Kash Patel wants us to know he is the hero of the story he is telling us. And he has certainly made it easy for MAGA to love his autobiographical exposé, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy.”
Even in my very best days, I could never pull off the Kash Patel look: his tough-guy sunglasses, hiding I presume ice-cold eyes, filled with a near-pathological determination to get on with kicking the shite out of the Deep State. Kash, clearly committed to taking no prisoners, obviously deserves that helicopter.
In this, The Age of The Inappropriate, Kash doesn’t need anyone to agree he is the perfect poster boy for Trump 2.0. As the Associated Press tells us, he is a warrior willing to peddle conspiracies and anti-vaccine medicine that doesn’t work, along with mediocre MAGA active wear.
Yes, this is the time when the one-again-soon-to-be president, with the help of the Supreme Court he has helped to pick, has been granted exception from the basic criminal laws that restrain the rest of us. And as almost all of his previous indictments melt into the ether, how much of a stretch is it, really, that Kash Patel, who despises the FBI with all his energy, has been picked to head it?
Those still able to recall recent American history know that, unfortunately, we have already lived much of this story. In the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, we experienced the overreaction to the Cold War, spearheaded by J. Edgar Hoover and his out-of-control FBI and Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Add the Smith and McCarran Acts, and please don’t forget Roy Cohn, who trained Donald Trump on how to blame everybody else for his failures and schooled him in “deny, deny, deny.”
Kash Patel imagines himself Donald’s new edition of Roy Cohn. He surely earned his spot at Mar-a-Lago for having vouched for him through thick and thin. Patel has rewritten the recent record for him, dismissing/erasing the evidence assembled by Robert Mueller, the January 6 Committee, and Jack Smith, revealing a new set of villains. This time around, it is not the Commies we have to fear—in fact, stretching irony to its outermost borders, MAGA has found common cause with Putin’s communism. It is really the enemies within we have to vanquish: the press, the Democrats, the deep-state bureaucrats, the scientists, the environmentalists, women who want choice, the trans community, and, yes, the “woke” in each and every devious form they assume.
But, surge the theme music, thank God, there is Kash to save the day:
“Wicked” is taken, but what about “Kash: The Musical”? Its opening number: “I’m just a guy from Queens, without no special upbringing. Who, with the grace of God and Devin Nunes, I broke open the Russia Gate. Yes, you heard me, the Russia Gate.”
But kudos to Kash. It is positively Roy Cohn-like to take Russian interference—yes it happened—their attempt to rig the election, and flip the whole thing on its head and blame the Democrats and drug-addled Hunter Biden. I mean Putin had an entire building in St. Petersburg creating false Facebook accounts to post lies day and night during the 2016 election. And, as Business Insider wrote, sensitive Trump campaign data passed to them via Konstantin Klimnik by Paul Manafort.
Did Kash Patel do even the slightest bit of fact finding? In “United States of America v. Internet Research Agency,” Robert Mueller provided the names of the actual Russians involved in their several-year efforts to interfere in our election. Some even traveled to the United States to do research. Cyber snooping from our allies allowed us to watch those at Prigozhin’s Internet Research Agency at work. “From in or around 2014 to the present, Defendants knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other (and with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury) to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.”
Yes, there were errors made by those in the intelligence services, but despite overwhelming evidence, MAGA has managed to convince a large chunk of the American people to ignore reality in favor of fantasy. Once it was the communists who had infiltrated every outpost of American society. Living multiple lives, telling multiple lies. I most remember the popular television show “I Led 3 Lives.”
The series was loosely based on the life of Herbert Philbrick, a Boston advertising executive who infiltrated the U.S. Communist Party on behalf of the FBI in the 1940s and wrote a bestselling book on the topic, I Led Three Lives: Citizen, ‘Communist’, Counterspy (1952). The part of Philbrick was played by Richard Carlson. The ‘three lives’ in the title are Philbrick’s outward life as a white-collar worker, his secret life as a Communist agent, and his even more secret life as an FBI operative helping to foil Communist plots. I Led 3 Lives lasted 117 episodes.
The show was an incredibly effective propaganda effort meant to justify our increasingly exorbitant defense budget and increased supply of ever-more deadly, completely unusable nuclear weapons. As Wikipedia acknowledges:
Screenplays gradually became more and more outlandish, featuring, for example, such supposed ‘Communist plots’ as the conversion of household vacuum cleaners (1942-1954 Electrolux) into tactical missile launchers with which the Communists intended to destroy America’s Nike anti-aircraft defensive missiles, and the manufacturing of untraceable ‘ghost guns’ (unserialized Colt M1911 .45 cal semi-automatics) with which the Communists intended to assassinate their political enemies.
As far–fetched as the campaign to exaggerate the internal communist threat was, Kash Patel and MAGA now want Americans to worry about the new enemy within:
Now, it is important to remember the ordinary people who were charged with membership in the Deep State. Volunteer poll workers like Ruby Freeman and county clerks were vilified for tampering with votes. Underpaid state workers were assumed to be manipulating our elections. From those at the lowest levels of our governments to the top. The CIA, Republican politicians like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, our generals, finally even the vice president.
At least in the 1950s, “I Led 3 Lives” had the FBI fighting the bad guys. Now, Kash tells us, it is time to fight the FBI. And Donald Trump is convinced Kash is just the guy to win that fight.
Several years ago, in The Washington Post, David Ignatius wrote:
In the Trump administration’s four-year battle with the intelligence community, a recurring character was a brash lawyer named Kashyap P. ‘Kash’ Patel … Patel repeatedly pressed intelligence agencies to release secrets that, in his view, showed that the president was being persecuted unfairly by critics. Ironically, he is now facing Justice Department investigation for possible improper disclosure of classified information, according to two knowledgeable sources who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe. The sources said the investigation resulted from a complaint made this year by an intelligence agency, but wouldn’t provide additional details …
What worried other intelligence community officials during Patel’s stint at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was his relentless attempt to declassify the ‘Russia Gate’ memo he had helped write back when he worked for Nunes. One senior intelligence official at the time told me in an interview this week that the memo included such sensitive details about intelligence sources and methods that disclosure ‘would put the lives of human sources at risk.’ Patel kept pushing. The former intelligence official recalls: ‘He was focused solely on political ends. It wasn’t national security that was paramount. It was how do we use this collection to make a political point.’
Ignatius continued:
Patel’s aggressiveness in pushing his agenda worried other Trump appointees. In April 2020, Trump wanted to appoint Patel as deputy FBI director. Attorney General William P. Barr warned the White House that the Patel appointment would happen ‘over my dead body.’ He explained in a memoir: ‘Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s premier law enforcement agency. … The very idea of moving Patel into a role like this showed a shocking detachment from reality.’
Ignatius is but one member of the press who has earned Kash Patel’s profound anger. Here is how Patel goes after him in “Government Gangsters”:
Unlike previous scandals, from the Bay of Pigs to Watergate, the press was totally unwilling to investigate the truth behind Russia Gate. Worse than that, they were actively spreading lies and publishing disinformation disseminated by the FBI itself, running cover for the corrupt government officials whom it is their duty to hold accountable. With the press serving as a functionary of the Deep State, few others were capable of discovering the truth. So the fact that this scandal was even exposed is a bit of a miracle. I know because I’m the one who exposed it. [Emphasis added.]
But clearly Ignatius deserves something extra:
The media – fed lies by government leakers – reported that I could have been under investigation for improperly disclosing classified information. The source of this attack was shameless Deep State mouthpiece David Ignatius, a columnist for the Washington Post. His original article on the purported ‘scandal’ surrounding me was the definition of disinformation. His sources were two possible anonymous individuals who refused to give their names because they knew they were spouting lies …The truth is there was no investigation into my handling of classified documents because I did everything by the book while in Washington. Not only that, but if such an investigation really did exist, it would be a clear example of the two-tiered justice system in America, because the Justice Department did absolutely NOTHING to prosecute the near daily leakers of classified information in the Trump administration — leakers that not only damaged the Trump presidency but harmed American national security … [Emphasis added.]
I confess I grow weary searching for the truth in the thick pea-soup world of MAGA lies. This sun-glassed guy from Queens announces he “ended up breaking open the biggest criminal conspiracy by government officials since Watergate—Russia Gate,” yet he so often sounds like a victim:
Regardless, the Ignatius piece worked exactly as planned. The rest of the fake news media mafia, ultimately fed by Deep State anonymous rubes, smeared my name relentlessly without any consequences. Why did they target me? Because … I successfully uncovered the corruption of the FBI and DoJ when I led the Russia Gate investigation on the Hill. I learned that when you go after government corruption, you must be prepared to have your reputation destroyed by the fake news mafia and the corrupt Deep Staters in government. They will do anything to stop you. But I don’t bend the knee. Too bad for them.
Sadly, the “Too bad for them” recalls my Bronx schoolyard and the taunts of the kid who takes his ball with him after the game he just lost.
But here is what some others are saying about Kash. Alan Suderman and Juliet Linderman of the AP wrote:
It was a Friday morning in February at one of America’s biggest conservative conventions, and Donald Trump’s trusted lieutenant was on center stage, pleading with the former president’s supporters to help the now presumptive Republican nominee reclaim the White House. Getting behind Trump was the only way to root out ‘government gangsters,’ Patel said, at once referring to the title of his recently published memoir and the entrenched and shadowy cabal of ‘deep state’ operatives he believes are threatening the country. ‘That’s what it’s going to take’ to win in November, he told the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference in suburban Washington. ‘An entire army.’
Then, draped in a green scarf emblazoned with a ‘K$H’ logo he once sought to trademark, Patel announced his book’s upcoming film adaptation … Patel has made it clear that he is in lockstep with the former president on most national security issues, including purging government officials deemed disloyal. Many who worked with Patel before he joined the Trump administration said he was an ambitious if not exceptional lawyer whose quick rise and far-right tilt have left them stunned.
Tom Rooney, a former Republican congressman, worked with Patel on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He described Patel as a smart and focused staffer, but said he hardly recognizes the man loudly defending the Jan. 6 rioters on far-right podcasts and radio shows. ‘It’s not the same person that I knew,’ Rooney said. ‘But Kash is still relevant and I’m not, so who’s the smart one?’ Patel, 44, declined requests for interviews and did not respond to a list of questions. He provided a statement saying he was proud of his public service and blasted The Associated Press for ‘taking potshots at my private life.’
Kash has a long memory, and he has compiled a list of those he believes have taken those potshots, or merely opposed his boss. That is something familiar to survivors of McCarthyism: There was always another list.
I have always been interested in the ability of some to imagine their own greatness. They seem not to recognize the significant difference between the dream and the reality. For every Michael Jordan, for every Lionel Messi, for every Simone Biles, and for every Serena Williams, there are millions of us who, while we would love for one minute to possess their talents, know well we aren’t them. But there are those subject to delusion. Kash Patel, for example, is talking about himself:
We need people with the guts and intelligence to take on the Deep State and who have the strength to withstand the attacks — fighting for the truth and defeating the disinformation campaigns. We need people who are unafraid to stand for America …
I imagine, for Kash, assembling his enemies list must have been a glorious mission. And because he dwells in the world of the inappropriate, his enemies include many brave and distinguished Americans. Many who felt compelled to honor their oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution never failed to remind the emperor when he wasn’t wearing any clothes. Now that Christopher Wray has announced he will resign, it is appropriate to ask what you think about living with a bitter FBI director armed with extraordinary power and a large staff just itching to get at all those on his list.
Kash has a soon-to-be-former president of the Unites States on said list, as well as the former heads of the CIA and of the Department of Defense, a former attorney general, and a former national security advisor. Such a list puts any list J. Edgar Hoover came up with to shame. Some Hollywood screenwriters and actors and trade unionists, some writers for The Daily Worker.
The folks who produced “I Led 3 Lives” could only dream of Kash’s list. There are some gems further down, including Cassidy Hutchinson, a low-level assistant at the White House, who could never have contemplated sharing the list with someone like Liz Cheney, an “enemy” she grew to admire during her complicated journey before the January 6 Committee. There are blasts from the past like Hillary Clinton and Andy McCabe and Lisa Page and Peter Strzok. And, of course, there is Kamala Harris.
There are attorneys from both sides of the fence: Attorney General Merritt Garland and former Trump lawyers Pat Cippolone and Pat Philbin; generals like Mark Milley and Mark Esper; and, of course, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, accompanied by James Comey, yet another former director of the very agency Kash Patel wants to head. And, not surprisingly, the list includes Andrew Weismann, who won’t shut up about the Constitution. What a kick: Imagine a kid from Queens who pretends he deserves a helicopter now able to go after distinguished generals who actually fought some wars.
This past Sunday, Kristen Welker asked Donald Trump about Kash Patel’s list on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”
WELKER: You named Kash Patel to be the next FBI director.
TRUMP: Yeah.
WELKER: He has a list in his book of 60 people that he calls members of the so-called “deep state.” It includes Democrats like Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. It includes former members of your cabinet, from Bill Barr to Christopher Wray. You campaigned on destroying the deep state. Do you want Kash Patel to launch investigations into people on that list?
TRUMP: No. I mean, he’s going to do what he thinks is right. And I will —
WELKER: Well, do you think that’s right?
TRUMP: — and I will —
WELKER: Do you think that’s right, sir?
TRUMP: If they think that somebody was dishonest or crooked or a corrupt politician, I think he probably has an obligation to do it, but —
WELKER: Are you going to direct him to do it?
TRUMP: No. Not at all. Not at all … Kash Patel is very fair. I’ll tell you. I thought Kash may be difficult because he’s, you know, a strong conservative voice, and I don’t know of anybody that’s not singing his praises. The other day, I was watching, and Trey Gowdy, who’s a moderate person and very smart and very respected in the party, he’s Kash’s biggest fan. He said, “This is the most misunderstood man in politics. He’s great.” I guess they worked together on the Russia hoax or something … I don’t know of one negative vote – I don’t think he’s going to have any negative votes.
WELKER: Is it your expectation, though, that Kash Patel will pursue investigations against your political enemies?
TRUMP: No, I don’t think so.
WELKER: Do you want to see that happen?
TRUMP: If they were crooked, if they did something wrong, if they have broken the law, probably. They went after me. You know, they went after me and I did nothing wrong.
I have shared my own PTSD-driven nightmares about an out-of-control FBI from the point of view of someone on a list. But how about we listen to someone who spent a significant part of his life on the inside looking out. Frank Figliuzzi served for 25 years as a special agent and the assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI, where he directed all espionage investigations for the U.S. government. On December 2, 2024, he wrote the following for MSNBC:
I’m a former FBI agent. Kash Patel’s problems go beyond his incompetence. His record shows no devotion to the Constitution, but blind allegiance to Trump.
It isn’t just that Patel is wholly unqualified to lead the pre-eminent law enforcement and intelligence agency in the nation and perhaps the world. Yes, he lacks the professional experience needed to lead the bureau’s 37,000 employees in 55 U.S. field offices, 350 satellite offices and 63 locations abroad that cover nearly 200 countries. But that’s the least of my concerns. After all, Trump’s picks for homeland security secretary, director of national intelligence and defense secretary are also remarkably lacking in competency for their proposed roles …
Patel’s particular problem goes far beyond competence: His record shows no devotion to the Constitution, but blind allegiance to Trump. Patel helped spread the fabricated conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump. He has promoted the conspiracy of a ‘deep state’ within government institutions whose aim is to topple Trump. Court findings and the jury system are things that should matter to an FBI director, yet Patel seems not to care that more than 60 court challenges found no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election, nor that grand juries and trial juries of American citizens determined Trump should be criminally indicted, held civilly liable and even convicted.
If he becomes FBI director, Patel will have to take an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, but his public statements raise concerns about his ability to keep that oath. In an interview last year with Trump adviser Steve Bannon, Patel promised to pursue judges, lawyers and even journalists he perceived as having wrongly investigated Trump and influenced the 2020 election. ‘We will go out and find the conspirators,’ he told Bannon, ‘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.’ That doesn’t sound like a man who intends to strictly adhere to the rule of law. It sounds like a wannabe cop planning on false arrests and fabricated evidence.
This wouldn’t be the first time in our nation’s history that an FBI director blindly pursued perceived enemies and threats in the absence of all-important evidence. As I wrote earlier this year, in the 1960s, then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ‘with the approval of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and later with the encouragement of President Lyndon Johnson, illegally wiretapped Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders. The FBI sent a letter to King, using details uncovered in the wiretap, essentially blackmailing King and suggesting he kill himself. There were countless ‘black bag jobs’ where the FBI, without court authorization, broke into people’s homes, took evidence, opened and read mail, and planted microphones — all outside the law, because someone in power deemed those American citizens to pose some kind of threat.
There are books, and there are books. I have shared a bit from “Gangster Government” and some of Kash Patel’s version of America. But then there is former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper’s “A Sacred Oath.”
Esper begins with:
A Meeting Like No Other – ‘Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?’ he asked. I couldn’t believe the president of the United States just suggested the U.S. military shoot our fellow Americans in the streets of the nation’s capital. The moment was surreal, sitting in front of the Resolute desk, inside the Oval Office, with this idea weighing heavily in the air, and the president red faced and complaining loudly about the protests under way in Washington, D.C.
When I accepted the job as secretary of defense the previous year, I knew I would face tough issues — questions of war and peace, for example. But never anything like this. The good news — this wasn’t a difficult decision. The bad news — I had to figure out a way to walk Trump back without creating the mess I was trying to avoid. This wasn’t how I ever thought the first week of June 2020, or any week for that matter, would begin …
General Mark Milley is a barrel-chested soldier with dark bushy eyebrows who hails from the Boston area… After forty years of Army service, he had multiple combat tours and a lifetime of experience under his belt. He carried a stern look on his face that belied a quick sense of humor, and he could fill a room with his booming voice, which often spoke in exclamation points and language not always made to be taken literally …
Milley was unusually animated now, and rightfully so. Minutes earlier the president had called him, he said, in a fury over what happened in the streets of D.C. the prior evening, when more than a thousand people gathered to protest the killing of George Floyd … Protesters marched through the streets and gathered in Lafayette Park, right across from the White House. Fires were lit, windows were smashed, and people were hurt as some in the crowd grew violent. The chaotic scenes played over and over on television and undoubtedly caught Trump’s attention. The president thought his administration ‘looked weak’ and wanted something done … ‘The president is really angry,’ Milley said. ‘He thinks it’s a disgrace what happened last night. He wants ten thousand troops deployed to stop the violence. I told him I had to speak with you.’
‘Ten thousand troops, really, he said that?’ I asked. ‘Yes, sir,’ he responded with a serious but slightly wide-eyed look. ‘Ten thousand.’ … Milley and I trudged over to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that morning for what turned out to be a very heated encounter with the president. It was loud, contentious, and unreal. We did manage to avoid a terrible outcome — the one that Trump wanted — but we were shaken, and it wasn’t even noon yet.
Clearly, Esper has had his own repeated dealings with the grossly inapproptiate:
As readers of this book will learn, the president or some of his top White House aides proposed to take some type of military action in or against other nations on multiple occasions during the nearly eighteen months I served as secretary of defense. Other recommendations were so careless that they easily could have provoked a conflict. Some of these proposed actions are still unknown to the public. Some could even have led to war. On each of those occasions, sober minds pulled us back from the brink. What would happen, I wondered, if we were all gone?
There is a bit of a back story before we get to Esper’s encounter with Kash Patel:
Once the president named John McEntee director of the Office of Presidential Personnel in February 2020, we had to be doubly careful … McEntee would not be the first hard-core loyalist to rejoin Team Trump. After the Senate acquitted the president on both impeachment articles in February, more true believers — fresh troops — like Ric Grenell and Mark Meadows began entering the White House. They paired up with the likes of Robert O’Brien, Stephen Miller, and Kash Patel, the senior director for counterterrorism at the NSC, to do Trump’s bidding. A darker, more aggressive evolution of the Trump White House was now emerging …
Soon enough, loyalty purges morphed into a weapon that White House staffers wielded to get rid of people in the departments who disagreed with anything they said, even if they were aligned with the president’s policies … Worse yet, people were removed from positions simply because the White House wanted to replace them with more hard-core Trump loyalists, regardless of their qualifications …
Esper continues:
[O]n Thursday, October 29, General Milley called me with some breaking news. On Tuesday of that week, an American named Philipe Nathan Walton had been taken from his farm in Massalata in southern Niger, not far from the border with Nigeria. The kidnappers were armed and considered dangerous; they demanded a ransom from the man’s father in exchange for his release …It was unclear how this would end up, but most outcomes seemed bad. If the talks fell through, they could kill Walton, or possibly hand him over to Islamic terrorists in the area for a small sum … Milley’s breaking news was that we learned where the kidnappers were holding Walton, and the NSC asked that we be prepared to rescue him in the event the negotiations fell through. This made sense to me. The chairman also recommended that we give SOCOM a warning order — which basically provides the command the rough details of the situation and the mission so they can begin planning and preparing — and the okay to deploy forward in theater, which I also approved …
I also wanted to make sure State, Justice, and the CIA were in the loop and properly coordinated. They had roles to play here, and no one at the DoD knew if they were aware of the president’s decision. I wanted to ensure we synchronized the plan with them, and that they supported it … I approved the plan with some minor tweaks and an unresolved question or two — for example, did we have permission from other nations to fly through their airspace en route to the objective? … one of the many other benefits our allies and partners also offered was their willingness to provide what we called ABO, which was shorthand for access, basing, and overflight rights. We needed these to move people, weapons, or equipment as quickly as possible around the world from point A to point B without any diversions, delays, or obstructions …
By contrast, in April 1986, the French had refused to grant U.S. military aircraft overflight rights after President Reagan ordered strikes against Libya in retaliation for a terrorist attack against American citizens in Europe. The denial by Paris required our aircraft to fly an extra 2,400 miles around the western coast of Europe, putting unnecessary stress on the pilots and the aircraft, which raised the risk level of the mission … I finished all my calls around 11:00 A.M. and then picked up the secure phone to update the president … Meadows took the call … I told him where things stood, that ‘I connected with Wray, Barr, Haspel, and Biegun, and all supported moving forward.’ I said, ‘We are good to go at this point, except for the overflight permissions, but State is working the matter,’ and we could always turn around at the last minute. At this point in the decision-making process, I didn’t want to cancel the mission and risk Walton’s life over an airspace clearance issue we had a few hours to work …
Not long after that, I received word from my Policy shop that ‘the airspace issues are resolved; we have the clearances.’ Kash Patel at the NSC reportedly told Tony Tata, the retired Army general who was the acting principal deputy undersecretary for policy, that Pompeo ‘got the airspace cleared.’ We were good to go … A few hours later, though, around 4:45 P.M., I learned some disturbing news. Apparently, we did not have permission to enter the airspace of one of the key countries, and the aircraft were only fifteen miles away from the international border. Milley and I spoke and agreed to have the aircraft circle in approved airspace until we received final clearance to proceed. I then called State to find out what happened and get it fixed. Apparently, what Patel reported to Tata was wrong. Pompeo had not secured the clearances. Rather, State was still working the phones to get the proper approval. By the time Mike and I spoke an hour later, he still didn’t have the okay from the remaining country. He also didn’t know where Patel received his information. Pompeo never spoke with him …
Right now, we were in a bad place. The aircraft had been flying in circles for an hour awaiting permission to cross the border, and if we didn’t decide soon, they would have to return to their start point. We would have to reschedule the operation for another evening, which meant that the odds of mission exposure, and Walton being moved (or maybe even killed), would grow with each passing hour and day. Milley had already received an intelligence spot report that suggested those holding Walton were thinking of killing him or giving him to another terrorist group …
The time was creeping closer to 6:00 P.M. — the decision point for the aircraft to go forward or return — so I decided to call the president. I asked Pompeo to join me. General Milley was on the phone too. When the Situation Room connected us with the president, Meadows picked up the call and said, ‘Hello, Secretary, what’s the latest?’ I updated him on what happened with the overflight rights and said that ‘we need to make a decision now regarding the mission.’ He asked, ‘How did we receive the bad information in the first place?’ clearly annoyed at the situation as much as we were. My team suspected Patel made the approval story up, but they didn’t have all the facts. I told Meadows that ‘Mike [Pompeo] and I want to learn that too, but that is a longer discussion we don’t have time for right now.’ …
Milley updated him on what was happening on the ground. ‘With an American’s life possibly at stake,’ I said, ‘We recommended the mission go forward. But the president needs to make that call. None of us can. And I need to hear that from him,’ I added, as the time ticked further down. There was a brief pause.
Meadows started asking some questions. Just as he did, the Situation Room intervened with ‘Break. Break. I have Deputy Secretary of State Steve Biegun on the line. He says he needs to join this call … Steve had breaking news. He had been working this issue all afternoon and knew we were discussing whether to go in or not. He wanted to let us know: ‘The overflight rights we requested were approved.’ All was clear to proceed … I told Milley to give SOCOM and AFRICOM the green light immediately. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, jumping off the line to pass the orders. I let everyone know we would keep them apprised. The tactical mission went off without a hitch.
[Emphasis added.]
You should know that Olivia Troye, former counterterrorism aide to Vice President Mike Pence, who never made it onto Kash Patel’s original Executive Deep State enemies list, is now probably at the very top of his new list. Troye has a habit of vigorously sharing her experience and expertise about matters of national security. Her latest offence, according to Kash Patel, is retelling her version of the very story Mark Esper told about Nigeria. As Jacob Bryant of The Wrap reports in “Ex-Mike Pence Aide Olivia Troye Says Kash Patel Threatened to Sue Her for Calling Him a ‘Delusional Liar’ on MSNBC“:
‘I stand by my statements,’ Troye writes in a statement posted on social media …
While on MSNBC, Troye took Patel to task, calling him a liar and someone who shouldn’t be trusted to be in charge of the FBI. ‘Kash Patel is a delusional liar,’ she said. ‘Let me just be very clear about that. And he would lie about intelligence. He would like about making things up on operations. I think Mark Esper has talked about that as well, where he put the lives of Navy Seals at risk in an operation when it came to Nigeria … At some point I realized I need to check Kash’s work to make sure that I wasn’t misinforming Mike Pence by relying on his word. So, I had to go around him. And this is a guy who openly has contempt for people in national security – for people especially at DOJ and the FBI.’ She continued, ‘there is a little bit of fear here from people where they know someone like Kash Patel is fully capable of just doing partisan investigations. It will be insane if he becomes the director of the FBI.’
Today, Kash Patel sent a letter to my counsel @MarkSZaidEsq– threatening legal action & demanding that I retract my comments on MSNBC about his unfitness to serve as FBI Director. This aligns with his threats against the media & political opponents, revealing how he might conduct… pic.twitter.com/BJU90haUhO
— Olivia of Troye (@OliviaTroye) December 4, 2024
Philip Nieto of Mediate added:
On Wednesday, Troye revealed that a lawyer representing Patel sent her a letter threatening to sue her for defamation unless she retracted claims she made about his ability to lead the FBI … CNN Anchor Jim Acosta asked Troye during a Thursday morning interview if she plans on retracting her statements.
ACOSTA: What does that even tell you that even before his confirmation hearings, he is threatening you for criticizing him?
TROYE: Yeah, I think it’s a very clear sign of what’s to come. Should he become the director of the FBI and how he is going to conduct himself? I mean, we should take him at his word. These are things that he has threatened in the past. And I think by doing what he did, by sending that letter to me, it was an attempt to bully me, silence me, intimidate me. But it’s also a signal to others, right as he goes into the confirmation process of of trying to silence others in terms of telling the truth about his background. I mean, look, I am a person who believes that he is unfit for the role of FBI director. And I have concerns about how he will behave in the role in leading the nation’s premiere law enforcement agency.
ACOSTA: And so you stand by your criticism of Kash Patel?
TROYE: I absolutely do.
ACOSTA: Even if they have this letter saying you’ve got to retract all this, you’re not going to do that.
TROYE: Yeah, I’m not going to retract from telling the truth. That is where I am. And this is something that I lived when I was working with him. And it is absolutely true. I you know, my job in that role was to serve the vice president of the United States in the best way possible. That is what I did. And if that meant, you know, at times not taking Kash at his word, going around like there were people on his staff that used to come to my office and seek counsel for me and advice about what it was like to work for him who know exactly what I’m talking about. Others have been very public about the things that I mentioned. I am not the only senior national security official who has come out and said they have concerns about Kash Patel and his fitness for this role.
If I have to choose between the stories Donald Trump and Kash Patel want us to believe and the stories Mark Esper and Olivia Troye are telling, I know which side makes the most sense. America just barely survived J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. We certainly don’t deserve to have to live with Kash Patel’s FBI.
