“Beyond Reproach”
Sen. Lindsey Graham performs a flip flop worthy of, well, Sen. Lindsey Graham.
I’m offline most of today while here in Chicago, attending the anatomy scan of Baby No. 2, who is due in late April or early May! But I did want to drop a quick observation to kick off this Monday.
Yesterday, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who once upon a time had principles but sold them off after Trump won in 2016, went on Meet the Press to speak with host Kristen Welker. One of his objectives was to defend none other than Kash Patel, Trump’s controversial nominee for FBI Director.
I say “controversial” here because Patel literally has an enemies list of “Deep State” opponents of Donald Trump, and if confirmed, he intends on using the power of the Bureau to investigate and prosecute them. That’s about as politicized as you can get.
During the interview, Welker did successfully box Graham in a corner on this question, playing for him his interview in 2017 in which he stood steadfastly by the idea that the FBI Director should be someone who has stayed clear of partisan politics.
“He has a duty and obligation to pick somebody beyond reproach outside the political lane,” Graham said in 2017. “I think he’ll do that. I hope he’ll do that. I would encourage the president to pick somebody we can all rally around, including those who work in the FBI.”
Welker then asked him, “Senator, is Kash Patel beyond reproach and someone that everyone can rally around?”
The answer is objectively no. But that’s not the answer Graham gave.
“I think you’re talking about what [Trump] should do the last time,” Graham said. “Look what’s happened since the last time: The FBI, in the eyes of conservatives, has become sort of a very biased organization.”
Graham added that he wants someone in that role who
“can clean it up, get back to the job of fighting crime. Don’t have your thumb on the political scale. Make sure it’s not used as a political weapon against people that you have a beef with. We don’t want to go back to the days of J. Edgar Hoover. What we want to do is have an FBI that’s going to call balls and strikes, and it’s going to take somebody to clean out the place.”
That person of course is not Patel, who has stated he will indeed put his finger on the scale and use his office as a weapon against those Trump has a beef with, on top of moving the FBI out of Washington, D.C. As I wrote in an earlier piece, Patel has falsely claimed that the Bidens have gotten away with crimes in connection with Ukraine and Burisma and that President Joe Biden is guilty and complicit. Never mind that the chief pusher of that lie, Alexander Smirnov, just pleaded guilty and admitted he made up all the claims of bribery that the GOP later pushed publicly.
On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, Patel also said that he would “come after people in the media” who had “helped Joe Biden rig elections”—referring presumably to initial efforts to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story when it first came out. That story sure seemed like a Russian psyop, given that it also came from Rudy Giuliani.
I highlight Graham’s words because his argument is a sinister one. Over these past years, the FBI has successfully obtained guilty charges from both Democratic and Republican officials. It acted under a lawful warrant when it seized classified documents from Mar-a-Lago. And it has properly sought to investigate all those involved in the violent attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The FBI is only “biased” to conservatives because many more radical elements affiliated with the GOP committed crimes.
But pay close attention to what Graham is saying. Because the FBI did its job and tried to stop the bad guys, those same bad guys (who are now in power) are justified in trying to “clean out the place.” This sends a chilling message that could endure long past the Trump years: In the hands of political opportunists, of which the GOP boasts many, FBI agents who go after criminals need to be looking over their shoulder. You never know when the voters will put the criminals back in charge, and you may be out of a job for doing your duty.
It is shameful and dangerous for Graham to support someone like Patel, whom he knows will be on a political vendetta once in charge. Far from being “beyond reproach,” Patel is the very opposite: a MAGA Trumpist lickspittle without any relevant experience, whose objective is to undermine and hollow out the FBI.
Graham once famously tweeted that if the GOP nominated Trump, they would get destroyed, and they will have deserved it. Perhaps he didn’t realize that he was absolutely correct, but that the destruction would be a moral rot from within the party itself, and that he himself would help spread it.
There will be a special circle in Hell for Graham and Mitch McConnell.
As always, I offer my thanks to Jay for his fearless commentary. I would like to add to this comment by saying that Director Wray, a Republican but not a tame one, was appointed by Trump himself back in 2017. I am also aware that not once in its storied existence, has the FBI ever had a Democratic director, not once, not ever!!! Talk about weaponization!