Source.

Former FBI officials have warned that Donald Trump’s nominee to be the next FBI director, Kash Patel, could have limitless power at the bureau as they confront the likelihood that he will be confirmed next year after locking down support from key Republicans and the current director’s intention to resign.

The alarm has come as Patel, who has called for shutting down FBI headquarters and drafted what critics call an ‘enemies list’ of Patel’s opponents, appears set to have his nomination supported unanimously by Republicans on the Senate judiciary committee.

The problem with Patel leading the FBI in the second Trump administration is that typical checks on the power of the FBI director would almost certainly be gone, according to former FBI assistant director Frank Figliuzzi and other former officials familiar with the matter.

Patel is almost certain to install his own chief of staff and a new FBI general counsel to sign off on any campaign of retribution, while Pam Bondi, the Trump pick for attorney general, has previously echoed Patel’s aims to make the agency subservient to the White House.

“I don’t think people truly realize how powerful an FBI director can be, unrestrained,” Figliuzzi recently said on the Highly Conflicted podcast. “You want to open a case and call it a threat assessment or a preliminary investigation, you can do it.

“If the FBI director wants to get a press conference together, not tell the DoJ, and make pronouncements to the public about a case opening or a case closing or someone should be prosecuted, they can do it.

“And then going through files? I imagine on the first day in office, he’s going to say, ‘I need every file that has the word Trump in it,’” Figliuzzi said. “That should be a real concern, that Kash Patel is going through informant files and saying, ‘Look at that, this guy coughed it up on Trump.’”

These people are a piece of work, yes?

Logic isn’t the hobgoblin of small minds. It’s the stuff of life.

In this case, it occurs to most normal people who have to live life by the rules of logic – or die, or go to prison – that if any of this is true, then the previous administration and FBI officials were equally culpable to running the organization in such a way as they just described.

In my case, I hope that’s a very short list of the things he does, including declassify most of what he finds regarding a multitude of things. There is no better disinfectant than light. That’s what the FBI and former officials fear most.