President-elect Donald Trump chose Saturday night to announce that his long-time aide Kash Patel is his choice to be the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and for anyone interested in a good fumigation of the bureau, this is a cause for real optimism.
Before we get to the laundry list of FBI abuses that Patel would hopefully put an end to, let us first establish that this is a well-credentialed man who served at high levels in the first Trump administration. This is not an influencer.
But Patel is somebody with a fresh set of eyes who has a chance to identify and cure the abuses of an FBI that has become too often an enemy, not a friend of liberty and freedom.
For example, Patel would be taking over an FBI that has targeted Catholics. The FBI has decided that traditional Catholics need to be watched carefully because we might be adjacent to extremism.
As a Catholic, I will say that an FBI that does not spy on my churches as the FBI has done over the past several years would be a great improvement. Though, in fairness, the guy in the black shoes and white socks at Mass isn’t fooling anyone. I wish that was just a joke.
As Sen, Josh Hawley put it in questioning current FBI director Christopher Wray last year, ‘Good heavens, director, this is one of the most outrageous targetings — you have mobilized your division, the most powerful law enforcement division in the world, against traditionalist Catholics … and you just told us you have not fired a single person.’
Want to go back a bit further? You remember the Durham Report? Where a special counsel found that, and I quote, ‘The FBI failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law.’
That’s kinda the whole mission, guys. Fidelity to law. That whole thing.
And that’s not all. Remember the raid on Mar-A-Lago? Melania Trump’s underwear drawer being searched and a public display of the evidence found there, splayed on the floor like an outtake from ‘Goodfellas?’
Did we ever see pictures like that from the FBI in regard to President Joe Biden’s classified documents? No.
Was there a reason the FBI had to treat the Trump raid like some kind of Call of Duty mission when President Joe Biden’s lawyers were given notice and high fives from the FBI? No.
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.
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.
Do you have an FBI file? You don’t know. You might. Do I have an FBI file? I don’t know either, but I also might. And this is the point. These people have extraordinary power over 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.
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.
And there is every reason to believe it can help our nation on its path to healing.