Last week, I took Attorney General-elect Kris Kobach to task for jumping on the Republican bandwagon of lesser prairie chicken silliness, an issue of importance to a handful of Kansas oil and cattle barons, but not much of anybody else.
Today, it pleases me to report that Kobach has gotten one right.
On Tuesday, Kobach announced that he’s nominating a political rival, former federal prosecutor Tony Mattivi, as the next head of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. It’s hard to see how Kobach could make a better choice.
Mattivi, who ran against Kobach and state Sen. Kellie Warren in the Republican primary for attorney general, cut an impressive figure on the campaign trail. He’s conservative on major issues including abortions, guns and the federal government — but not obnoxiously so.
Truth be told, he was probably the best candidate for attorney general, but couldn’t match Kobach’s near-universal name recognition or Warren’s political base from serving in the Legislature.
But it’d be difficult to question Mattivi’s law-enforcement credentials.
As a Justice Department attorney, he prosecuted cases ranging from drug trafficking to war crimes committed by former officials of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq.
He prosecuted terrorism detainees, including five years as lead prosecutor in the boat-bomb attack on the guided missile cruiser USS Cole.
In Kansas, he prosecuted Terry Lee Loewen of Wichita, a radicalized Islamist who plotted to bomb Eisenhower Airport using his employee access, and right-wing militia members Patrick Stein, Curtis Allen and Gavin Wright, who plotted to blow up a Garden City mosque and an apartment building housing Muslim Somali immigrants and their families.
Think about that for a minute.
Mattivi got all of the above 20 to 30 years in federal prison, whether their motive was radical Islam or radical opposition to Islam.
What that should tell you is that Mattivi is a serious guy who, without regard to politics, wants to put bad actors behind bars so we can all sleep safer at night.
And that’s exactly what we need in a KBI director.
Choosing who heads the KBI is one of the most crucial decisions an attorney general will be called on to make.
So credit Kris Kobach, who, by all indications, hit it out of the park with the Mattivi nomination.
