There are certain blacklists it’s probably better to be on than to be left off of — and one of them is definitely John Bolton’s.
If there are swampier Beltway swamp creatures than the Bush 43 and Trump official — who left both administrations under what can best be described as inauspicious terms — it’d be hard to find one. Of the 194 other recognized countries that aren’t the United States in this world, there are 194 that John Bolton feels it’s Washington’s job to meddle in, and usually with unsurprisingly bad results.
He’s also not particularly great at home, where he became a professional NeverTrumper after this worldview clashed with the president’s and he left the Trump 45 administration to become one of those air-quotes “Republicans” news outlets invite on to discuss the perfidies of not just Trump but any Washington outsider having a say in D.C. circles.
So, when he said that Trump’s FBI director nominee, Kash Patel, should be voted down 100-0 by the Senate, that was practically an endorsement to these ears. It was even more so to the eyes when Bolton decided to take to the pages of The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday to declare: “Kash Patel Doesn’t Belong at the FBI.”
Patel, who previously worked for House Intelligence Committee Chair Rep. Devin Nunes before entering the White House as a member of the National Security Council, has an extensive background in counterterrorism and Justice Department legal work.
However, Bolton’s problem is that, according to the column, he displays “personal fealty” to Trump, “not loyalty to the Constitution.”
Strike the second part of that thought, and you begin to see the problem: John Bolton’s “personal fealty” has always been to himself and his ideology, and he has an innate suspicion of anyone who doesn’t share it.
Bolton has already used the oldest trick in the book, which is the “Trumper guy is authoritarian” slur; Bolton already compared him to a Soviet secret police officer and said, “The Senate should reject this nomination 100-0.”
That didn’t work, so he expounded on this thought at greater length with a bit less feverous language — still to virtually no great effect.
Will Kash Patel be confirmed?
Yes: 100% (458 Votes)
No: 0% (1 Votes)
First, Bolton talked about his time with Patel at the NSC, from which we are supposed to assume that he’s talking from a place of dispassionate employee evaluation and not ideological fervor. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t convince.
“Rep. Devin Nunes pushed Mr. Patel for the National Security Council staff after Republicans lost the House in 2018. Notwithstanding Mr. Patel’s lack of policy credentials, the president ordered him hired,” Bolton said, saying that Patel held two roles within the NSC.
“In neither case was he in charge of a directorate during my tenure as national security adviser or thereafter, as he contends in his memoir and elsewhere. He reported to senior directors in both cases and had defined responsibilities,” he said.
“His puffery was characteristic of the résumé inflation we had detected when Mr. Trump pressed him on us. We found he had exaggerated his role in cases he worked on as a Justice Department lawyer before joining Mr. Nunes’s committee staff. Given the sensitivity of the NSC’s responsibilities, problems of credibility or reliability would ordinarily disqualify any job applicant.”
Now, just to be clear, our arguments against Patel so far are 1) no loyalty to the Constitution or the law and 2) “puffery.”
Consider that this is coming from John Bolton, a man who — despite being an enemy of Donald Trump — said Jan. 6 didn’t equal a coup because “as somebody who has helped plan coups d’état, not here, but, you know, other places, it takes a lot of work.”
Jake Tapper: “One doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup.”
John Bolton: “I disagree with that. As somebody who has helped plan coup d’etat, not here, but other places, it takes a lot of work.” pic.twitter.com/REyqh3KtHi
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) July 12, 2022
I call for summary judgement, dear reader.
Bolton later said that, a month before he resigned, he was called into a meeting in the Oval Office with the president and two other White House officials, the subject of which involved giving Patel a role as an “administration enforcer of presidential loyalty.”
The other two “strongly objected to any such role, whether in the NSC or the counsel’s office, and the issue disappeared. I resigned in September 2019.”
Other stories from Bolton’s piece involve similar swamp creatures from the Trump 45 years, including Fiona Hill and Olivia Troye, none of which are particularly damnable. He also puts snippets of speech from Patel in the worst possible light, glossing over context.
“Mr. Patel has frequently called for investigations of journalists, comments he has since tried to walk back. He has been accused of seeking to declassify sensitive information for political rather than legitimate national-security reasons,” Bolton said.
“During Mr. Trump’s first term, both Attorney General William Barr and Central Intelligence Agency Director Gina Haspel threatened to resign if Mr. Patel was forced on them as deputy FBI or CIA director, respectively.”
Again, this is coming from Mr. “That Wasn’t a Coup, And I Know Because I Planned Coups” guy. Do draw your own conclusions about where John Bolton’s idea of where the reach of unelected Washington bureaucrats extends. I assure you, it’s far beyond a few tossed-off comments about investigating journalists.
“I regret I didn’t fully discern Mr. Patel’s threat immediately,” Bolton concluded. “But we are now all fairly warned. Senators won’t escape history’s judgment if they vote to confirm him.”
He is right on that last part. They’re voting to drain the swampiest part of the officialdom swamp — an environment that John Bolton has called home for most of his professional political life. That’s why he’s on the former national security advisor’s blacklist. And that’s also why it’s a great place to be — and proof Trump’s plan is working.
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