Having antipathy towards Donald Trump seems to be almost a job requirement at Politico. However, even among the TDS crowd their senior staff writer Ankush Khardori seems to be an extreme standout. As has already been revealed at NewsBusters, Khardori absolutely despises Trump to the extent that last July, he urged that the J6 trial be dramatically sped up in order to convict him before election day.
Therefore you have to wonder what is going on in the eyes of Politico management that Khardori was allowed to make the case against choosing Patel as the next FBI director? They have a blind eye that prevents them from seeing that extreme hatred openly for Trump is not a good look for an organization that at least pretends to be even handed.
In any event, Khardori has white hot hatred for Trump so expansive as to include Patel as we can see on Saturday in "You Should Worry About Kash Patel Running the FBI."
A few samples of Khardori's Patel Derangement Syndrome:
Trump’s decision to nominate Patel has proven particularly controversial, since his principal qualification appears to be his sycophancy toward Trump.
...Patel calls to mind the specter of J. Edgar Hoover, the infamous FBI director whose nearly 50-year stint running the agency until 1972 was marked by egregious abuses of power — including illegal surveillance, blackmail and the harassment of political dissidents.
Psst! Ankush, I hate to break it to you but it was revealed on Friday that the FBI spied on Patel by surveilling his phone and email records back in 2017 when he led the House Intelligence Committee investigation of the FBI relying on Hillary Clinton's false opposition research that resulted in the Trump-Russian collusion hoax. Not exactly great timing for hinting that Patel would abuse his power as FBI Director.
On paper, there is no way to justify Patel’s ascension. He spent a few years as a federal prosecutor focused on national security and was an aide in Congress and the first Trump administration on intelligence and national security issues.
Khardori conveniently skips Patel's key role in writing the Nunes memo which exposed the FBI abuse of the FISA court system, such as lying in order to spy on Carter Page. No wonder the FBI (and Khardori) want to keep him from becoming its Director.
...the legal and bureaucratic dynamics surrounding the FBI’s work are very different today than they were during the Hoover era, and there are limits to what the FBI can do on its own without drawing serious scrutiny.
Such as lying on FISA warrants, which Patel helped expose? The Trump haters never see how ironic it is for them to evoke "the fear that Patel would use the FBI to go after Trump’s political opponents." As if the Comey-McCabe FBI didn't go after their political opponents.
To read Khardori's screed against Patel you have to be convinced that the FBI is innocent of all the many abuses that have already come to light in large part due to work of Kash Patel as well as multiple whistleblowers. It would be refreshing to have an FBI Director that can provide answers for many of the highly questionable questionable FBI activities of the past few years. No wonder they want to characterize exposing abusive behavior as an abuse of power.
