Kash Patel has an enemies list centered on grievance
- By cigaretteman
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Next week, Cassidy Hutchinson will turn 28. The New Jersey native graduated from Christopher Newport University in Virginia five years ago. She interned briefly on Capitol Hill before taking a job at the White House, earning a write-up in the college newspaper. She worked in the Trump administration for a little over two years.
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This, according to Kash Patel, earns Hutchinson a spot as one of 60 “Members of the Executive Branch Deep State.” Should he be confirmed to run the FBI, as President-elect Donald Trump desires, Hutchinson and those 59 others could find that their stints as government employees, however brief, earned them federal criminal investigations. Not because they compromised the public trust, but because they ran afoul of Trump — or Patel.
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Patel’s list was delineated in his 2023 book, “Government Gangsters,” a screed that mirrors Patel’s children’s book series “The Plot Against the King” (the eponymous king being Trump) in casting anti-Trump and anti-Patel forces as wrong or evil or both. Trump gave “Gangsters” his blessing, calling it a “brilliant roadmap highlighting every corrupt actor” that would be used to “help us take back the White House and remove these Gangsters from all of Government.”
Hutchinson, of course, no longer works in government. She served under Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows as Trump’s first term in office concluded. She eventually offered public testimony about what she observed as Trump tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election. That is the reason she’s on the list: not because she is a member of the “deep state” — her tenure barely qualifies as inch-deep — but because she had the temerity to speak truth to Trump’s power.
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Several other people on the list fit the same pattern. Nina Jankowicz worked for the government for a bit over a month in 2022, selected by President Joe Biden to run a government board targeting misinformation. The right, building on the coronavirus pandemic by casting Biden and the left as dangerously censorious, attacked the board and Jankowicz, leading to the organization’s dissolution. She became an enemy of Trumpworld and, therefore, an element of the anti-Trump deep state.
Melania Trump’s former chief of staff and later Trump administration press secretary Stephanie Grisham made the list because she eventually spoke out against her former boss. So did Alyssa Farah, who worked for the government only as a member of the Trump administration, but became part of the “deep state” when she offered negative information about Trump publicly.
Several lesser-known members of Trump’s first term in office are also on the list. There are two members of his legal team, for example: Pat Cipollone and Pat Philbin, who defended Trump during his first impeachment trial. Perhaps because Cipollone rejected Trump’s efforts to retain power after losing in 2020, he was placed on Patel’s “deep state” list. His tenure as a state actor extends no further than his work for Trump. Cipollone and Philbin testified to the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot.
Patel’s list also includes Nellie Ohr, whom his book identifies as a “Former CIA Employee and Independent Contract [sic] for Fusion GPS.” Ohr, according to earlier Washington Post reporting, worked for a firm that contracted with the CIA. She’s on the list not because of her purported work for the government but because of that latter job, her work with Fusion GPS.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli..._magnet-trump-presidency_inline_collection_15
That firm was responsible for hiring a former British intelligence officer who compiled a set of documents alleging close ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian actors. This dossier became a central element of the narrative about Russian interference and a key component of the right’s effort to dismiss the federal government’s interference probe as politically biased against Trump.
This is the primary through-line to Patel’s list. Most of those included were involved, however tangentially, in investigating Russian interference, Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results or Trump’s effort to pressure Ukraine — or in rejecting Patel’s efforts to defend Trump in each of those instances.
Why is former FBI official Stephen Boyd on the list? Well, probably because he issued a public warning about a memo, primarily written by Patel, that attempted to undermine the validity of a tangential element of the Russia investigation.
Why is former State Department official Elizabeth Dibble on it? Probably because she was the one who was informed by an Australian diplomat that a Trump campaign adviser had told him in 2016 that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton.
And Charles Kupperman? Patel no doubt takes issue with the former deputy national security adviser for having recommended against having Patel vet White House staffers for loyalty to Trump as the Ukraine probe unfolded. The text of the book lashes out at Patel’s and Trump’s overlapping (perceived) oppressors; the list is just a summary of that grievance.
It includes a parade of names that popped up in derogatory Fox News lower-thirds over the past decade: Peter Strzok, Michael Sussmann, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. Some of the people on the list have, in fact, been in government service for decades. Others are part of the “deep state” only to the extent that “deep state” is used synonymously with “person who declined to put Trump’s needs first.”
Until the past few days, none of this mattered. Patel wrote a book in which he disparages government officials as “gangsters” and lists out the ones he views with particular malice. But now Trump wants to put him in charge of the federal government’s premier law enforcement agency, where (Trump hopes) he would report to another Trump loyalist, Pam Bondi. Patel has spoken about his interest in prosecuting Trump’s enemies. Trump wants to give him the power to do so, just as he said in his book blurb.
Critically, this is precisely why Trump selected Patel. No one pretends that he is experienced at managing large organizations or has any particular insights into law enforcement and the application of blind justice. It is understood that he wants to effect justice for Trump, the former and future president who had to endure valid but unpleasant investigations into his actions. Patel’s job would be to exact the retribution Trump promised his supporters.
There’s no reason to think that the list doesn’t show how that might happen.
Get the latest election news and resultsThis, according to Kash Patel, earns Hutchinson a spot as one of 60 “Members of the Executive Branch Deep State.” Should he be confirmed to run the FBI, as President-elect Donald Trump desires, Hutchinson and those 59 others could find that their stints as government employees, however brief, earned them federal criminal investigations. Not because they compromised the public trust, but because they ran afoul of Trump — or Patel.
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Patel’s list was delineated in his 2023 book, “Government Gangsters,” a screed that mirrors Patel’s children’s book series “The Plot Against the King” (the eponymous king being Trump) in casting anti-Trump and anti-Patel forces as wrong or evil or both. Trump gave “Gangsters” his blessing, calling it a “brilliant roadmap highlighting every corrupt actor” that would be used to “help us take back the White House and remove these Gangsters from all of Government.”
Hutchinson, of course, no longer works in government. She served under Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows as Trump’s first term in office concluded. She eventually offered public testimony about what she observed as Trump tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election. That is the reason she’s on the list: not because she is a member of the “deep state” — her tenure barely qualifies as inch-deep — but because she had the temerity to speak truth to Trump’s power.
🏛️
Follow Politics
Several other people on the list fit the same pattern. Nina Jankowicz worked for the government for a bit over a month in 2022, selected by President Joe Biden to run a government board targeting misinformation. The right, building on the coronavirus pandemic by casting Biden and the left as dangerously censorious, attacked the board and Jankowicz, leading to the organization’s dissolution. She became an enemy of Trumpworld and, therefore, an element of the anti-Trump deep state.
Melania Trump’s former chief of staff and later Trump administration press secretary Stephanie Grisham made the list because she eventually spoke out against her former boss. So did Alyssa Farah, who worked for the government only as a member of the Trump administration, but became part of the “deep state” when she offered negative information about Trump publicly.
Several lesser-known members of Trump’s first term in office are also on the list. There are two members of his legal team, for example: Pat Cipollone and Pat Philbin, who defended Trump during his first impeachment trial. Perhaps because Cipollone rejected Trump’s efforts to retain power after losing in 2020, he was placed on Patel’s “deep state” list. His tenure as a state actor extends no further than his work for Trump. Cipollone and Philbin testified to the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot.
Patel’s list also includes Nellie Ohr, whom his book identifies as a “Former CIA Employee and Independent Contract [sic] for Fusion GPS.” Ohr, according to earlier Washington Post reporting, worked for a firm that contracted with the CIA. She’s on the list not because of her purported work for the government but because of that latter job, her work with Fusion GPS.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli..._magnet-trump-presidency_inline_collection_15
That firm was responsible for hiring a former British intelligence officer who compiled a set of documents alleging close ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian actors. This dossier became a central element of the narrative about Russian interference and a key component of the right’s effort to dismiss the federal government’s interference probe as politically biased against Trump.
This is the primary through-line to Patel’s list. Most of those included were involved, however tangentially, in investigating Russian interference, Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results or Trump’s effort to pressure Ukraine — or in rejecting Patel’s efforts to defend Trump in each of those instances.
Why is former FBI official Stephen Boyd on the list? Well, probably because he issued a public warning about a memo, primarily written by Patel, that attempted to undermine the validity of a tangential element of the Russia investigation.
Why is former State Department official Elizabeth Dibble on it? Probably because she was the one who was informed by an Australian diplomat that a Trump campaign adviser had told him in 2016 that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton.
And Charles Kupperman? Patel no doubt takes issue with the former deputy national security adviser for having recommended against having Patel vet White House staffers for loyalty to Trump as the Ukraine probe unfolded. The text of the book lashes out at Patel’s and Trump’s overlapping (perceived) oppressors; the list is just a summary of that grievance.
It includes a parade of names that popped up in derogatory Fox News lower-thirds over the past decade: Peter Strzok, Michael Sussmann, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. Some of the people on the list have, in fact, been in government service for decades. Others are part of the “deep state” only to the extent that “deep state” is used synonymously with “person who declined to put Trump’s needs first.”
Until the past few days, none of this mattered. Patel wrote a book in which he disparages government officials as “gangsters” and lists out the ones he views with particular malice. But now Trump wants to put him in charge of the federal government’s premier law enforcement agency, where (Trump hopes) he would report to another Trump loyalist, Pam Bondi. Patel has spoken about his interest in prosecuting Trump’s enemies. Trump wants to give him the power to do so, just as he said in his book blurb.
Critically, this is precisely why Trump selected Patel. No one pretends that he is experienced at managing large organizations or has any particular insights into law enforcement and the application of blind justice. It is understood that he wants to effect justice for Trump, the former and future president who had to endure valid but unpleasant investigations into his actions. Patel’s job would be to exact the retribution Trump promised his supporters.
There’s no reason to think that the list doesn’t show how that might happen.
