Donald Trump's selection of former GOP staffer and hardcore MAGA loyalist Kash Patel to take over as FBI director caused outrage and alarm among Trump's political opponents, given that Patel has vowed to use the power of the state to "come after" the media and Trump dissidents.
But it's not just Democrats who are alarmed, Mother Jones reported on Tuesday.
In fact, Patel has also amassed a number of Republican enemies, whom he could well decide to target in a position of power as well.
Patel, who among other things has embraced the QAnon conspiracy theory and spread claims that the January 6 attack was a false flag, "laid out his plans in a 2023 book titled Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for our Democracy," wrote David Corn. Patel, he continued, used this book to define the "Deep State" as a "coordinated, ideologically rigid force independent from the people that manipulates the levers of politics and justice for its own gain and self-preservation," led by "a significant number of high-level cultural leaders and officials who, acting through networks of networks, disregard objectivity, weaponize the law, spread disinformation, spurn fairness, or even violate their oaths of office for political and personal gain."
He went on to list 60 purported people running the "Deep State," many of which are predictable names like President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and many of their major Cabinet officials.
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But he also named a number of Republicans, including some who previously worked for Trump as devout loyalists — and some of whom may be reflections of Patel's "own personal vendettas."
Among the Republicans Patel brands Deep State operatives are "Bill Barr, who served as attorney general for Trump; John Bolton, one of Trump’s national security advisers in his first White House stint; Pat Cipollone, Trump’s White House counsel; Mark Esper, a secretary of defense under Trump; Sarah Isgur Flores, who was head of communications for Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions; Alyssa Farah Griffin, the director of strategic commissions in the Trump White House; and Stephanie Grisham, former chief of staff for Melania Trump."
He also named former FBI Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey, who are Republicans, and sitting FBI Director Christopher Wray, who is not just a Republican but Trump's hand-picked replacement for Comey.
Many of these inclusions don't make any sense, Corn noted: For instance, "Barr, as attorney general, undermined Mueller’s investigation of the Trump-Russia scandal, an inquiry that according to Patel was a Deep State plot. Why would a Deep State denizen do that? And while Barr did not back up Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 election was rigged against him, he endorsed Trump’s presidential campaign this year. Another curious move for an anti-Trump conspirator."
Patel's real motivation for putting Barr on the list may be that Barr persuaded Trump not to appoint Patel deputy FBI director in his last administration, telling Trump he would resign if he went through with it.
The fact Trump has actually endorsed and praised Patel's Deep State book, concluded Corn, is a flashing red light that this time, "Patel’s list could end up as a to-do — or to-get — list for Trump. Not only Democrats should worry about that."