Kash Patel speaks at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference.Michael Brochstein/AP
For years, Kash Patel, the MAGA provocateur, conspiracy theory monger, and seller of pills he claims reverse the effects of Covid vaccines, who Donald Trump has announced as his pick to replace FBI Director Chris Wray, has made his mission plain: He wants to crush the supposed Deep State that has conspired against Trump. Last year, while appearing on Steve Bannon’s podcast, he vowed, “We will go and find the conspirators—not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens to help Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly.” This was not an empty threat, for Patel has a list of specific targets for his score-settling. And that line-up includes not only Democrats but also prominent Republicans.
Patel laid out his plans in a 2023 book titled Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for our Democracy. In this work, he breathlessly described the Deep State as a “coordinated, ideologically rigid force independent from the people that manipulates the levers of politics and justice for its own gain and self-preservation.” It is run “by a significant number of high-level cultural leaders and officials who, acting through networks of networks, disregard objectivity, weaponize the law, spread disinformation, spurn fairness, or even violate their oaths of office for political and personal gain, all at the expense of equal justice and American national security.” He added, “They are thugs in suits, nothing more than government gangsters.” And he inveighed that this is “a cabal of unelected tyrants.”
In his book, Patel, a supporter of QAnon and a promoter of assorted MAGA conspiracy theories (the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, the Trump-Russia investigation was a hoax, and the January 6 riot was sparked by “strange agitators” and federal agents), called for mounting “investigations” to “take on the Deep State.” Though he doesn’t specify what the cause for these inquiries would be, he has plenty of people in mind. In an appendix to the book, Patel presented a list of 60 supposed members of the Deep State who are current or former executive branch officials and who presumably would be the prey. He noted this roster did not include “other corrupt actors,” such as California Democrats Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, “the entire fake news mafia press corps,” and former GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan. (When Patel worked for the GOP-controlled House intelligence committee, he had run-ins with Ryan over the issuance of subpoenas and Patel leaking information to a Fox News reporter—which must mean that Ryan was a Deep State operative.)
Patel’s list names what would for a MAGA activist be the obvious purported cabalists: President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former CIA chief John Brennan, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, and former or current FBI directors Chris Wray, Robert Mueller, and James Comey. (Patel doesn’t explain why Comey, a supposed anti-Trump Deep State player, torpedoed Clinton’s presidential bid in 2016 when he reopened an FBI inquiry into her handling of State Department emails in the final days of the campaign.)
This line-up also includes a number of Republicans and onetime Trump appointees. These include Bill Barr, who served as attorney general for Trump; John Bolton, one of Trump’s national security advisers in his first White House stint; Pat Cipollone, Trump’s White House counsel; Mark Esper, a secretary of defense under Trump; Sarah Isgur Flores, who was head of communications for Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions; Alyssa Farah Griffin, the director of strategic commissions in the Trump White House; and Stephanie Grisham, former chief of staff for Melania Trump.
When Barr was Trump’s attorney general, he prevented Trump from appointing Patel deputy director of the FBI, noting Patel was vastly unqualified for the position. “Over my dead body,” Barr told the White House at the time. Barr’s presence on Patel’s run-down of Deep State wrongdoers—like Ryan’s inclusion— suggests it might also function as a list of his own personal vendettas.
After recently learning her name appeared in Patel’s appendix of enemies, Flores, who’s now a news commentator, tweeted, “Just learned I’m included on this list. I’ve never met Patel or attended any meetings where he was present as far as I know. Will include a disclaimer when I talk about this intent to nominate from now on.”
There are other Republicans on Patel’s Deep State inventory: Robert Hur, the US attorney who investigated Biden’s handling of classified documents; Cassidy Hutchinson, the twenty-something aide who worked for Mark Meadows, the final White House chief of staff during the first Trump presidency; Charles Kupperman, a deputy national security adviser for Trump; Ryan McCarthy, a secretary of the Army under Trump; Pat Philbin, a deputy White House counsel for Trump; Rod Rosenstein, a deputy attorney general for Trump; and Miles Taylor, a Department of Homeland Security official under Trump.
Last year, Patel filed a lawsuit against Wray, Rosenstein, Hur, and others, claiming that in 2017, when he was an investigator for the House intelligence committee, the Justice Department spied on him.
These Republicans on Patel’s hit list are all in his dark worldview sinister Deep Staters. Yet some of these selections are especially absurd. Barr, as attorney general, undermined Mueller’s investigation of the Trump-Russia scandal, an inquiry that according to Patel was a Deep State plot. Why would a Deep State denizen do that? And while Barr did not back up Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 election was rigged against him, he endorsed Trump’s presidential campaign this year. Another curious move for an anti-Trump conspirator.
When she was at the Justice Department, Flores defended Trump’s controversial Muslim travel ban and his family separation policy. Hur issued a report that raised questions about Biden’s age and abilities. Rosenstein helped Trump fire Comey as FBI director. Hutchinson was an intern for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and then Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) before becoming an intern in the Trump White House for the office of legislative affairs. (She was a key witness at the hearings held by the House select committee that investigated the January 6 riot.). Griffin, the daughter of far-right journalist Joseph Farah, worked for her dad’s website, WorldNetDaily, then interned for a GOP congressman and was an associate producer for Fox host Laura Ingraham. She later served as a press secretary for Meadows and for the House Freedom Caucus before becoming a spokesperson for Vice President Mike Pence and, then, director of strategic communications for the Trump White House.
These are not the profiles or actions of Deep State plotters. Their inclusion on Patel’s list reveals the ludicrousness of his notion that a nefarious Deep State exists and has been scheming to sabotage Trump and destroy America. Patel is like the old commie-hunter who spots subversives under every bed and at every PTA bake sale. His book and his entire exercise of naming names raises questions about his analytical ability—an important asset for an FBI director. This appendix shows Patel is nothing but an extreme Trump loyalist, yearning to use (or abuse) government power to pursue Trump’s critics and opponents, as well as his own. Patel is even something of a Trump royalist, having written a series of children’s books about a “King Donald” who manages to triumph over his evil foes led by “Hillary Queenton.”
Still, Patel and Government Gangsters, which features a photo of Patel on the cover, ought not be dismissed. Patel has signaled he’s looking to conduct revenge-a-thon, and Trump endorsed this work as a “brilliant roadmap highlighting every corrupt actor.” He declared, “we will use this blueprint to help us take back the White House and remove these Gangsters from all of Government!” That indicates Patel’s list could end up as a to-do—or to-get—list for Trump. Not only Democrats should worry about that.