Donald Trump's recent nominee has ties to an ideology that has "sparked multiple acts of violence," according to a new report.
David Corn, D.C. bureau chief of Mother Jones and MSNBC analyst, wrote Sunday that Kash Patel, chosen by Trump to lead the FBI, has embraced "the unhinged QAnon movement." Critics were outraged by the FBI selection.
According to Corn, Patel's "extremism goes far beyond assailing a supposed Deep State."
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"Patel is a MAGA combatant who has fiercely advocated Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and who has championed January 6 rioters as patriots and unfairly persecuted political prisoners. (The still ongoing January 6 case, including scores of prosecutions for assaults on police, is one of the FBI’s largest and most successful criminal investigations ever.) Patel is also a fervent promoter of conspiracy theories. At the end of Trump’s first presidency, when he was a Pentagon official, he spread the bonkers idea that Italian military satellites had been employed to turn Trump votes to Joe Biden votes in the 2020 election. And he has falsely claimed that the Trump-Russia scandal was a hoax cooked up by the FBI and so-called Deep State to sabotage Trump," Corn wrote. "Moreover, Patel has been supportive of the most loony conspiracy theory in MAGA land: QAnon."
Corn further explained the QAnon conspiracy theory, which he said "holds that an intelligence operative known only as Q has revealed through cryptic messages that a cabal of global, Satanic, cannibalistic elitists and pedophiles is operating a child sex trafficking operation as it vies for world domination and conspires against Trump."
"It is pure nuttery. Worse than that, QAnon has sparked multiple acts of violence," he added. "Yet Patel repeatedlyhas hailed QAnoners and promoted this conspiracy theory. In early 2022, when he sat on the board of Trump’s social media company, Truth Social, Patel amplified an account called @Q that pushed out QAnon messaging."