If the Senate confirms Kash Patel to be the next director of the FBI, we could be bearing witness to a changed FBI that acts as internal security, akin to national political police—similar to the reputations accredited to Russia’s KGB or Hitler’s Gestapo.
Should he go unchecked, Patel may end up redesigning and using the FBI to violate First Amendment rights and target political opposition, thus infringing on the freedoms of those who speak against Donald Trump or his actions. From the rhetoric Trump and his allies have regularly used, I expect the upcoming president to use the FBI, or at least attempt to, to prosecute his naysayers. I believe Petel would fire any FBI personnel who oppose him and subsequently replace them with those who are more primed to fall in line. Petel has already identified nine former and present FBI employees as targets of investigation and possible prosecution.
I am concerned about how Patel could misuse the FBI to further Project 2025 and Donald Trump’s fascist agenda.
As a former agent of the FBI myself for 31 years—26 as a field investigator and five as a supervisor—I have witnessed plenty of the good things the FBI does, as well as the bad things that poorly supervised or misdirected agents did. I know the FBI mindset and understand how agents can be misused in their work.
I served in five FBI offices including in Washington, D.C., where I worked on the Watergate investigation.
L. Patrick Gray was the acting director of the FBI then. Gray resigned after destroying Watergate evidence against Nixon, who nominated him in the first place. In effect, Gray was acting as Nixon’s head of the internal security police of the United States. We cannot let that happen again. As American citizens, we have to oppose confirmation of Patel as FBI director.
As an FBI agent, I worked closely with U.S. attorneys and FBI officials to ensure we did not violate constitutional guidelines in our investigations. We closely followed FBI policy and protocols, which are designed to protect the rights of all individuals under investigation. We have to ensure that continues.
If Donald Trump follows through on the many statements he has made in recent years, then represents the greatest threat to our American freedoms, and he will use Patel to enforce those threats.
Make your voice heard. Convince your representatives to keep constitutional freedoms at the core of the FBI’s operations.
This MFP Voices essay does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.