Before last fall's election, Kash Patel assured Donald Trump's supporters that the former and future president's enemies would get their comeuppance once he was back in power. Patel, a former federal prosecutor who held various national security positions during Trump's first term, said a second Trump administration would "come after" the "deep state" agents, including journalists as well as former federal officials, who supposedly had conspired to undermine democracy by opposing the president's agenda. Although Patel was hazy on exactly what crimes those people had committed, he promised to get them one way or another.
After Trump picked Patel to run the FBI, the nominee repudiated his threats of retaliation, presenting himself as a sober and conscientious public servant who would never take "retributive actions" or allow politics to affect decisions at the country's leading law enforcement agency. The Republican-controlled Senate, which narrowly confirmed Patel as FBI director on Thursday, evidently bought that transformation. Soon we will learn which Patel is running the FBI: the Trump hatchet man who served as a pugnacious proxy for his 2024 campaign or a principled reformer dedicated to justice and the rule of law.
Patel's public comments and published works provide plenty of reason to be skeptical of his new persona. In his podcast interviews, he comes across as a reckless partisan whose overriding concern is loyalty to Trump. That preeminent priority explains Patel's coziness with QAnon followers, whose manifestly loony beliefs he was willing to overlook because he saw their movement as an important part of the MAGA constituency. It also explains why Patel, even at his confirmation hearing, could not bring himself to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, conceding only that "Joe Biden's election was certified, he was sworn in, and he served as the president of the United States."
