The Senate voted 51–49 Thursday to confirm Kash Patel to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski were the two lone Republicans to join a unified caucus of Democrats against Patel’s nomination.In the weeks leading up to Patel’s confirmation, the private citizen was roundly accused of directing a “purge” of the bureau—despite lacking any authority to do so.Earlier this month, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin asked the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate “highly credible” claims that Patel had issued “directives” to White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, and several members of the “newly-established” FBI director’s advisory team.Durbin’s letter pointed to notes from a January 29 meeting that stated, “KP wants movement at FBI, reciprocal actions for DOJ,” reported The Hill.But such evidence would suggest that Patel perjured himself during his Senate confirmation hearing on January 30, when the Trump nominee denied knowing of any “plans or discussions” to “punish” personnel that had been involved in Trump’s criminal investigations.Durbin issued a last-minute warning to the Senate ahead of the vote. “My Senate Republican colleagues are willfully ignoring myriad red flags about Mr. Patel, especially his recurring instinct to threaten retribution against his perceived enemies,” he said in a press conference outside the FBI headquarters.Patel, a January 6 conspiracy theorist, unashamedly published an enemies list in his 2022 book Government Gangsters, promising to go after 60-some individuals who he believed to be “a cabal of unelected tyrants.” They included Joe Biden, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, former FBI Director James Comey, former Attorney General Merrick Garland, and former USAID Administrator Samantha Power.The 44-year-old had also pledged to shut down the FBI Hoover building and “replace it with a mausoleum of the Deep State” while speaking with podcaster Benny Johnson in 2023.“If Kash Patel becomes director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as President Trump has suggested he should, he will be the poster child of vindictiveness—and his infamous public declarations of retribution may lead to the dismissal of any politically motivated prosecutions he initiates against his enemies list of ‘Deep State’ opponents,” Paul Rosenzweig, the former deputy assistant secretary for policy in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush, wrote in The Bulwark in December.This story has been updated.
The post January 6 Conspiracist With Revenge List Becomes Trump’s FBI Director appeared first on New Republic.
