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.