Trump – a political outsider at the time – pledged to drain the swamp from 2016-2020. While some progress occurred, there was a border wall that didn’t get finished. In addition, Trump endured constant fighting those last two years with a Democrat-led House under Nancy Pelosi which voted to impeach him in 2019 on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress over his dealings with Ukraine; and again in 2021 – after he had left office – on “insurrection” charges stemming from protests at the Capitol on Jan. 6 of that year.
Trump also dealt with allegations that he was a Russian agent, later debunked by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
With all that baggage, it’s not surprising that Trump is surrounding himself with loyalists like Kash Patel, his pick to lead the FBI, as his second term draws closer.
Having loyalists around him is important to Trump, but it’s also important to have loyalty in the right places. Those places aren’t necessarily at the top, Jonathan Gilliam, a former FBI agent and Navy SEAL, said on Washington Watch Monday.
“Kash Patel (pictured, right) is a very loyal individual. That’s very important for Trump because there’s not many loyal people in DC, not many people he can trust,” Gilliam told show host Jody Hice.
If the plan is for Patel, a former federal prosecutor and key advisor during the first Trump presidency, to weed out left-leaning elements who were key in the lawfare aimed at Trump since he left of office – and by other Americans in the FBI and other agencies – it’s not the director’s job, Gilliam says. It’s just way too big.
“You pick an attorney to run the DOJ, and you know that attorney understands federal prosecution. But in all these other agencies, you have to have someone who can run and reorganize and rebuild these agencies. That in and of itself is a four-year job for whoever gets appointed,” Gilliam argued.
Patel has many on the Left spooked as they see major disruption ahead.
Irony: Left has lawfare concerns with Patel
“He [Patel] has actually seen the danger of this core of people, whether it be the RussiaGate hoax, the jailing of the J6ers. A lot of it has been very unconstitutional under the present administration,” former FBI agent Bruce Rather tells AFN. “We need someone to come into the FBI who does not owe anybody anything … somebody who is there that can look at things objectively.”
Rather believes there’s been intentional efforts to hide actions in Joe Biden’s FBI – and he argues that could keep Patel from coming in with guns blazing as the force of change.
Getting to 30% on the change meter would be a success, Rather says.
“I fear that the record-keeping may have been messed with. Anytime Congress asked for any kind of oversight of the FBI, they received documents that are completely redacted, or the FBI told them ‘we can't find them,’” Rather points out.
Undoable on his own
Gilliam used Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” as an example of Patel’s need for help. It’s Homan, he said – not Gov. Kristi Noem, Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security – who is in charge of cleaning up the untended and dangerous mess left by the Biden administration.
According to Gilliam, Trump is wrong to believe a loyalist like Patel – who once proclaimed, if left to him, the J. Edgar Hoover building would be shut down only to reopen as a museum to the Deep State – can accomplish that without a sort of "task force" at the helm.
“… Just like Homan is the border czar," Gilliam argued, "there needs to be a justice czar or a reorganization czar who takes a team of people who are from these agencies, looks broadly at all of them to see like or similar issues, then looks at them each individually to see where the Left and all these other mafias are entrenched and then systematically expose those people, show them to the director, to the AG, and allow them to get rid of them.”
Basically, Gilliam added, Patel won’t be able to do both jobs.
Gilliam: Agency experience preferred
Aside from Patel potentially facing a task too large for the position, the FBI – according to Gilliam – would be better served with one of its own at the top.
“The problem that I have with Kash Patel is he’s an attorney – and his resume speaks to the things he’s done as an attorney, and that’s been a problem with the FBI since before Louis Freeh and after Louis Freeh,” Gilliam said.
Freeh served in the FBI ranks before being appointed as the Bureau’s fifth director by President Bill Clinton.
“This is something that all the agencies in DC suffer from, that political appointees do not know the agencies they’re representing,” Gilliam said.
While Patel would be very capable of rooting out the top layer of the FBI’s anti-Trump personnel, Gilliam said that won’t be nearly enough.
“It would be easy to put Kash Patel in there and have him get rid of all the executives on the seventh floor of the J. Edgard Hoover Building and clean up that," said Gilliam.
"The problem is the Left, and all of these what I call 'mafias' within the Bureau and all these other agencies, those people are not in plain sight," he warned. "If we don’t come up with an effective solution to purging these people and not letting them repopulate, in 2028 they will just come out of hiding and repopulate their ranks.”
