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Watchdog Says Wray Should Not Assist Trump's Attack on FBI by Resigning
"FBI directors are given 10-year terms for a reason: to insulate them from political pressure," said Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen.
Dec 11, 2024
Current FBI Director Christopher Wray announced Wednesday that he will depart his post when President Joe Biden's term ends in January—a move that drew criticism from the watchdog group Public Citizen.
Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman pointed out that Wray's planned departure follows President-elect Donald Trump's threat to fire him.
"FBI directors are given 10-year terms for a reason: to insulate them from political pressure. To defend the vital independence of the FBI, Director Wray should not preemptively resign in face of Donald Trump's bad-faith threats to remove him," Weissman said in a statement.
Patel, who served as chief of staff to acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller at the end of Trump's first term, was characterized by The Associated Press earlier this year as a "trusted aide and swaggering campaign surrogate who mythologizes the former president while promoting conspiracy theories and his own brand."
Some of Patel's past statements have alarmed critics, who worry he may be willing to weaponize the agency to go after political enemies or media critics of Trump.
"We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections," he said during an appearance on former Trump advisor Steve Bannon's War Room podcast last year.
Weissman said that "if Donald Trump fires [Wray], so be it. But Wray should not aid and abet the effort to weaponize the FBI by bowing out in advance."
Weissman was not the only person to criticize Wray along these lines: "A profile in courage, Chris Wray is not. Wray bowed to political pressure; his early resignation is the easy way out. It avoids a very public conversation when Trump inevitably would have fired him," wrote Anthony Coley, an analyst at NBC News, CNBC, and MSNBC.
In announcing his decision to leave, Wray said the choice "is the best way to avoid dragging the bureau deeper into the fray, while reinforcing the values and principles that are so important to how we do our work," according to The New York Times.
He also struck a wistful tone. "This is not easy for me," Wray said, per the Times. "I love this place, I love our mission, and I love our people."
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Trump Picks 'Deeply Strange' Kash Patel—Who Vowed to 'Come After People in the Media'—for FBI Director
Kash's nomination to lead the FBI, said one watchdog, "represents the cronyism that is coming to define the second Trump administration. Loyalty to President-elect Trump is what matters above all else."
Dec 01, 2024
Watchdog critics are sounding the alarm over president-elect Donald Trump's choice of Kashyap "Kash" Patel to be the next director of the FBI, calling the MAGA ultra-loyalist—who even former Republican colleagues describe as "dangerous" and unqualified—to be running the nation's top law enforcement agency.
Patel, who served in the previous Trump administration as chief of staff in the Department of Defense and a counterterrorism adviser on the National Security Council, was characterized by the Associated Press earlier this year as "trusted aide and swaggering campaign surrogate who mythologizes the former president while promoting conspiracy theories and his own brand."
Journalist Medhi Hasan, co-founder of Zeteo, said that while previously working for MSNBC he had done a deep-dive on Patel, during which he discovered just what "a deeply strange and alarming and sycophantic figure" Trump's pick is.
"Yes, we're going to come after people in the media." —Kash Patel, 2023
As the New York Timesreports, Patel founded a nonprofit that provides legal assistance to individuals prosecuted for involvement in the January 6, 2021 insurrection and also runs a merchandise business which sells flashy pro-MAGA gear under the "K$H" label.
Patel, the Times notes, "sells pro-Trump T-shirts and other items as well as a series of his children's books that pay homage to 'King Donald.' Mr. Patel also collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees from the 2024 Trump campaign and from Friends of Matt Gaetz, the campaign committee for the former House Republican from Florida, who withdrew from consideration as Mr. Trump’s attorney general after criticism over allegations of sex trafficking and drug use."
According to the watchdog group Accountable.US, Patel is just the latest unqualified choice by a president-elect will to put "political loyalty above national security." As the group noted in a statement:
While Patel joined the previous Trump administration in its last year and quickly rose through the ranks thanks to his hard-nosed style and fawning devotion to Donald Trump, other Trump officials reportedly regarded Patel as "dangerous" including General Mark Milley who feared he would break the law for Trump, and former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr who said "Over my dead body" when Trump entertained naming Patel deputy director of the FBI. Recently, Patel has threatened to prosecute journalists and political opponents of Trump. Patel has also reportedly spread baseless Qanon conspiracy theories and "earned hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from his own business dealings with Trump-related entities."
Last year, during an appearance on Steve Bannon's War Room podcast, Patel vowed that Trump's enemies would be targeted if the former president returned to power. "We will go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media," Patel said at the time.
"Yes, we're going to come after people in the media," Patel explained to Bannon, talking about journalists and others who he claimed "help Joe Biden rig elections."
Tony Carrk, Accountable's executive director, warned Kash's nomination to lead the FBI "represents the cronyism that is coming to define the second Trump administration. Loyalty to President-elect Trump is what matters above all else."
"Even former Trump officials have questioned Patel's qualifications and ability to adhere to the rule of law after he has threatened to prosecute journalists and Trump's political opponents,” Carrk added. "Patel's financial entanglements with the president-elect also present potential conflicts of interest. He has turned his gushing idolization of Trump into a money-making opportunity, enriching himself by promoting the Trump brand alongside his own. It says it all about Donald Trump's priorities to once again reward a devout political crony even if it means America's national security interests come a distant second."
"Even in an administration full of loyalists, Patel was exceptional in his devotion."
Writing Saturday in The Atlantic, staff writer Elaina Plott Calabro described Kash as "exactly the kind of person who would serve in a second Trump administration," based on his personality as much as his record.
Why was he seen as "dangerous," even among Trump administration insiders at the time?
"It wasn't a question of ideology," according to Calabro. "He wasn't a zealot like Stephen Miller, trying to make the bureaucracy yield to his agenda. Rather, Patel appeared singularly focused on pleasing Trump. Even in an administration full of loyalists, Patel was exceptional in his devotion."
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Trump White House Limited 'Sham' FBI Kavanaugh Probe, Senate Report Confirms
"The Trump White House exercised total control over the scope of the investigation, preventing the FBI from interviewing relevant witnesses and following up on tips," reads a new report.
Oct 08, 2024
"Our suspicions are confirmed," said one veteran women's rights advocate on Tuesday after a U.S. Senate report was released on former Republican President Donald Trump's suppression of a federal probe into Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) released a report after an investigation that he said took six years to complete due to a lack of access to Federal Bureau of Investigation correspondence and officials, but that ultimately revealed the Trump White House "exercised total control over the scope" of the FBI's investigation into allegations that Kavanaugh had committed sexual assault.
The report was released as U.S. voters in some states have already begun heading to the polls to vote in the 2024 election, in which Trump is running for a second term.
Whitehouse launched his investigation in 2018 after Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court—a major victory for the far right as it sought to gut federal abortion rights, which the justices did in 2022. Kavanaugh's confirmation followed allegations of sexual assault made by Christine Blasey Ford, who testified at an explosive hearing, and Deborah Ramirez, a Yale classmate of the judge.
A supplemental background investigation into Blasey Ford's allegations was begun by the FBI in response to the allegations, but the probe failed to uncover corroborating evidence for Blasey Ford's claims—a fact that several senators cited when explaining why they voted to confirm Kavanaugh despite the accusations against him.
Whitehouse's report found that the supplemental background investigation was "flawed and incomplete"—criticisms that were shared by Democratic senators and rights advocates at the time—and furthermore, that Trump's claim that the FBI would have "free rein" over the probe was a "sham."
"The Trump White House exercised total control over the scope of the investigation, preventing the FBI from interviewing relevant witnesses and following up on tips. The White House refused to authorize basic investigatory steps that might have uncovered information corroborating the allegations," reads the report, titled Unworthy of Reliance.
The report confirms that the FBI received more than 4,500 calls and electronic messages about Kavanaugh, but on instructions from the White House, officials forwarded the tips to the Trump administration "without investigation."
"If anything, the White House may have used the tip line to steer FBI investigators away from derogatory or damaging information," said Whitehouse.
The report found that the FBI interviewed only 10 people before concluding the supplemental background investigation on October 4, 2018, two days before Kavanaugh was confirmed by an historically narrow margin.
The people interviewed by the FBI had "firsthand knowledge of the allegations," but agents did not speak to "the witnesses potentially with the most firsthand knowledge"—Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh.
"Sometimes having what you know confirmed doesn't make it better," said Ilyse Hogue, former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, now called Reproductive Freedom for All. Hogue and other reproductive justice advocates sounded the alarm in 2018 that the FBI's probe was "a total joke" that "disregarded women."
With the Trump administration circumscribing the FBI investigation and prohibiting officials from following up on leads, said Whitehouse, "senators cast their vote on the confirmation of a Supreme Court nominee credibly accused of sexual assault by multiple women on the basis of a truncated and incomplete investigation about whose scope the senators had been misled."
Debra Katz, a lawyer for Blasey Ford, applauded Whitehouse's probe and called for the Office of the Inspector General at the FBI to investigate the "sham" that took place in 2018.
"The congressional report published today confirms what we long suspected: The FBI supplemental investigation of then-nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh was, in fact, a sham effort directed by the Trump White House to silence brave victims and other witnesses who came forward and to hide the truth," said Katz and Lisa Banks, another attorney who represented Blasey Ford.
Whitehouse said his investigation showed how the FBI's supplemental background investigation process "can be easily manipulated," and "would benefit from greater transparency."
"The FBI and White House should implement clear, written procedures that apply uniformly to the conduct of supplemental
background investigations—or at least to situations like the Kavanaugh nomination, where major allegations of misconduct surface after a nominee's initial background investigation is complete," reads the report. "Only then can the Senate be assured that a supplemental background investigation is used to gather rather than suppress information."
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