When President-elect Donald Trump announced that Kash Patel will be his nominee for director of the FBI, my reaction wasn’t subtle. In an appearance on MSNBC, I warned that, if confirmed, Patel “would be like if you crossed Alex Jones with J. Edgar Hoover.”
It’s an assessment that I stand behind three weeks later, even as Patel’s nomination has failed to garner the same kind of pushback from Republican senators as some of Trump’s other controversial picks. If my comparison comes across as glib or, as one outlet called it, “apoplectic,” it’s because Hoover’s tyranny and similarities to Jones, the conspiracy theorist and former Infowars host, have been downplayed over the decades since his death. It also then fails to acknowledge how much worse Patel is poised to be if given the chance.
Patel’s relationship with Trump highlights his talent at endearing himself to the worst people.
Patel’s relationship with Trump highlights his talent at endearing himself to the worst people. Patel’s time as a MAGA acolyte began when he was a congressional aide helping to hamper the Russia investigation during the early days of the Trump administration. As a reward, Trump demanded that his staffers find Patel a White House job on the National Security Council.
Since then, Patel has continued to leverage that relationship to his benefit. He has become a major right-wing media figure, one willing to say anything, regardless of the facts, so long as it paints Trump in a good light. As a day job he took up a post as fellow at the pro-Trump think tank founded by Trump’s choice for director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought. Patel has also been emulating his patron’s penchant for hawking merchandise to the rubes in the crowd and raising questionable cash.
And, most important to Trump, there’s no question that Patel would be more than willing to turn the investigative might of the FBI on anyone the president-elect puts in his sights. Here’s how he put it during an appearance on former White House adviser Steve Bannon’s podcast last year:
We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But, yeah, we’re putting you all on notice. And, Steve, this is why they hate us. This is why we’re tyrannical. This is why we’re dictators, because we’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.
What Patel is promising is a return to the days under Hoover when the FBI’s power was almost entirely unchecked and it was turned against the left-wing organizers its director loathed. When Hoover first joined the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation in 1917, it was to lead its “Radical Division.” It was a good fit for the 24-year-old reactionary, who would a few years later become the bureau’s acting director in 1924. He’d spend almost 50 years atop the FBI, outlasting seven presidents and serving under an eighth, before dying in his sleep in 1972.
Unlike Patel’s eagerness to attack journalists, Hoover spent most of his career seeing the media as an accomplice in garnering public opinion for his G-men’s activities. At his peak in the 1950s, he positioned himself to be one of the most trusted men in the country, anticommunist and yet seemingly willing to safeguard civil liberties. But behind closed doors, Hoover stockpiled potential blackmail material against political figures and engaged in unwarranted surveillance against American citizens.
As he got older, Hoover became more daring and willing to revert to his earlier focus on breaking left-wing organizations. His career racism helped fuel the establishment of COINTELPRO, the now-infamous program designed to spy on, harass and otherwise discredit liberal voices. He fully bought into conspiracy theories that blamed any leftist sentiment or support for civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. on Soviet influences. It was only after Hoover’s death that the full exposé about the FBI’s abuses under his watch became public thanks in part to an NBC News journalist’s reporting and blockbuster congressional investigations.
Hoover had one thing to boost his aura of invincibility that Patel won’t have: The presidents he served over time grew to fear him.
Hoover had one thing to boost his aura of invincibility that Patel won’t have: The presidents he served over time grew to fear him. President Richard Nixon was unwilling to dismiss the director despite the growing furor over the public’s getting its first inklings of the breadth of the FBI’s surveillance of anti-Vietnam War activists. Nixon was recorded on the White House’s taping system saying he was concerned that firing Hoover would prompt him to “pull down the temple with him, including me.”
Patel has no chance of that sort of power dynamic with Trump — but don’t mark that as a positive development. He has shown little tangible success in the roles he has been granted during his rise, and he has actively annoyed the people around him in the process. His devotion to Trump is the only qualification that he possesses and that prevents him from the sort of independence Hoover displayed. Instead, it will be Patel who is constantly living in fear of dismissal and lashing out against their perceived shared enemies as a result.
There will likewise be no reason for Trump to worry about Patel because pleasing the boss, not serving justice, will be his north star. And what the president-elect wants is an FBI that serves his needs in violation of the norms against directing investigations from the White House. Not that this is necessarily a problem for Patel, based on his evident willingness to do whatever it takes to retain his spot on Trump’s good side. If the Senate confirms him in January, it will be a catastrophic blow to the freedom and safety of all Americans. The FBI will become a loaded machine gun in the hands of a coward, someone willing to open fire on anyone who might threaten his standing.