CLAIM: The mainstream media and Democrats have asserted that President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for director of the FBI, Kash Patel, has an “enemies list.”
VERDICT: FALSE. While Patel’s book lists “Members of the Executive Branch Deep State,” it is not an “enemies list” and the words “enemies list” is absent and not mentioned. It is an appendix of names for a book about bad government actors.
Outlets such as the New York Times and the New Republic have claimed that Patel “has an enemies list” and that President Joe Biden “should pardon everyone on it.”
In an opinion article from the New York Times, titled “Trump’s F.B.I. Pick Has an Enemies List. Biden Should Pardon Everyone on It,” Michelle Goldberg wrote that in Patel’s book, Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy, Patel “lists” 60 names of people “in a useful alphabetized appendix.”
WATCH — “They Have Weaponized Justice” Trump’s FBI Director Pick Kash Patel Rails Against the Deep State:
The article notes that Patel’s book “purports to show how government employees who defied Trump constitute a shadowy cabal that is ‘the most dangerous threat to our democracy.’”
Some names listed include former House Speaker Paul Ryan, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, former Trump administration official and The View co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Patel’s 2023 book, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” purports to show how government employees who defied Trump constitute a shadowy cabal that is “the most dangerous threat to our democracy.” The “deep state,” in Patel’s telling, is “as treacherous and evil as the villains portrayed in books and movies.” Virtually every investigation of Trump and his allies, Patel suggests, is part of a monstrous plot against “the people’s president.” The book strongly implies that Jan. 6, “the insurrection that never was,” was encouraged by “deep state” agitators and then used as a pretext to persecute patriotic Trump supporters. In a blurb on the book jacket, Trump wrote, “We will use this blueprint to help us take back the White House and remove these gangsters from all of government!”
Who are these gangsters? Patel lists 60 of them in a useful alphabetized appendix. It is not, as he acknowledges, exhaustive, since he limits himself to the executive branch, leaving out “other corrupt actors of the first order” like Senator-elect Adam Schiff, the former Republican House speaker Paul Ryan and “the entire fake news mafia press corps.” His catalog of the “deep state” includes some of Patel’s bureacratic foes from when he served in Trump’s first administration, like Bill Barr, who as attorney general said that Trump could make Patel the deputy F.B.I. director only “over my dead body,” and Wray, the man Patel would replace.
Patel also lists both the current secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, and Trump’s secretary of defense Mark Esper. Cassidy Hutchinson, the brave young former aide to Mark Meadows who testified before the Jan. 6 committee, is on the list, as is Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump staff member who often criticizes her old boss on “The View.” Naturally, Biden, Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton are on it as well.
An article from the New Republic titled “Kash Patel’s Biggest Obstacle Could Be His Own Enemies List,” also claimed that Patel had composed a so-called “enemies list” of members of the “deep state.”
The article adds that Patel “may have already ruined his own plans to prosecute any of those people.”
While Patel’s book has an “Appendix B,” which includes names such as former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI agent Lisa Page, it is not a list of Patel’s enemies.
Appendix B of Patel’s book states:
This list only includes current and former Executive Branch officials and is not exhaustive. It does not, for example, include other corrupt actors of the first order such as Congressmen Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, members of Fusion GPS or Perkins Coie, Christopher Steele, Paul Ryan, the entire fake news mafia press corps, etc. Alphabetical by last name.
Despite Patel not using the words “enemies list” in the appendix list of names, others such as Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA) have also referred to the list of names as an “enemies list.”
“By choosing Kash Patel as his FBI Director, Trump has made it clear that he is more focused on settling personal scores than on protecting the American people or upholding the rule of law,” Boyle said in a press release. “Patel has openly published an ‘enemies list’ in his book, naming individuals he and Trump plan to investigate and prosecute—targeting those who stood up to Trump’s lies, abuses of power, and baseless attempts to overturn the 2020 election. This is no hypothetical threat.”
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