Kash Patel JustThisClose to Confirmation

AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

Oh, my heart was in my throat last night when I saw Senator Markwayne Mullin's Xweet.

Kash Patel was up for a cloture vote at about 5:30 EST last night - would there be a last-minute Democratic or Rino-tic wrench thrown in the works?

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Steady....steady...Lutnick's confirmation came in...steady...and DONE.

Patel was officially on the confirmation countdown clock; Sen Mullin is predicting a vote on Thursday and is feeling strongly that Patel has bested the Democrats' worst efforts.

I hope he's not overconfident, but some truly sad little weasel faces give me hope that he's right. That Patel will be our next FBI director by tomorrow night.

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WAAH, WAAH

It was also cheering this morning to see a relatively complimentary article about Patel in the Washington Post, of all liberal rags. I mean, knock me over with a feather.

Has Hell frozen over?

Although it could be purely self-interested CYA, as the paper is surely aware that Patel will start crawling up butts over the torrent of anti-Trump classified and privileged information leaks to the press during the past two administrations.

Oh, golly. Let's just shelve our cynical sides for a second and bathe in the momentary and transitory psuedo-magnanimity, shall we?

Kash Patel, a fierce critic of the FBI, is on the verge of being confirmed as the bureau’s next director, with a full Senate vote expected Thursday.

If approved, he would take over the agency amid turmoil unlike anything in its 116-year history, while facing allegations that he played a role in purges of at least eight top officials while his nomination was pending.

Some of those forced out had been vilified for years by a group of former agents who have previously been accused of misconduct and suspended, a Washington Post examination has found.

The ex-agents, who deny wrongdoing, have forged bonds with Patel, in some cases accepting financial help from his nonprofit foundation, and have been in contact with him since his nomination, one member of the group said in an interview. They testified on Capitol Hill about the need to clean house at the FBI, including at a hearing organized by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) in 2023.

...Conservative critics of the FBI see President Donald Trump’s decision to nominate Patel — an ex-federal prosecutor, former assistant public defender and conservative commentator — as a welcome development for a law enforcement agency they argue has become politicized and out of control.

And perhaps no group is happier than the coterie of suspended or former agents Patel has connected with in recent years.

They call themselves “The Suspendables”: victims of what they deride as the FBI’s weaponization against conservatives, and say they were punished for political differences and whistleblowing. They’ve built an online following through podcast appearances, social media and conservative news outlets where they’ve trumpeted their complaints.

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Aw. Waffley warm fuzzies from the WaPo - whoda thunk?

These are some of the former agents they are talking about.

And there are FBI whistleblowers who have courageously stepped forward only to be ruthlessly crushed by the Obama-Biden regimes. They deserve their moment of reckoning, too.

Should the Senate confirm Kash Patel as FBI director, it will have clinched the second of perhaps the two most vital nominations President Donald Trump will make, alongside Tulsi Gabbard. These are the two individuals after Trump with the near-singular ability to prevent us from devolving into a total police state of the kind that has already targeted them.

President Trump was elected in no small part as a rebuke to a national security apparatus and intelligence agencies that have been weaponized and politicized against dissenters from ruling-class orthodoxy. From Russiagate and the fostering of the Censorship-Industrial Complex, to the first Trump impeachment and the Jan. 6 inquisition, to the targeting of all from faithful Christians to pro-life activists and parents concerned about their kids being indoctrinated in Marxism in school, increasingly our deep state has operated like our political foes’ secret police.

As I recently reported at RealClearInvestigations, the evidence shows that at least at the FBI, whistleblowers exposing this misconduct have had their careers and lives destroyed. Those defending them have faced retaliation too.

The turning of America’s cops and spies on the American people is the death knell of the republic, not to mention ultimately a boon to our adversaries. After all, from their perspective, what could be better than seeing the U.S. destroy itself from within by eviscerating liberty and justice in targeting domestic wrongthinkers? We effectively run information operations on ourselves via politicizing intelligence, while diverting precious resources from pursuing our actual foreign enemies. 

Simply put, police states cannot be free states.

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Won't it be nice to have advocates for the American people in those positions at last?

And to know that they want answers. Maybe even heads. At the very least, Patel will demand some sort of accountability for all of the sins committed by the FBI and intelligence agencies against innocent citizens.

There's also been quite a bit of nerve-induced housecleaning going on among former FBI types.

Can't imagine why. They were such a cute couple.

As far as other 'news' outlets reporting on Patel's advance to the last round, like, say, Politico - sheesh. 

That rag must still be butthurt over the canceled USAID subscriptions, judging by their take on his passing the cloture threshold. It's more like a dramatic reading.

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Kash Patel, the controversial nominee to lead the FBI, cleared another key procedural hurdle Tuesday.

The Senate voted 48-45 to move forward with Patel’s nomination, setting up his confirmation vote in the coming days to helm the agency for a 10-year term.

Patel, if confirmed, is set to be a central figure in President Donald Trump’s efforts to leverage his powers against perceived enemies. A former House staffer who worked to discredit the congressional inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Patel has promised to go after Trump’s adversaries and shut down the FBI’s Washington headquarters on Day 1 of his tenure to create "a museum" of the “deep state.”

Reuters was having a moment, too. 

I can't wait to see how they write about it tomorrow, when and if he, at long last, becomes Director Patel.

Should be riveting reading.

LFG and git 'er done.

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