Edwin Eisendrath is the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Alderman who hosts It's The Democracy Stupid on Lincoln Square and a weekly radio show on WCPT820AM/ Heartland Signal. Subscribe to his Substack.
Kash Patel had a week. In Senate hearings, he had to admit to lowering the recruitment and hiring standards for the FBI. One of those standards? Bestiality. He dropped the prohibition on hiring candidates who committed bestiality.
Now, frankly, I’m not sure if I care that someone wants to have sex with an animal. But Patel’s response when asked, was that he changed the standard to protect the victims of bestiality. So, I guess, in this unthinkable scenario, the sheep is the perpetrator, and the guy with his pants unzipped is the victim? That’s the head of the FBI under Donald Trump.
We learned this week that Patel ordered the agency to no longer cooperate on criminal investigations with Canada because he didn’t like a Canadian broadcaster’s description of 9/11 as hijackers and attackers rather than as terrorists. If he wants more terrorist attacks, one way to get them is to stop working with the country that shares our longest border.
This week, Patel went on FOX and claimed he’s only taken four days off since becoming the director. Um, the whole country saw him drinking at the Olympics, flying off with his girlfriend on government funded jets, and going to sporting events and concerts. We’ve seen the Atlantic reporting on his antics, including that agents allegedly have had to rouse him from his bed to get him to work.
So, maybe he doesn’t technically take days off, but he sure should have. What would happen to you if you just said you were at work when you were actually at party or snorkeling around a coral reef thousands of miles from the office?
Kash Patel has his job precisely because he is so bad at it.
Donald Trump does not want the law enforced. He wants the tools of law enforcement for other purposes. If you are a friend of the Trump family, there’s no law you need to fear. From his day one pardons of the January 6th felons, to the development of entire pardon industry, Donald Trump has made it clear, as far as the federal government is concerned, he is the law.
Kash Patel: The Drunk in the Poodle Room
There’s a moment in every Trump-era career arc, and I mean every one, where the walls close in, the flop sweat starts, and the doomed apparatchik begins thrashing around like a catfish on a hot dock.
You want to get to know my family, you want to be an insider? Don junior is having a wedding … it sure would be nice if he didn’t have to pay for it. That was the message Umar Kremlev heard. He’s the Russian oligarch who showed up with an open checkbook and in the back row of the photos of the wedding party on the beach.
Kash Patel isn’t about to look into that. Never mind that just two years ago, he was indignant at anything that hinted at impropriety.
“Hunter Biden is guilty of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Hunter Biden was shown to have been in bed with criminals from Ukraine and China to lobby the US government through the laundering of money that Hunter Biden received and leveraging his relationship with his dad.”
Kash managed to say “Hunter Biden” three times in two sentences, but his outrage turns out to be fake.
Jared Kushner is taking Saudi cash while negotiating America’s future in the middle east. Kash can’t say his name even once.
The nation’s top cop is looking the other way when the first family’s money laundering business is there for anyone to see. That’s what all the crypto is for. The SEC under Trump dismissed several high-profile crypto related enforcement actions. And now Trump’s own administration has given conditional approval to Trump’s own crypto company to become a bank.
But for Kash … nothing to see here. And no eyes to see it anyway, because the government gutted the Justice Department’s kleptocracy and sanctions enforcement units. Trump said his administration would not enforce the foreign corrupt practices act. (And Republicans in Congress rolled over and said something that translates to: “We didn’t mean to pass that law, sir. We’re so sorry, sir. Thank you, sir, for ignoring it.”)
What are Kash Patel hires, those who meet his now-lower standards, doing instead having looking into any of this? Well, Patel ordered his officers to find Trump’s name in the Epstein files, and to plan the boss’ protection.
All this lawlessness leads me to the Kennedy Center. Never mind its function as a living memorial to a former president. Never mind its function in the preservation and encouragement of performing arts in America. Just think about all that marble.
As reported, Donald Trump is threatening to tear it down. Never mind that he violated his fiduciary duties as head of the Kennedy Center board. You watch. Trump wants to say his ballroom and his arch came in under budget. And the way to make that happen? Steal the marble that clads the Kennedy Center and reuse it for his own vanity projects.
That’s just theft, but Trump needn’t worry. Kash Patel is there to tell us it’s all about the sheep.
The Trumpification of the FBI
A 2020 paper published in the American Journal of Political Science studied who works for secret police organizations under authoritarian governments. The authors, Christian Gläßel and Adam Scharpf, argued that those willing to do the dirty work for non-democratic regimes were not typically sadists or psychopaths, but simply …
You can’t make this stuff up! Only in trump’s America can this be happening. Wake up America!!! VOTE BLUE!!!