A national security expert sounded the alarm Tuesday that Donald Trump is expected to appoint a loyalist to "a position where he could do a lot of damage and wield a lot of power."
The president-elect will likely appoint Kash Patel to a high-profile position at either the FBI or the Justice Department, according to several reports. And since his nomination would be highly controversial, Trump is considering naming him to a position that would not require Senate confirmation.
"Patel would be an extremely controversial selection for any leadership role, including director of the FBI," said MSNBC's Willie Geist. "Patel served as a senior adviser during Trump's first term. Since leaving the White House he has repeatedly talked about using the Justice Department to go after Trump's political enemies and the media.
"The president-elect is reportedly considering naming Patel deputy director or to an appointed investigative role within the DOJ to avoid a confirmation fight in the Senate. Trump is expected to fire FBI director Christopher Wray, whom he appointed in 2017 to a 10-year term."
The transition team seems to have accepted that Patel would not be confirmed, even by a Republican-led Senate, and they want to avoid a losing battle such as the one Matt Gaetz faced before he withdrew his nomination as attorney general.
"It seems they have made the decision that Kash Patel is not confirmable, particularly after the Gaetz debacle," said NBC News correspondent Ken Dilanian.
"That may not be what he said about going after the 'deep state' – they're all for that. It's the kind of things in his background that have been out there, like, for example, he appeared to have misrepresented his role in the Benghazi case. He said at one point he was one of the lead prosecutors, and that's just not true, and other things over the years that have been raised in his background, and so the plan seems to be to install him in an appointed position where he could do a lot of damage and wield a lot of power."
"Let's make no mistake — deputy FBI director, for example, is essentially the chief operating officer," Dilanian added. "It's a hugely responsible role, or even if they set him loose investigating the investigators because it's clear that that is going to happen in some form, that Jack Smith and his team will find themselves under some kind of scrutiny. He could make a lot of mischief that way. Patel is the personification of MAGA rage about the Justice Department and the FBI."
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Patel has repeatedly given interviews where he baselessly accuses the FBI of corruption and blames Democrats for the Trump prosecutions that eventually withered on the vine.
"I've covered these investigations for two years – there's not a shred of evidence that happened," Dilanian said. "In fact, it's the opposite. [Attorney General] Merrick Garland, as you were talking about before, bent over backwards to stay out of this, to appoint a special counsel, to have the political people play no role in these decisions, you know, to a fault, some people would argue, but Patel has been saying this is the deep state corrupted the FBI to go after Trump and he's going to mete out his revenge, and it looks like he's going to have a job where he'll be able to do that [and] do equal damage at the CIA, where he's also waged war on the intelligence community."
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