Donald Trump promised retribution on the campaign trail and his nomination of ultra-loyalist Kash Patel to FBI director is a sure-fire sign that he plans to deliver on it.
That bodes ill for a huge cast of characters, across the US’s top law enforcement agency and the Department of Justice, who have sought to investigate the president-elect on a litany of criminal charges, now dropped or on hold due to the impermissibility of prosecuting a sitting president.
“Government gangsters” is how the 40-year-old Patel has termed them, the name of a book he’s written on what he perceives to be Deep State corruption at the heart of the agency he’ll be tasked with running and beyond.
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“We will go out and find the conspirators. Not just in government, but in the media,” he announced to Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon on his War Room podcast this time last year. “We’re going to come after you whether it’s criminally or civilly.”
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Yes, Patel’s nomination requires Senate approval. But the capacity he will have to investigate and pressurise anyone he sees fit to once he’s in office might add a certain chill to individual senators’ decision-making.
He seems resolved to gut the FBI. What effect that will have on the country’s security remains to be seen.
As for the Kushner family, the marital connection continues to pay off. Donald Trump’s announcement that his son-in law’s father Charles Kushner will be US ambassador to France puts a man sentenced to two years in prison for tax evasion and witness tampering into a prime diplomatic role.
Trump pardoned Kushner senior at the end of his last term in office but it is an insalubrious tale and a controversial choice.
Not that the president-elect seems to mind. Not when friends or family are concerned, or indeed simply a Florida connection which a lot of his picks seem to share.
Friends, family, Florida, fealty. That’s a lot of what the current rush at Mar-a-Lago seems to be about.