 "Kash Patel, a 'conspiracy theorist' who Trump picked to head FBI, to be grilled in Senate today")
When Kash Patel, US President Donald Trump’s pick to head the FBI, will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, he is expected to face tough questions from Democrats.
Unlike Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was confirmed by Senate unanimously, Patel’s confirmation is expected to be along party lines. While Republicans are bound to hail him, owing to his unflinching loyalty to Trump, Democrats are bound to flag his pledge to go after political opponents and support for debunked conspiracy theories about January 6 riots and Russia investigation during Trump’s first term.
While FBI directors have always been appointed by presidents, they have sought to maintain distance from White House to ensure independence of their agency. However, with Patel at the helm, who owes his rise in the government to nothing but loyalty to Trump and parroting his worldview over the years, there are questions whether the agency would be able to function independently or would be reduced to a Republican witch-hunt project.
Ahead of the hearing, Yale University historian Beverly Gage told The New York Times that Patel could be “earth-shattering” at the FBI.
“He’s so close to Donald Trump and is making no secret that he will use the bureau to punish Mr. Trump’s enemies. He’s coming in openly hostile to the institution. At the F.B.I., this is potentially earth-shattering,” said Gage.
Patel wanted to disband FBI
In the most notable iteration of his distaste of the agency he is now set to head, Patel once said he wanted to disband FBI and turn all of its agents and officers into policepersons.
In a podcast last year, Patel said that if he were the head of FBI, he would “shut down” the agency’s headquarters building and “reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state’”.
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More Shorts“And I’d take the seven thousand employees that work in that building and send them across America to go chase down criminals. Go be cops,” said Patel in the podcast, according to Associated Press.
A history of conspiracy theories, falsehoods
Patel has claimed for years that the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, instigated by Trump with the intention to illegally overturn the 2020 election in his favour, was planned and executed by FBI through its undercover operatives and informants.
Michael Horowitz, the Inspector General of the Department of Justice, concluded in his investigation of the FBI’s handling of informants and intelligence leading up to the Jan. 6 attack that the FBI “did not have any undercover employees” in the mob that day, according to The New York Times.
Horowitz’s report concluded that there were 26 persons with a history of providing information to the FBI who were in Washington DC on Jan. 6, 2021. Out of these 26 persons, the report said that only three informants were told to “report on specific domestic terrorism case subjects” planning to attend Trump’s rally that day where he egged on the mob to attack the Capitol and none of them was ordered to or were authorised to encourage an attack on the Capitol.
Patel has also peddled for years that a document emerging indirectly from the Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, Steele Dossier, was the basis of FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in 2016 election in favour of Trump. However, that’s not true.
The FBI opened the Russia investigation on July 31, 2016, after a tip from Australian government, according to two investigations by Horowitz and Special Counsel John Durham.
The Australian authorities had alerted the FBI that a foreign policy aide on the Trump campaign had suggested to Australian diplomats that Russia was planning to plant dirt on Hillary to damage her candidacy and boost Trump’s prospects in the election, according to The Times.
While the FBI began the investigation on July 31, 2016, it received the Steele Dossier weeks later on Sept. 19.
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