Patel Using FBI Equipment To See What Trash Talkers Say About Him

What’s next, waterboarding? Bamboo shoots under the fingernails? We live in an America that is not the same one we grew up in. Sadly, that was a fact I realized the night of November 8, 2016, the first time this nightmare of a Trump administration manifested. Trump 2.0 is even worse. At least when Trump first took the reins we had James Comey running the FBI. Then the fall out with Comey and we got Christopher Wray. Wray was still somebody who had been with the Bureau a great many years and was a seasoned professional. But the days of having adults in the room are gone and now we have Kash Patel. And he’s, honest to God, administering polygraphs to FBI employees and asking if they have ever spoken ill of him. What’s next the Thought Police and the Junior Spies? New York Times:

Typically, the F.B.I. has turned to polygraph tests to sniff out employees who might have betrayed their country or shown they cannot be trusted with secrets.

Since Kash Patel took office as the director of the F.B.I., the bureau has significantly stepped up the use of the lie-detector test, at times subjecting personnel to a question as specific as whether they have cast aspersions on Mr. Patel himself.

In interviews and polygraph tests, the F.B.I. has asked senior employees whether they have said anything negative about Mr. Patel, according to two people with knowledge of the questions and others familiar with similar accounts. In one instance, officials were forced to take a polygraph as the agency sought to determine who disclosed to the news media that Mr. Patel had demanded a service weapon, an unusual request given that he is not an agent. The number of officials asked to take a polygraph is in the dozens, several people familiar with the matter said, though it is unclear how many have specifically been asked about Mr. Patel.

The use of the polygraph, and the nature of the questioning, is part of the F.B.I.’s broader crackdown on news leaks, reflecting, to a degree, Mr. Patel’s acute awareness of how he is publicly portrayed. The moves, former bureau officials say, are politically charged and highly inappropriate, underscoring what they describe as an alarming quest for fealty at the F.B.I., where there is little tolerance for dissent. Disparaging Mr. Patel or his deputy, Dan Bongino, former officials say, could cost people their job.

“An F.B.I. employee’s loyalty is to the Constitution, not to the director or deputy director,” said James Davidson, a former agent who spent 23 years in the bureau. “It says everything about Patel’s weak constitution that this is even on his radar.”

Ah, the Constitution. Ah yes. We do so recall how people in the government and in the military used to swear an oath to the Constitution. And now we have Trump For King banners on display at rallies and in front of the White House. And Kash Patel is using technology to weed out people who are disloyal to him — as if anybody sane would be loyal to the man. But that’s not the point. The point is that FBI agents or staff don’t owe loyalty to Patel, they owe it to the Constitution.

DOGE has fired many people, Marco Rubio intends to fire a great many more at the State Department, and firings will continue to happen. We will be dealing with skeleton crews in many crucial aspects of government. You saw what happened with the Texas floods, and how well the National Weather Service can function with 55% of its staff gone.

It’s a set up for more trouble. It’s also demoralizing to the people that are left because they don’t know when the guillotine is going to come down on them. Government workers are a certain breed and they’re not easily replaced, contrary to conventional wisdom on the subject. This is a bad move across the boards but this is what got voted into power. All that the rest of us can do is hope to take things back in 2026. And that’s assuming that a true coup d’etat doesn’t take place in the interim.

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