Politics
Video: How Kash Patel, Trump’s F.B.I. Pick, Plans to Reshape the Bureau
new video loaded: How Kash Patel, Trump’s F.B.I. Pick, Plans to Reshape the Bureau
transcript
transcript
How Kash Patel, Trump’s F.B.I. Pick, Plans to Reshape the Bureau
Donald Trump’s pick to lead the F.B.I. has called for firing the agency’s top officials, shutting down its Washington headquarters and has vowed to investigate the president-elect’s political adversaries.
-
“I’d shut down the F.B.I. Hoover building on Day 1, and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state. And I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals. Go be cops. You’re cops, go be cops.” “A man who’s also been with me just about from the beginning. He’s tough, he’s smart. He loves our country and he is a warrior, Kash Patel.” “We are blessed by God to have Donald Trump be our juggernaut of justice, to be our leader, to be our continued warrior in the arena. I am going to go on a government gangsters manhunt in Washington, D.C., for our great president. Who’s coming with me? And we have to take out not just the government gangsters, but the mainstream media, the ones that perpetuated the fake news narratives. We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you.”
Recent episodes in 2024 Elections
Politics
Special Counsel Jack Smith required to submit Trump findings to DOJ before leaving. What happens next?
Special Counsel Jack Smith is required to submit to the Justice Department a report summarizing the results of his dual investigations into President-elect Trump — an action that will put a formal end to his two-year probe and one that will punt all next steps, including whether to make public the results of the report, to outgoing Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Smith — a longtime prosecutor who worked in The Hague and at the Justice Department, including as chief of the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section — was tapped by Garland in 2022 to investigate both the alleged effort by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as well as Trump’s keeping of allegedly classified documents at his Florida residence.
Justice Department regulations mandate that a special counsel submit to the attorney general a confidential report detailing the findings of their investigation after it is concluded, and explaining any prosecution or declination decisions they reached as a result of the probe.
In Smith’s case, the prosecution decision is immaterial, given Trump’s status as president-elect and longstanding Justice Department policy against bringing criminal charges against a sitting president.
TIM WALZ ADMITS HE WAS SURPRISED BY ELECTION DEFEAT: ‘THOUGHT THE COUNTRY WAS READY’
But he still must outline the investigation and its findings in his report to Garland, who will then decide whether to share it publicly.
Notably, Garland has opted to release the reports from two other special counsels whose investigations concluded during his tenure — publishing both the summary reports submitted by John Durham, who was tapped by then-Attorney General Bill Barr in 2019 to review law enforcement and intelligence gathering during the 2016 presidential campaign and the origins of the Trump-Russia probe, as well as the final report from Robert Hur, a former U.S. attorney whom he tapped in 2023 to investigate President Biden’s handling of classified documents.
These reports were made public at the same time as they were shared with members of Congress. But it is unclear whether Garland will move to do the same with Smith’s findings, given their sensitivity and Trump’s status as president-elect.
The Justice Department declined to respond to Fox News’s request for comment on the status of the report or whether Garland plans to share it publicly.
Smith has long pointed to Dec. 2 as the deadline for his team to submit their final status reports to the federal judges in the D.C. and the 11th Circuit Courts summarizing the results of their investigations into the cases against Trump, which were dismissed without prejudice late last month.
Under Justice Department regulations, a special counsel is required at the conclusion of their work to “provide the Attorney General with a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions reached.”
TRUMP’S AG PICK HAS ‘HISTORY OF CONSENSUS BUILDING’
Garland has the authority to decide whether to make Smith’s report public before Biden leaves office, or whether to punt it to the incoming Trump administration.
It is unclear how he will act, however, and the Justice Department did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for more information on the matter.
Smith had indicted Trump in D.C. earlier this year on charges stemming from the former president’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election outcome, and his team also brought federal charges against Trump in Florida in the classified documents case.
Trump, for his part, had railed against the special counsel investigation as a politically motivated “witch hunt” and vowed during his presidential campaign to fire Smith “within two seconds,” if elected. Smith, for his part, is expected to resign before Trump’s inauguration, and his team of prosecutors has moved in recent weeks to wind down their cases against Trump.
‘IT’S A SETBACK’: DEMOCRATS CRITICIZE BIDEN OVER HUNTER PARDON
Late last month, Smith filed motions to vacate deadlines in both cases against Trump following his election, citing an Office of Legal Counsel memo that states it is against Department of Justice policy to investigate a sitting president for federal criminal charges and is a violation of the separation of powers doctrine.
They have also cited a July Supreme Court decision that widened the criteria for immunity for sitting presidents.
Smith’s team stressed in their most recent court filing that their motion to vacate the case is based solely on the Office of Legal Counsel policy, and not on the merits of the investigation itself.
“That prohibition is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Government stands fully behind,” Smith’s office wrote in their motion to dismiss the election interference case.
“The Government’s position on the merits of the defendant’s prosecution has not changed. But the circumstances have,” they added.
Politics
Column: The backlash on the backlash against the Hunter Biden pardon
Days later I’m still seething that President Biden gave a “full and unconditional” pardon to his troublesome surviving son.
And yet, reluctantly, I have to say that I’d have done the same thing — minus some of the self-pitying and misleading passages in Biden’s official statement.
Opinion Columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
First the bad stuff. With the pardon of Hunter Biden, who’d pleaded guilty to tax evasion and was separately convicted of lying about his drug addiction on a gun application, Joe Biden put his family ahead of his fealty to the animating pledge of his presidency: to restore governing norms and the rule of law after both were shredded by his predecessor, Donald Trump. Biden, who’s otherwise been stingy in using the Constitution’s mighty presidential power, by his nepotistic act adds to the pile of rancid pardons amassed by modern presidents of both parties, including Trump’s first-term grants to a scofflaw family member, sordid allies, donors and war criminals.
In Biden’s statement justifying his stay-out-of-jail-free card for Hunter, he echoed Trump’s tirades about a weaponized justice system. That alone contributes to many Americans’ loss of faith in their own institutions and gives Trump cover for his false claims of victimhood. Though Hunter Biden’s name does explain why he faced gun and tax charges for which most Americans wouldn’t be similarly prosecuted — as even Republicans have acknowledged — there is a flip side: Hunter traded on that name to peddle his purported influence globally. Despite years of probing by the feds and House Republicans, however, he faced no charges for those dealings.
The biggest reason to oppose the pardon is this: Joe Biden lied to us.
The man who likes to say “I give you my word as a Biden” broke it here, betraying himself and us. He didn’t have to make the “no pardon” promise, or allow his spokeswoman to do so as recently as last month. He could have dodged the question.
Instead, in June, then-candidate Biden said he would “abide by the jury decision” that had just convicted Hunter for the gun lie. Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre assured reporters the following month that a pardon was “still a no. It will be a no.” And last month, after Trump’s election and in advance of Hunter Biden’s sentencing scheduled for Dec. 16, Jean-Pierre underscored: “Our answer stands, which is no.”
So Joe deserves the bipartisan backlash he’s getting. But how about some backlash to the backlash? For me, one consideration trumps all others, pun intended, to excuse the president: The deplorable Trump is about to reclaim power.
Had any other Republican in the 2024 mix been elected — say, Nikki Haley or Tim Scott, even Ron DeSanctimonious — there’d be no justification for absolving Hunter. But those Republicans weren’t elected, Trump was, and he’s the vengeful former and future president who vowed last year to “appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family.”
Given such explicit threats, and Trump’s first-term record of trying to politicize the Justice Department and FBI, why should Biden leave his son to Trump’s nonexistent mercies? Especially once Trump showed by his picks of willing enforcers for his new administration just how serious he is about retribution.
The president-elect’s first choice for attorney general, attack dog and former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, fell under the weight of his own legal woes. Then Trump turned to former Florida Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, a longtime loyalist who has explicitly called for revenge against those deemed responsible for Trump’s legal travails: “The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted. … The investigators will be investigated.”
And on Saturday, Trump tapped MAGA henchman Kash Patel to be FBI director. Patel’s credentials? Last year he produced a literal enemies list for Trump and separately said he’d prosecute Hunter Biden as a foreign agent, never mind past investigations that produced nothing.
As former federal prosecutor and law professor Joyce Vance wrote recently, by way of justifying the pardon, Trump as president could have made Hunter Biden’s life in federal prison “extremely difficult.”
And a Trumpian Justice Department could have redoubled efforts to charge him for foreign dealings going back to his father’s time as veep, as Patel has suggested. The pardon preempts that sort of actual witch hunt.
President Biden has time to make up for the all but unpardonable pardon. He could endorse an effort, even if it’s a pipe dream, to amend the Constitution to repeal or at least reform presidents’ unchecked pardon power.
Better yet — because it’s achievable by Jan. 20 — Biden could put aides to work on a long list of pardons for obscure Americans truly wronged by the justice system and deserving mercy. This pattern of presidents sullying the office as they leave it with clemency for the connected should end, even if the pardon power lives on.
@jackiekcalmes
Politics
Pete Hegseth says he had ‘substantive conversation’ with Joni Ernst as Trump signals support
President-elect Trump expressed public support for embattled defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth Friday, and the nominee said he had a “substantive conversation” with Sen. Joni Ernst.
Hegseth, a former National Guard officer, has been meeting with Republican senators this week to rally support as allegations of sexual misconduct and excessive drinking have surfaced. He has denied any wrongdoing.
Ernst has not committed to voting for Hegseth.
“Looks like Pete is doing well now,” Trump told Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” Friday. “I mean, people were a little bit concerned. He’s a young guy with a tremendous track record, actually. Went to Princeton, went to Harvard. He was a good student at both, but he loves the military. And I think people are starting to see it. So, we’ll be working on his nomination along with a lot of others.”
PETE HEGSETH SAYS HE WILL BE ‘STANDING RIGHT HERE IN THIS FIGHT’ AFTER MEETING WITH SENATORS
Trump confirmed he still has confidence in Hegseth.
“He’s a very smart guy,” Trump said. “I’ve known him through Fox, but I’ve known him for a long time. I mean, he’s basically a military guy. I mean, every time I talk to him, all he wants to talk about is the military.”
Trump said that while he didn’t have assurances from senators that his nomination would be confirmed, he believes he will get it through.
“I’ve had a lot of senators calling me up saying he’s fantastic,” Trump said.
Asked by Welker about the allegations of excessive drinking, Trump said, “Well, I’ve spoken to people that know him very well, and they say he does not have a drinking problem.”
INCOMING WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY ADDRESSES TRUMP’S SUPPORT OF HEGSETH
Trump also supported Hegseth on Truth Social on Friday, writing, “Pete Hegseth is doing very well. His support is strong and deep. He was a great student – Princeton/Harvard educated – with a Military state of mind. He will be a fantastic, high energy, Secretary of Defense, one who leads with charisma and skill. Pete is a WINNER, and there is nothing that can be done to change that.”
Hegseth wrote on his X account Friday: “I just had another substantive conversation with Senator Ernst, I appreciate her sincere commitment to defense policy, and I look forward to meeting with her again next week.”
Ernst also called their meeting “constructive” on her account, adding that the two plan to meet again next week.
“Pete Hegseth and I will continue our constructive conversations as we move forward together in this process. We plan to meet again next week. At a minimum, we agree that he deserves the opportunity to lay out his vision for our warfighters at a fair hearing,” she said.
Vice President-elect JD Vance also told reporters Friday that Hegseth has the incoming administration’s full support and won’t face a “sham hearing before the American media.”
TRUMP FLOATS DESANTIS AS POTENTIAL DEFENSE SECRETARY REPLACEMENT IF HEGSETH FALTERS
“Pete Hegseth is going to get his hearing before the Senate Armed Forces Committee, not a sham hearing before the American media,” Vance told reporters while in North Carolina. “We believe Pete Hegseth is the right guy to lead the Department of Defense. That’s why Trump nominated him. We’re not abandoning this nomination.
“I fully support Pete. I think Pete’s going to get confirmed, and we are completely behind him. I have talked to Joni [Ernst]. I’ve talked to a number of my colleagues about this nomination and about other nominations. All I’m asking is people actually allow the Senate nomination process to work. We do not determine important government officials based on anonymous sourcing from the American media.”
-
Entertainment1 week ago
Review: A tense household becomes a metaphor for Iran's divisions in 'The Seed of the Sacred Fig'
-
Technology1 week ago
US agriculture industry tests artificial intelligence: 'A lot of potential'
-
Technology6 days ago
Elon Musk targets OpenAI’s for-profit transition in a new filing
-
Sports7 days ago
One Black Friday 2024 free-agent deal for every MLB team
-
News5 days ago
Rassemblement National’s Jordan Bardella threatens to bring down French government
-
Technology6 days ago
9 ways scammers can use your phone number to try to trick you
-
World6 days ago
Georgian PM praises country's protest crackdown despite US condemnation
-
World3 days ago
Freedom is permanent for Missourian described as the longest-held wrongly incarcerated woman in US