When Kash Patel appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee seeking confirmation as FBI director on January 30, someone will no doubt raise questions about his threats against Donald Trump’s critics, his stated penchant to abuse power, his minimal job qualifications and his embarrassing career as a conspiracy monger.
But in addition to all those pressing issues, and perhaps even more vital, is that Patel be grilled on the boundless enthusiasm for his candidacy among America’s adversaries in the Kremlin. No Senator of either party should leave that hearing room without seeing this video, one of many that have appeared on Russia’s main television channel in the weeks since Election Day.
“When will they bring my Kash to power?” demands Vladimir Solovyov, the most prominent newscaster in Moscow and a close associate of President Vladimir Putin. “I just want to see how Kash Patel turns the FBI into a Museum of Repression on his first day in office.” Solovyov and the panel of commentators in that clip are echoing the Kremlin’s official line, as they do every evening – and their hunger to see Patel take over the premier law enforcement agency in the United States is not a joke.
Solovyov’s quip about what "his Kash" would do to FBI headquarters in Washington echoes remarks that he himself made last November when the likelihood of his nomination by Trump suddenly became real. He promised to shut down the J. Edgar Hoover building in downtown Washington and “open it up the next day as the Museum of the Deep State.”
But Patel went further, vowing to abolish the bureau’s Intelligence Division, which he claims has been “weaponized” against Trump and the MAGA movement. “We have an intel agency. I don’t need it to be redone within the walls of the FBI, ” he said, displaying his ignorance of both national security law and the functions of the CIA, NSA and other US intelligence agencies. “Send those 7,000 agents in the headquarters building downrange to chase down rapists, murderers, and drug traffickers.” Chasing down rapists and murderers (and most drug traffickers) are what local police do, of course, as former prosecutor Patel ought to know. He's just gaslighting the MAGA rubes.
But Patel’s promise to close down the FBI intelligence division – whose actual job is to thwart and capture foreign spies in the United States – is why the Russians are so giddily celebrating the prospect that he will take over the bureau. On an earlier show, Solovyov proclaimed that the elevation of figures like Patel, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, would enable the Kremlin to “quickly dismantle the United States.”
- YouTubeyoutu.be
What Patel doesn't know -- and clearly has no interest in understanding -- is that the thousands of agents and officials in Washington have an enormous task in defending the United States against hostile foreign powers, not only the GRU and other Russian outfits but agents employed by China, Iran, and North Korea as well. Just last year, the FBI exposed a Chinese agent secretly nested in New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's office, part of an enormous network used by Beijing to carry out influence operations and intimidation of dissidents in the Empire State.
The Chinese aren't loudly boasting like the Russians, but they too can only be excited by the destruction of the agency that stands in their way on our soil.
None of this is theoretical. Trump and his minions have been determined to wreck American counterintelligence ever since his connections with Russian intelligence were first exposed in the wake of the 2016 election.
Listen to Dave Troy, who has worked hard to expose this looming existential menace:
"Counterintelligence will be gone; terrorists will not be tracked; expect unjust prosecutions and leaks to support extrajudicial persecution of personal foes and enemies of Putin. Impossible to overstate the danger here."
Vladimir Solovyov worried that Senate Republicans wouldn't confirm Trump's dangerous nominees. But he seems to have overestimated their wisdom and patriotism.
It is indeed impossible to overstate the danger from Patel and whatever lunatics he would bring in to the FBI -- and from Gabbard as well. But it is the FBI nominee who has declared his desire to tear down America's defense against foreign spies. Confirming him to a position where he can do that will give aid and comfort to hostile powers -- and Republican senators should think carefully before they cast that vote.
Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.
