Kash Patel’s Biggest Obstacle Could Be His Own Enemies List

Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s pick to take over the FBI, has put together an enemies list composed of members of the so-called “deep state.” But he may have already ruined his own plans to prosecute any of those people.

Paul Rosenzweig, the former deputy assistant secretary for policy in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush, thinks that Patel has doomed his revenge plot by openly discussing it, he wrote in The Bulwark Friday.

Rosenzweig explains that if accused criminals can prove that their prosecution is vindictive, they have grounds to rebut the charges. Usually, that’s very hard for defendants to prove, but Patel’s many interviews and the long enemies list in his book Government Gangsters provide that proof.

“If Kash Patel becomes director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as President Trump has suggested he should, he will be the poster child of vindictiveness—and his infamous public declarations of retribution may lead to the dismissal of any politically motivated prosecutions he initiates against his enemies list of ‘Deep State’ opponents,” Rosenzweig writes.

Even if Patel has actual credible evidence against any of the people on that list, he has preemptively hurt those efforts, according to Rosenzweig.

“A defendant can still succeed if he or she can present direct evidence showing that the prosecution was intended as retribution, notwithstanding the fact that actual crimes may have occurred,” the ex-Bush administration official writes.

Patel has already demonstrated a willingness to go after his own critics, threatening legal action against Olivia Troye, his former colleague from the first Trump administration, after she criticized him during an appearance on MSNBC. Democratic and Republican senators alike reportedly aren’t in favor of his nomination, preferring that current FBI Director Christopher Wray serve out the rest of his 10-year term. If Patel has actually messed up Trump’s chances to take revenge against enemies, the MAGA loyalist might soon lose the support of the president-elect too.

Elon Musk was behind a pro–Donald Trump Super PAC that falsely claimed the president-elect’s position on abortion aligned with the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s.

Politico reported Thursday that the world’s richest man was the only funder behind RBG PAC, giving the group $20.5 million to spend on ads claiming that Ginsburg was of “one mind” with Trump on the issue of abortion. The PAC’s website even displayed photos of Trump and the justice, saying that “great minds think alike.”

Ginsburg’s family vehemently opposed the ads. In October, her granddaughter Claudia Spera said in a statement that using the late justice’s name to “support Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, and specifically to suggest that she would approve of his position on abortion, is nothing short of appalling.”

Musk’s donation is a small fraction of the more than $250 million he spent on the 2024 presidential election for Trump’s candidacy but among the most secretive of the tech CEO’s political expenditures. He donated the $20.5 million on October 24, which was not disclosed until Thursday in a Federal Election Commission filing, conveniently a month after Election Day.

The RBG scheme isn’t Musk’s only deceptive political action during the campaign. The billionaire, through his larger America PAC, spent money on ads that touted Vice President Kamala Harris’s support for Israel, aimed at pro-Palestine Arab and Muslim voters in Michigan, while also funding ads attacking her as supporting anti-Israel policies, which were aimed at Jewish voters in Pennsylvania.

Musk brazenly gave away daily $1 million “lottery” prizes to voters in battleground states in the weeks leading up to the election and successfully avoided any legal consequences for it. But all of this is his known spending. He may have spent much more on right-wing dark money groups and in downballot races, which could remain hidden to the public. And thanks to America’s easily exploitable campaign finance laws, it’s all perfectly legal.

As Donald Trump drilled down in support of his defense secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth, his MAGA acolytes fell in line—but some are pushing a little too hard on the throttle to illustrate their deference to the president-elect’s choices.

During an interview Friday on Real America’s Voice’s Charlie Kirk Show, while blowing off the rape allegations plaguing Hegseth’s nomination process, Texas Representative Chip Roy practically admitted to his own sexual assault scandal.

“I think Pete Hegseth was an exceptional pick,” Roy said of the former Fox News anchor, who has been decried as “inordinately unqualified” for the top Pentagon position by former Army National Guard officials.

“He’s under fire from squishy senators who’ve been against everything we want to do,” Roy continued. “So I hope that Pete holds the line all the way through. And we should all defend him.

“Look, we’ve all had some indiscretions in our past and things like that,” Roy added, seemingly referring to Hegseth’s situation. “Every human has. But good grief, Pete Hegseth—you know, he has the support of so many people. And he represents somebody who would take on the defense establishment.”

Hegseth, a 44-year-old former infantry officer, has been under fire since Trump tapped him to lead the Pentagon, primarily over a shocking 2017 police report that revealed the Army veteran was accused of raping an attendee at a Republican women’s conference in Monterey, California. Hegseth has also admitted to several other scandals, including five affairs that he had during his first marriage. Some of Hegseth’s former Fox colleagues have accused him of being “handsy” and groping them. Nearly a dozen of his former co-workers have spoken to various media outlets to warn that his drinking habits are “concerning,” and some noted that they had smelled alcohol on Hegseth as recently as last month.

Republicans at the forefront of the Senate confirmation process have bristled at Hegseth’s nomination, with some taking particular note of the 44-year-old’s drinking problem. In an interview with CNN earlier this week, Republican Senator Kevin Cramer specified that Hegseth needed to stay away from the bottle and offer a promise of sobriety before taking the reins of the country’s military intelligence.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services, is already taking applications for people to work for him—and they include some bizarre questions. 

Puck News reported Friday that the anti-vaccine activist has a form on his “Make America Healthy Again” website where applicants can respond to a series of questions by selecting some odd pre-written responses.

Job hunters have to fill out a 90-minute questionnaire that recommends one be “well rested, have recently eaten, and will not be disturbed” before beginning. The questions themselves seem to concern personality traits, with applicants having to choose responses such as “Modesty doesn’t become me,” “I get upset when people don’t notice how I look when I go out in public,” and “I can usually talk my way out of anything.”

Kennedy has some unusual views, including believing that the Covid-19 pandemic was planned, AIDS isn’t caused by HIV,  and that WiFi causes cancer, so it’s not a big surprise that he would have an unusual application process. However, at this point, Kennedy has not even begun his Senate confirmation hearings, let alone been sworn into Trump’s Cabinet, so these applications don’t meet federal hiring standards and laws.

If Kennedy is confirmed, it will be interesting to see if his application process faces legal challenges, especially since many federal agencies are unionized. Trump has pledged to purge the civil service of his opponents and is putting Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of “government efficiency,” which effectively means massive cuts to government programs and the firing of civil servants in large numbers. 

Kennedy’s strange hiring standards may not initially hold up, but if Trump and his new friends get their way on overhauling the civil service, these kinds of unusual applications could become the norm in the federal bureaucracy, to the detriment of the government actually functioning well. 

Ex–Fox 5 New York host and Trumpian acolyte Greg Kelly uncharacteristically dropped the hammer on one of the president-elect’s Cabinet picks, warning that his former network colleague—defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth—has “serious baggage” that makes him “blackmailable.”

“I was once accused of sexual assault, falsely,” Kelly said on Newsmax, his current home network, Wednesday. “I would never in a billion years pay that person a dime. That doesn’t sound like a fighter. That sounds like somebody who’s blackmailable. And I’m not comfortable with that individual being the secretary of defense.”

Kelly, the son of New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, was accused of raping and impregnating a woman in 2011 before the charges were dropped a year later by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

Hegseth, meanwhile, has been under fire since Donald Trump tapped him to lead the Pentagon, primarily over a shocking 2017 police report that revealed the Army veteran was accused of raping an attendee at a Republican women’s conference in Monterey, California. Hegseth has also admitted to several other scandals, including five affairs that he had during his first marriage. Some of Hegseth’s former Fox colleagues have accused him of being “handsy” and groping them. Nearly a dozen of his former co-workers have spoken to various media outlets to warn that his drinking habits are “concerning,” and some noted that they had smelled alcohol on Hegseth as recently as last month.

Republicans at the forefront of the Senate confirmation process have also taken note of Hegseth’s drinking problem. In an interview with CNN earlier this week, Republican Senator Kevin Cramer specified that Hegseth needed to stay away from the bottle and offer a promise of sobriety before taking the reins of the country’s military intelligence.

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.” (Penelope Hegseth 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 beyond the unsavory misconduct, Kelly’s gripe with Hegseth is that he’s an unqualified candidate who simply hasn’t demonstrated enough loyalty to Trump to warrant such a title.

“Pete Hegseth is no Matt Gaetz,” Kelly said, referring to the legally embattled ex-congressman who was practically forced to drop his attorney general nomination last month over sex trafficking allegations. “He hasn’t done nearly enough for MAGA to warrant the Department of Defense job. And he’s got serious baggage. Serious baggage. It happens sometimes. Not every pick is perfect.”

Trump, meanwhile, has drilled down on his endorsement of the former Fox host.

“Pete Hegseth is doing very well. His support is strong and deep, much more so than the Fake News would have you believe,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday morning. “He was a great student—Princeton/Harvard educated—with a Military state of mind. He will be a fantastic, high energy, Secretary of Defense Defense, one who leads with charisma and skill. Pete is a WINNER, and there is nothing that can be done to change that!!!”