The Bell Finally Tolls for the FBI

The reported nomination of Kash Patel means chickens are coming home to roost for the FBI, which needs to be destroyed as a political entity

From CNN’s “Trump announces he intends to replace current FBI director with loyalist Kash Patel”:

Even among Trump loyalists, Patel is widely viewed as a controversial figure and relentless self-promoter whose value to the president-elect largely derives from a shared disdain for the so-called deep state… Patel rose to prominence within Trump’s orbit in 2018, when he served as an aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee… Patel played a key role in Nunes’ efforts to discredit the FBI’s Russia investigation into the Trump campaign, including a controversial classified memo that alleged FBI abuses of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants on Trump advisers.

What’s a “loyalist”? How many presidents nominate “disloyalists” to fill senior positions? Why do sites like Axios continue to complain that Donald Trump has picked “yet another hardline MAGA ally” to occupy a key spot? Who the hell else is he supposed to pick?

After everything that’s taken place, it’s unsafe for Trump to do anything but bonfire the whole FBI leadership structure, including probably the entire National Security and Counterintelligence Divisions, for starters. Control over the FBI is the critical test of how real any coming changes will be. In the last eight-plus years, the Bureau went beyond the excesses of the J. Edgar Hoover era, attempting to install itself as a KGB-like domestic intelligence service with gatekeeping power over everything from the White House to the speech landscape. Forget Trump: we are not safe unless its bureaucracy is fully dismantled.

As for CNN: for the network to shudder about what a “frightening” choice Patel is without mentioning its own role in his story ought to be a shock, but it’s sadly par for the course. Coverage of the “controversial classified memo” Patel helped author may be exhibit A in the case against the “dishonest fake news media,” a description CNN’s gesticulator-in-chief Jim Acosta denounced as “out of control” and part of Trump’s “assaults on the truth.” The network spent more than a year attacking this “Nunes memo,” through reports that were themselves frequently proven wrong, with a few venturing into the realm of outright hoaxes. Industry coverage of the episode collectively represents perhaps the most egregious still-unacknowledged error of the Trump years, a story botched in quantity. No one performed worse than Acosta’s CNN:

THE GREAT FACEPLANT? A sample of CNN’s copious coverage of the “Nunes memo.” These are all different stories, even if they have the same illustrations in some cases. A “Hamilton 68” article is in the top right corner

I defy anyone from CNN to defend its pile of misses on this subject, which collectively read not as journalism but free advertising for Democrats and the FBI. This episode was so shameful, it blurred the lines between the press and a corrupt federal police force. At minimum, the smug mass errors by stations like CNN were Trump’s best campaign ads. Anderson Cooper, can you defend it? Wolf Blitzer? Brian Stelter? Chris Cillizza, who wrote some of CNN’s copy on this? Anyone? Could even recently departed Chris Wallace justify unacknowledged “mistakes” on this scale? To recap: