FBI Director Kash Patel was grilled for nearly five hours Tuesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and one overlooked exchange raised alarm for former senior Homeland Security official Miles Taylor.
At the hearing, Patel was asked by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) whether he would commit to not sending FBI agents to polling places during the midterms. Patel not only refused to make such a commitment, but “seemed to hint,” Taylor argued, that the agency was already “pre-positioned to do it.”
“Patel is teeing up the possibility, if not the likelihood, that the FBI will deploy personnel toward the polls across its field offices,” Taylor wrote in an analysis published on his Substack Wednesday. “And I suspect the regime’s lawyers think they’ve found a clever workaround, namely, leaving their guns at the office.”
Taylor flagged a “Civil War-era” federal statute that prohibits “any troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held,” with a narrow exception for instances in which it was “necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.”
“While the military has already ruled out sending troops to voting locations on behalf of Trump, it appears the FBI might be looking to do it instead, possibly under the belief that if its agents aren’t armed, the statute doesn’t apply,” Taylor wrote.
“I’m guessing Donald Trump is more tempted than ever to do it. He’s getting desperate. In recent weeks, his election schemes have been thwarted, again and again.”
The rationale behind what Taylor suspected to be the Trump administration’s thinking — that deploying unarmed FBI agents to polling places was not unlawful — was a “mirage,” Taylor noted a number of district attorneys had already “pointed out.” And yet, Taylor still feared that the Trump administration may move forward with its alleged midterm plan regardless.
“They keep losing in the courts, yet they keep trying because Trump sees the writing on the wall,” Taylor warned. “He’s terrified of losing control of Congress.”