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J. Edgar Patel

Zach Beauchamp at Vox made an inhuman sacrifice:

To try and understand Patel better, I listened to every episode and clip tagged with “Kash Patel” on the War Room website — and a few others that Bannon’s team missed. The overwhelming impression is that Patel is a man whose entire worldview revolves around paranoid conspiracy theories — specifically, conspiracies against both America and Trump, which for him are one and the same. It’s a specific kind of obsession that reminds me of the FBI’s first director: J. Edgar Hoover, a man who infamously abused his power to persecute political enemies.

During his various appearances on Bannon’s show, Patel and/or his interviewees declared that:

-China is funding the Democratic Party and sending “military-aged males” across the Mexican and Canadian borders to prepare for a preemptive strike.

-Barack Obama directs a “shadow network” that is quietly directing the intelligence community and Big Tech to persecute Trump.

-Attorney General Merrick Garland wants to throw “all of us” — which is to say, Trump allies — in prison.

He wants to fight fire with fire:

In one episode, he called on the Republican majority in Congress to unilaterally arrest Garland — invoking an obscure legal doctrine called “inherent contempt” that has never been used in this fashion in the entirety of American history. In another, he outlined a plan for a MAGA blitz of American institutions focused on getting loyalists into high office.

[…]

Patel, in short, is the kind of man who could become Trump’s Hoover: a man willing to push federal law enforcement into dangerously anti-democratic territory in pursuit of alleged domestic enemies.

That’s exactly what Trump wants. And these Republicans ought to think twice about confirming him. Hoover had everyone under his thumb, not just the liberals. That’s why he was given a lifetime appointment.

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