Donald Trump’s Saturday night announcement that he’s going to nominate a new director of the FBI, the woefully unqualified and completely unfit Kash Patel, is premature by a few years because the director’s position is not open.
Director Chris Wray was nominated by Trump in his first Oval Office stint and confirmed 92–5 by the Senate, starting his 10-year term on Aug. 2, 2017.
Unless Wray leaves before the summer of 2027, there is no vacancy to fill.
Wray has not done anything as head of the FBI to warrant his removal for cause, which should be the only way for a president to get rid of a director.
In the 50 years since Congress created the modern FBI leadership following the unaccountable 48-year reign of J. Edgar Hoover, presidents have largely respected the independence directors have in their non-renewable decade in office.
Yes, President Bill Clinton did remove FBI boss Bill Sessions soon after Clinton took office in 1993, but that was only after a damning Department of Justice by the departing Bush administration report found that Sessions had improperly billed the government for private expenses.
The other instance, with far less justification, was in 2017 when Trump dumped FBI Director Jim Comey. The cover story was that Comey had badly botched the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation in the days before the 2016 election, which Comey did badly botch, upsetting everyone.
The real reason was that Trump didn’t want the Kremlin’s efforts to help his campaign to be probed.
As to any reason to dismiss Wray, there are none.
Expect the bogeyman of the deep state, which is where Patel comes in.
Patel, a former Trump aide who has no business being atop of the FBI, or the CIA (as has been floated by Trump in the past) wrote a 2023 book called: “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy.”
The book’s Appendix B, called “Members of the Executive Branch Deep State,” is a list of 60 names in alphabetical order.
The second name is Lloyd Austin, the current secretary of defense. Bill Barr, Trump’s attorney general, is the fifth name. Near the end of Trump’s first term when Trump mused with making Patel the FBI’s deputy director, Barr told the White House chief of staff: “Over my dead body.”
Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton is sixth on Patel’s list, while Joe Biden is No. 8.
And that’s just that’s the first page.
