostly from his fierce loyalty to the 45th president. When Trump was accused of unlawfully retaining government documents after his presidency ended in 2021, Patel claimed to have witnessed Trump declassify them all,” McQuade wrote. “In addition to Patel’s obsequious loyalty to Trump, he holds radical views about the agency he has been chosen to lead. Shortly after the November election, Patel said he would ‘shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state.’”

“As a former career prosecutor, I worked closely with the FBI for almost 20 years. I know from that experience that the FBI operates under its Domestic Investigations Operations Guide, which requires investigations to be predicated on credible allegations and forbids the agency from opening investigations based on politics or First Amendment-protected activity. Patel proposes to turn that mission on its head,” McQuade said. “Patel’s bad ideas don’t end there. The former public defender and prosecutor also wants to strip the FBI of its intelligence mission. Perhaps as payback for the investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election, Patel would eliminate the FBI’s role in counterintelligence investigations. Such a move would badly damage America’s national security.”

In The Columbia Journalism Review, Jon Allsop wrote “the story of Trump’s plans for the FBI is bigger than one man.”

The FBI “has been an instrument of personal power before (if not the president’s) and has often shown itself to be no protector of journalists or the First Amendment freedoms on which their work rests—in its older, darker days, but also more recently. We should be careful not to paint Patel as a pure perversion of a righteous history; his nomination is a radical break in many respects, and his threats to go after journalists have been unusually explicit, but at least as far as press freedom goes, we should perhaps view him less as a total departure than a potential rapid-fire accelerant of concerning broader trends within the broader Justice Department.”

“While it’s accurate to depict Patel as a bomb-thrower, he would be entering into a legal structure that already has immense power and only voluntary compunction not to wield it against reporters,” Allsop said. “In this way, this story is already bigger than Patel, and will remain so whether or not he gets confirmed to replace Wray. Trump himself has explicitly said that reporters who publish leaked information should go to jail; whoever eventually leads his FBI may not have written a sycophantic children’s book, but is likely to have to share this and related views, or at least pay lip service to them.”

What the right is saying.

• The right is mixed on the nomination, with many saying Patel needs to earn his confirmation. 
• Some praise the pick as a necessary move to shake up the FBI.
• Others say questions about Patel’s qualifications are reasonable, but he deserves a fair hearing. 

The Washington Examiner editorial board said “the FBI needs reform, not retribution.”

“The FBI is in desperate need of fundamental reform. President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to run the bureau, Kash Patel, promises to attempt that. But Patel has also said the Trump administration should go after political enemies, President Joe Biden’s allies. Senators should, therefore, give this nomination the closest possible scrutiny and establish that despite some fiery past rhetoric, Patel understands, appreciates, and respects the difference between reform and retribution before he is confirmed.”

“Wray has failed to supply the transparency House Republicans have demanded from the agency, and he should resign. Indeed, he has been obstructive, probably to protect the agency from unwelcome but highly necessary scrutiny,” the board wrote. “If Patel can show senators he is interested in reform, not retribution, and if he is confirmed, he should determinedly keep his promise. Voters do not want to see Joe Biden and his allies persecuted in a tit-for-tat fashion. The nation wants to see crime lowered, criminal migrant gangs arrested and deported, and drug traffickers arrested and brought to justice. That should be the focus of the FBI, and the Senate should determine whether Patel intends to make it so.”

In Fox News, David Marcus called Patel “the fumigator the FBI needs.”

“What Patel can bring to the FBI is fairness, honesty, the actual blindfold that lady justice is supposed to wear. No good person should fear that, it should not threaten anything true or just,” Marcus said. “What Patel does threaten is an FBI establishment and leadership, an array of men and women in tweed with twisting Ivy degrees who have never been told no before. He may well say no, when they seek to crush freedom. And well he should. Patel is not being put forth as FBI director to target enemies, but to take the target off of friends, and not just friends, but all of us.”

“Patel’s record suggests that he will use this power scarcely and judiciously when it comes to Americans expressing their beliefs and living their politics. That he will seek to punish crimes, not thoughts,” Marcus wrote. “This is about the best we could ask for in an FBI director. No more political investigations, no more scores to settle. Just the fair and free execution of the law. There is every reason to believe that is exactly what Patel intends.”

In Townhall, Derek Hunter criticized Democrats’ double standards for Trump’s nominees. 

“Are President-Elect Donald Trump’s nominees conventional? The pundit class would lead you to believe that they are not, that they ‘have no experience’ in the areas relevant to the positions they’ve been nominated to fill. That would be relevant information, were it a standard used in the past – used on Democrats as well – but it is not. In fact, not a single one of President Joe Biden’s nominees received a ‘no’ vote from a single Senate Democrat, no matter how unqualified they were for their job,” Hunter said. “Flashforward to today and the nominees from Donald Trump. They exist in a buzzword salad – inexperienced, controversial, unqualified, and ‘Trump loyalist.’” 

“The President appoints various positions in government ‘with the Advice and Consent of the Senate.’ While that consent is not guaranteed, it’s usually pretty damn close to certain… Republican Senators should extend the same courtesy to the incoming President,” Hunter wrote. “Donald Trump is a disruptor, so Democrats whining about Kash Patel not having previously worked in the FBI does not matter, as the last three heads of the FBI didn’t work there before they were confirmed to run it… If the Senate finds something illegal in one of the nominee’s backgrounds, fine, otherwise extend Donald Trump the courtesy Democrats give to themselves and fight for his nominees expressly because the old order establishment is made uncomfortable by them.”

My take.

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• Trump nominating Patel is a perfect example of a phenomenon in politics unique to Trump.
• The pick seems sensible until you put it into the right context.
• I support many of the reforms Patel has proposed, but I still find a lot of reason to be concerned about him as FBI director.

The Kash Patel story is a great embodiment of an effect that I’m calling "the Trump circularity." I don’t know if that’s quite the right term, but I’ll try to neatly define it: The Trump circularity is the phenomenon of Trump doing some norm-breaking thing (for better or for worse) that puts all of our political footing onto new ground that he then gets to define to his own political advantage. We often live in the Trump circularity, and he is incredibly good at keeping us there.

Take this example. In a simple sense, Trump is putting forward Kash Patel for FBI director because the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. Trump has had a rocky relationship from the time he appointed him, but this was the tipping point. Why did the FBI raid his Mar-a-Lago residence? Because Trump did the norm-breaking thing of taking and then refusing to return classified documents, even lying about whether he had them in the first place.

While the classified documents case never went to trial, we know this to be true: Trump took classified documents from the White House. And if you believe the very damning, very detailed Justice Department indictment (which I do), he lied about having them, lied about returning them, instructed people on his staff to move them around to evade detection, and then had his residence raided by the FBI when he refused to return them.

We can argue about how severe the punishment should be for this kind of action by a president, but I don't think we can argue whether or not Trump did this norm-breaking thing — he did. (And yes: This was very different from what Joe Biden did or what Hillary Clinton did or what Mike Pence did).

Once the news of the raid broke, we entered the Trump circularity. After forcing his FBI director’s hand, Trump used the raid to claim he was a victim of a political prosecution. Then, he went before a judge he appointed in Florida, whose series of inexplicable and eyebrow-raising legal decisions effectively tanked the government’s case. Now, Trump is forcing his former pick for the FBI out because that person (justifiably!) raided his home and is now tapping someone he believes is so in the palm of his hand he'd never dare to act in a way that undermines him. 

I think it’s important to trace this Trump circularity back to the start, because otherwise this pick feels understandable: What kind of president wouldn't force out an FBI director that raided his home? It makes total sense.

But it would make no sense outside the Trump circularity. Remember: FBI directors serve 10-year terms. While only one has served for the full 10 years, firing an FBI director or forcing them to retire is extremely unusual. In fact, that’s only happened twice in some 50 years. As David Frum detailed, every president since Nixon has initially kept the FBI director on, with the exception of Bill Clinton — who only fired the FBI director from George H.W. Bush’s term after Bush’s Justice Department issued a report on his ethical lapses.  

That brings us back to Kash Patel. Let me start by saying that I don't fear many of the things you might have heard or seen in the news already, like Patel's supposed promise to shut down the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. In his full quote (which he made while riffing on a podcast), he clearly states that he wants to relocate FBI agents to "go be cops" and do their jobs across the country. Which... doesn't really seem like a big deal?

Furthermore, I support some of Patel's worldview and promises. For starters, he is right about much of the "Russiagate" narrative, and he helped mainstream the realization that the FBI relied far too much on the Steele dossier to acquire surveillance warrants on the Trump campaign. I've written extensively about all the things the media got wrong on Trump and Russia, and Patel was one of the first to bring some of it to light.

Another reason Patel has called for moving agents out of Washington D.C., in his words, is "to prevent institutional capture and curb FBI leadership from engaging in political gamesmanship." Fair enough. He also calls on Congress to force intelligence agencies into more transparency by threatening their funding, which is smart. But as The Washington Examiner's editorial board (under “What the right is saying”) put it, the FBI needs reform, not retribution.

That’s why it’s important to remember where we are in the Trump circularity, because it reveals the outlandish nature of Patel’s seemingly reasonable criticisms. Patel's stated motivation for his proposed reforms are not to root out the genuine issues of bloat, corruption, and lack of transparency at the FBI; it’s to go after a hit list of mythical enemies like James Comey, Lisa Page, or Barack Obama who are part of the alleged "deep state" — even though, as journalist and frequent FBI critic Ken Klippenstein eloquently put it, Patel is really just obsessing over "a few dozen people who are over-the-hill and busying themselves writing doorstop memoirs titled, like, 'A Sacred Loyalty: My Life of Service and Sacrifice.'"

In the process, we get an FBI head whose behavior has spanned from oddball to outright worrisome. Remember, Patel has openly promised retribution against Trump's political enemies. Patel has said the figure at the center of the QAnon cult should "get credit for all the things he has accomplished." Patel has hawked dietary supplements to “reverse the vaxx n get healthy.” Patel has said he would crack down on leakers and prosecute journalists. And Patel still believes Joe Biden "stole" the 2020 election.

Again, these are not problems of experience, or of loyalty — as Derek Hunter explained (under "What the right is saying"), Democrats nominate inexperienced loyalists all the time, too. These are problems with handing broad law-enforcement powers at a (mostly) apolitical institution to someone who genuinely believes crackpot theories and openly promises to use his powers to go after perceived enemies.

The FBI needs reform. Our surveillance state needs some of the changes Patel is stumping for. But we don't need this — we don't need Kash Patel. Only because we are living in the Trump circularity is someone like him even sniffing the levers of power; and we're all worse off for it.

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Your questions, answered.

Q: From reading Tangle, I've gained a sense that one factor in the recent election was the media crying wolf: reporting basically false or misleading bad things about Donald Trump, which meant that when they reported true bad things about him, those reports were taken less seriously. 

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Tangle: First off, thank you for the implied compliment. We do try our best to provide thoughtful analysis, but I also know that we’re not the only outlet that’s trying to cover Trump — and any partisan issue — in a way that’s even-handed and clear-eyed. 

I know that staffers at a number of prominent mainstream media organizations read Tangle: Dozens from The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vox, TIME Magazine, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, and The Washington Examiner, just to name a few. But there is no way for me to know how much we influence any major outlet’s coverage. And just from a business perspective, I’m not sure they’d want to take their cues from us. 

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Under the radar.

On Sunday, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) announced it was suspending aid deliveries through the Kerem Shalom crossing, the main entry point into Gaza from Israel, following a series of attacks on aid trucks. UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini said Israel had failed to ensure safe conditions along the route, leading to a “breakdown of law and order” that threatened the safety of aid workers. In response, Israel said the suspension would have a minimal impact on overall aid deliveries, noting that its own aid-distribution agency had transported more than 1,000 truckloads of aid into Gaza in the last week. Gazans, however, are facing an imminent famine as food, water, medicine, and fuel remain scarce. The New York Times has the story.

Numbers.

• 1908. The year the FBI was formally created — initially as the Bureau of Investigation — by Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte. 
• 1976. The year Congress passed Public Law 94-503, limiting the FBI Director to a single term of no longer than 10 years, after J. Edgar Hoover served a 48-year term. 
• 20. The number of directors (including acting directors) in the FBI’s history. 
• 2. The number of FBI directors who have been fired before the end of their term since 1976. 
• 1. The number of FBI directors who have served their full 10-year term since 1976. 
• +18%. The FBI’s net favorability with Americans, according to an August 2024 Pew Research survey. 
• -13%. The FBI’s net favorability with Republicans. 
• +49%. The FBI’s net favorability with Democrats.

The extras.

• One year ago today we covered Henry Kissinger’s death.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the Covid-19 lab leak report.
• Nothing to do with politics: A German man attempting to break a record for living underwater.
• Yesterday’s survey: 5,061 readers responded to our survey on President Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter with 62% opposed. “Sets an unhealthy precedent. Reinforced the perception that the ruling elite are above the law,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

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