Trump’s FBI Pick Kash Patel Officially Begins Crusade Against Enemies

Donald Trump’s choice to run the FBI, Kash Patel, is already demonstrating how he’d use the country’s top law enforcement agency to crack down on his critics. 

Jesse Binall, Patel’s attorney, sent a letter Wednesday to former Trump White House staffer Olivia Troye, threatening legal action against her for her criticism of Patel on MSNBC Monday. The letter accused Troye of fabricating her criticisms of Patel previously lying about intelligence matters and putting U.S. service members at risk. 

Troye and Patel worked in the White House during Trump’s first term as president, and Binall’s letter threatens litigation against Troye unless she retracts her criticisms of Patel, which include calling him a “delusional liar.” 

It’s a clear sign of Trump and Patel’s plans to attack critics of the MAGA agenda, whether they are Democrats, Republicans, or members of the media. Patel has threatened to prosecute members of the so-called “deep state” in addition to the “entire fake news media,” publishing a long enemies list in the back of his 2023 book, Government Gangsters.

Patel has just three years working in the Justice Department as his law enforcement experience, and his appointment has already drawn opposition from senators in both parties, who would prefer that Christopher Wray serve out the rest of his 10-year term as FBI director. Trump’s choice also has opposition from within Trump’s team.

Despite the backlash, Trump has seemingly stood by his choice of Patel, even as his other nominees, such as Matt Gaetz for attorney general and Chris Chronister for DEA chief, have dropped out. For now, Patel only has to get through the Senate to begin Trump’s authoritarian takeover. 

While Pete Hegseth makes his last hurrah on Capitol Hill Wednesday to convince senators that he’s a worthy nominee for Donald Trump’s secretary of defense, the Fox News star’s former colleagues are coming out in droves to flag down his past indiscretions.

One former colleague who preferred to remain anonymous told NPR’s David Folkenflik that the ex-anchor was known to be “handsy” while inebriated and that he once groped her at a Manhattan bar.

Hegseth’s attorney, Tim Parlatore, told the radio network that the allegation was a “false claim.” Fox News denied having any knowledge of the groping accusation.

Ten other current and former Fox employees alerted NBC News on Tuesday that Hegseth’s drinking was concerning. Two sources told the outlet that they had smelled alcohol on Hegseth on more than a dozen occasions while he hosted Fox & Friends Weekend. Another source said they had smelled alcohol on Hegseth as recently as last month.

“Everyone would be talking about it behind the scenes before he went on the air,” one of the former Fox employees said.

Hegseth’s rampant drinking could be the last nail in the coffin for the inexperienced nominee’s chances at Trump’s Cabinet. On Wednesday, Republican Senator Kevin Cramer told CNN that the former anchor needed to offer a promise of sobriety before taking the reins of the Pentagon.

“One of the things I’d love to hear is that he’s committed to not drinking,” Cramer said. “Being familiar with the problems of alcoholism and the dumb things we do when we drink too much, it’d be really nice if he could set that one aside for good, if not at least through his term as secretary.”

Still, Hegseth is under the impression that he’s going to be fine. Speaking with reporters outside Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Hegseth said that Trump was still fully behind him—despite reports that the president-elect is apparently looking at other candidates, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

“He supports me fully,” Hegseth said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

But crossing boundaries with his co-workers would be just one part of the picture behind Hegseth. Last month, a shocking 2017 police report revealed that the Army veteran had been accused of raping an attendee at a Republican women’s conference in Monterey, California. Since those allegations surfaced, Hegseth has admitted to several other scandals, including five affairs that he had during his first marriage.

Even Hegseth’s own mother couldn’t defend the white nationalist–connected conservative, accusing her son in a scathing 2018 email following his separation from his second wife of “using women for his own power.”

“On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say … get some help and take an honest look at yourself,” Penelope Hegseth wrote in the email, obtained by The New York Times Friday. (Hegseth’s mother has since publicly changed her tune—on Wednesday morning, she appeared on Fox News to beg people to support her son for defense secretary.)

President-elect Donald Trump took to Truth Social Wednesday to deride The Wall Street Journal for reporting on his transition team’s travails.

The Journal had reported the previous evening that Trump’s pick to head the Drug Enforcement Administration, Hillsborough County, Florida, Sheriff Chad Chronister, had withdrawn from consideration. The paper also covered the controversy surrounding Pete Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary pick, whose future is uncertain as he faces a raft of misconduct allegations.

“The Wall Street Journal is becoming more and more obnoxious and unreadable. Today’s main headline is: ‘Trump’s DEA Pick Pulls Out In Latest Setback,’” Trump wrote.

“With all that’s happening in the World, this is their Number One story of the day,” he complained, before challenging the Journal’s characterization of Chronister’s withdrawal, which Chronister announced on social media Tuesday.

“As the gravity of this very important responsibility set in, I’ve concluded that I must respectfully withdraw from consideration,” Chronister posted.

Trump insisted that Chronister “didn’t pull out, I pulled him out, because I did not like what he said to my pastors and other supporters”—seemingly referring to the Hillsborough County sheriff arresting and criticizing a Florida megachurch pastor in 2020 for violating Covid-19 lockdown orders. That incident led “the MAGA corner of the Republican Party” to sour on his pick this week, according to CNN.

Further, Trump chided the Journal for describing the incident as his “latest” challenge. “But, more importantly, what’s my ‘latest’ setback???” Trump wrote. “I just won the Presidency of the United States! They haven’t written a good story about me in YEARS.”

Of course, the reasoning behind the Journal’s word choice becomes evident upon reading the report in question, or any number of news items since Trump’s win earlier this month.

After all, the Journal article covers Chronister’s withdrawal but also details the numerous other scandals bedeviling “some of Trump’s high-profile picks”—such as Hegseth facing scrutiny for sexual misconduct allegations, Matt Gaetz withdrawing from consideration for attorney general “under pressure in the midst of sexual-misconduct and drug-use allegations,” and lawmakers questioning Trump’s other picks, including Kash Patel, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard.

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barret asked a team of ACLU lawyers advocating for trans rights if trans people had ever really been discriminated against.

The court on Wednesday held oral arguments in United States v. Skrmetti, a landmark case originating from Tennessee that could decide just how far the federal government has to go, if at all, to protect the rights of trans people. In 2023, Senate Bill 1 became law in Tennessee, banning hormone therapy and puberty blockers for minors and imposing civil penalties on doctors who don’t fall in line. Skrmetti is challenging S.B. 1, but the conservative justices don’t seem to be having any of it.

“One question I have is, at least as far as I can think of, we don’t have a history—that I know of—we don’t have a history of de jure discrimination against transgender people,” Coney Barrett said during oral arguments on Wednesday morning. “You point out in your brief that in the last three years there might have been these laws, but before that we might have had private societal discrimination.… Is there a history that I don’t know about where we have de jure discrimination?”

By de jure Coney Barrett means “federally mandated,” and she goes on to note that other minority groups have experienced that kind of discrimination, while to her knowledge trans people haven’t.

U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar responded immediately. “Historical discrimination against transgender people may not have been reflected in the laws. But I think there’s no dispute that there is a broad history here and it hasn’t just been confined to private actors,” she said. “I think that if you actually looked at the facts there’s a wealth of evidence to suggest that transgender people throughout history have been subjected to violence, discrimination, and maybe lost employment opportunities, housing opportunities.”

Attorney Chase Strangio, the first transgender lawyer to argue in front of the Supreme Court, also later addressed Coney Barrett’s tone-deaf question.

“Transgender people are characterized as having a different gender identity than their birth sex. That is distinguishing,” Strangio said. “I would also point, if I could, to the history of discrimination—and there are many examples—of in-law discrimination, exclusions from the military, criminal bans on cross-dressing, and others.”

Coney Barrett has a history of judicial hostility toward LGBTQ issues, and trans rights specifically. She defended the dissenting justices on the Marriage Equality Act, has argued Title IX rights shouldn’t apply to trans people, and personally believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

Tennessee is just one of 26 states with laws that ban gender-affirming care for minors.

The nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services is open-sourcing cures from anyone with a song.

The FAQ for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” website features a relatively banal assortment of questions, from how to troubleshoot merchandising orders to how to stop recurring donations to RFK Jr.’s defunct presidential campaign. But among the bullet points hides a strange prompt that one wouldn’t expect from a man on the cusp of overseeing the nation’s health policies: an invitation to email him whatever medical therapies you’ve got lying around.

If you “have a cure for something,” the website reads, “please send an email to info@teamkennedy.com.”

The request plays into Kennedy’s larger conspiratorial ideas on modern medicine, effectively equating old wives’ tales and snake oil elixirs with thoroughly researched and studied science-backed treatments.

Kennedy—a virulent vaccine conspiracy theorist who doesn’t believe that AIDS is caused by HIV, insists that WiFi causes cancer, and has shared he has brain-eating worms in his head—has promised to completely reshape America’s approach to public health.

Under Trump’s helm, Kennedy has sworn to remove fluoride from all public water systems—reversing a 1945 public health decision that has reduced cavities and tooth decay in adults and children by as much as 25 percent, according to the American Dental Association.

During the “plandemic,” Kennedy likened 2020 vaccination efforts to the Nazi testing on “Gypsies and Jews,” referring to the jab as “a pharmaceutical-driven, biosecurity agenda that will enslave the entire human race and plunge us into a dystopian nightmare.” As part of Trump’s Cabinet, Kennedy reportedly has plans to strip not just the Covid vaccine but older, irrefutably effective vaccines from the market, as well.

But Kennedy’s vaccine conspiracies aren’t just easily refutable hogwash—they’ve caused legitimate, real-world harm. Prior to a deadly measles outbreak on the Pacific islands of Samoa in 2019, Kennedy’s anti-vax nonprofit Children’s Health Defense spread rampant misinformation about the efficacy of vaccines, sending the nation’s vaccination rate plummeting from the 60–70 percent range to just 31 percent, according to Mother Jones. That year, the country reported 5,707 cases of measles—an illness that was declared eliminated by the United States in 2000 thanks to advancements in modern medicine (read: vaccines)—as well as 83 measles-related deaths, the majority of which were children under the age of 5.

Since their invention, vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The shots are so effective at preventing illness that they have practically eradicated some of the worst diseases, from rabies to polio and smallpox, from our collective culture—a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat for the average, health-conscious individual.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene experienced a reality check outside the Supreme Court Wednesday morning.

Greene was speaking in front of the building that houses the high court as the justices heard oral arguments in U.S. v. Skrmetti, which concerns a legal challenge to Tennessee’s ban against gender-affirming care for transgender minors.

As the right-wing Georgia congresswoman went on a rant, complaining about minors taking puberty blockers “before they’re old enough to join the military, before they’re ever old enough to … be an adult,” she was taken aback by a wave of boos from protesters there for the “Freedom to Be Ourselves” rally in support of trans rights.

According to independent journalist and former New Republic reporter Talia Jane, the crowd was “roughly 4:1 pro-trans rights vs anti” and growing, making Greene and her fellow anti-trans activists a rapidly shrinking minority. In the House of Representatives, however, Greene is now part of a razor-thin Republican majority that will almost certainly attempt to restrict trans rights during Donald Trump’s second term.

Already, Greene and her colleague attention-seeking Representative Nancy Mace are targeting the first transgender person to be elected to Congress, Representative-elect Sarah McBride, ludicrously claiming her use of Capitol restrooms would be tantamount to assault. Inside the Supreme Court on Wednesday, conservative justices holding similar views indicated they would likely uphold the Tennessee law and further restrict rights for transgender people.

Outside of the court, though, Greene and right-wing activists came face-to-face with actual public opinions on trans rights, which include more support for the community than conservatives may realize. It’s a preview of the next four years, with Republicans set to take legal aim at the LGBTQ community in the face of public opposition.

Ex–Fox News star Pete Hegseth won’t let go of his nomination to be Donald Trump’s next defense secretary.

In a post on Wednesday, the accused rapist claimed that he would continue his ascent to the president-elect’s Cabinet despite his dwindling odds at passing a Senate confirmation hearing, branding himself as a “disruptor.”

“I’m doing this for the warfighters, not the warmongers,” Hegseth wrote alongside a photo of himself in combat gear. “The Left is afraid of disrupters and change agents. They are afraid of @realDonaldTrump—and me. So they smear w/ fake, anonymous sources & BS stories. They don’t want truth.

“Our warriors never back down, & neither will I,” he added.

Hegseth told reporters on Tuesday that he intended to meet with every senator, including those who were skeptical of his nomination.

“We’re going to meet with every senator that wants to meet with us, across the board,” Hegseth said on his second full day on Capitol Hill courting members of the upper chamber. “And we welcome their advice as we go through the advice and counsel process.”

That plan has already fallen apart, as The Washington Post’s Marianne Levine reported Wednesday that Hegseth had canceled an upcoming meeting with Senator Josh Hawley.

Conservatives have grown increasingly concerned about Hegseth’s ability to pass the Senate confirmation process in light of sexual assault allegations against the ex–Fox News host, including a detailed 2017 police report regarding Hegseth allegedly raping an attendee at a Republican women’s conference in Monterey, California.

Since those allegations surfaced, Hegseth has admitted to several other scandals, including five affairs that he had during his first marriage.

Even Hegseth’s own mother couldn’t defend the white nationalist–connected conservative, accusing her son in a scathing 2018 email following his separation from his second wife of “using women for his own power.”

“On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say … get some help and take an honest look at yourself,” Penelope Hegseth wrote in the email, obtained by The New York Times Friday.

“I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego,” she wrote. “You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.”

Hegseth’s mother has since publicly changed her tune—on Wednesday morning, she appeared on Fox News to beg people to support her son for defense secretary.

But that’s not the only issue blocking Hegseth’s tenure at the top of the Pentagon: Reports of the Fox News anchor’s rampant drinking have prompted some GOP lawmakers to put their foot down on his nomination barring a promise of sobriety.

“One of the things I’d love to hear is that he’s committed to not drinking,” Republican Senator Kevin Cramer told CNN on Wednesday. “Being familiar with the problems of alcoholism and the dumb things we do when we drink too much, it’d be really nice if he could set that one aside for good, if not at least through his term as secretary.”

Democratic candidate Adam Gray defeated incumbent Republican Representative John Duarte in the final 2024 House race to be called. Gray’s victory, flipping California’s 13th congressional district, means the House Republican majority will be even more razor-thin than before.

With Gray’s win, called early Wednesday morning by the Associated Press, House Republicans will have just a 220–215 majority in the 119th Congress, as the Democrats have netted one more House seat. As CNN reporter Harry Enten noted last week while results were still pending, a party’s majority in the House has not been this slim since the Herbert Hoover administration, following elections for the 72nd Congress.

The House Republican majority is poised to be further deflated, temporarily, to 217–215 in early 2025 with the expected vacancies of three Republican seats.

Representative Matt Gaetz resigned from his seat last month, after he was tapped to be Trump’s attorney general but before he withdrew from consideration in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations. Two other Republican representatives, Elise Stefanik and Mike Waltz, are expected to resign to join the Trump administration. Until these three vacancies are filled, a single Republican defector in a party-line vote would dash a piece of legislation.

The scantiness of the House majority—on top of internal strife among Republican representatives—could significantly hamper the party’s ability to enact its legislative agenda early on in the coming Trump administration.

Kash Patel, Trump’s pick for FBI director, has a fake Covid-19 vaccine “detox” supplement side hustle.

According to a report from NBC News Wednesday, Patel has helped push “Warrior Essentials,” a right-wing faux “wellness” company that sells three different types of supplements claiming to “undo the damage from the spike protein” (essentially the Covid vaccine).

He first advertised them in February on his Truth Social, writing, “Spike the Vax, order this homerun kit to rid your body of the harms of the vax. Huge discount now by ordering via link below,” above an image that read, “If the Covid vaccines were actually ‘safe’ we wouldn’t be essential.”

He shouted Warrior Essentials out again in April, this time writing, “Mrna detox, reverse the vaxx n get healthy with @warrioressentials,” above an image stating, “You were immune to the propaganda, but are you immune to the shedders?”

“Since the mRNA covid vaccines were rolled out we’ve learned our DNA may have been infiltrated by the mRNA in the covid vaccines,” the Warrior Essentials website states. “Our DNA is already under stress from environmental pollutants and chemical additives in our foods. The spike could undermine it all. Not to worry. Warrior Essentials has your back with a support system to bring you back to peak health.”

Patel is a loyal MAGA disciple who wants to dismantle the very agency he is set to head. It only makes sense that he’s doing weird supplement grifting too—after all, he’s learned from one of the best.

Donald Trump has decided to appoint his former lawyer Peter Navarro to serve as senior counselor for trade and manufacturing.

Trump made the announcement in a Truth Social post Wednesday, claiming Navarro “was treated horribly by the Deep State, or whatever else you would like to call it,” but failing to mention that the one-time Trump lawyer served four months in prison for contempt of Congress after defying a subpoena from the House January 6 committee.

Even while in prison, Navarro maintained his steadfast loyalty to the president-elect, going so far as to discuss Trump’s first-term agenda from behind bars. After being released, he stayed in the Trump orbit but was critical of how team Trump ran their 2024 presidential campaign. Now, according to Trump, Navarro will be helping to “successfully advance and communicate the Trump Manufacturing, Tariff, and Trade Agendas.”

In 2022, Navarro was indicted for failing to testify or provide documents to the House committee. He spent years refusing to testify before the House, trying to claim executive privilege because he was acting on Trump’s instructions after the 2020 election, although Trump never told the January 6 committee this nor did he back up Navarro’s claim in any way.

After a federal judge rejected the executive privilege argument, Navarro made a last-minute appeal to the Supreme Court that Chief Justice John Roberts promptly threw out, making Navarro the first ever former White House official to go to prison for being in contempt of Congress.

Trump credited Navarro for renegotiating “unfair Trade Deals like NAFTA and the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS)” in his first term, and the new role he envisions for the economist appears to be on similar policy matters. With Trump’s proposed tariffs egging on a likely trade war this time around, the trade war hawk with staunch loyalty to the president-elect will have plenty to keep him busy the next four years.

This story has been updated.