Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is the last person who should be critiquing Kash Patel as FBI Director, argued political commentator Katie Pavlich.
McCabe on CNN Saturday claimed President-elect Donald Trump’s pick of Patel as FBI Director was a “terrible development” because he was “unqualified” and likely to abuse his power.
But Pavlich on Sunday broke down McCabe’s well-documented corruption during his tenure at the FBI and subsequent firing from the bureau in 2018.
“First, let’s talk about former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe,” Pavlich said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“He was fired. He was fired for leaking information to the media. The Inspector General of the Department of Justice referred him for criminal prosecution. He is one of the top people who has destroyed the reputation of the FBI over the past ten years. There’s been no accountability for him.”
🔥@KatiePavlich scorches corrupt Andrew McCabe over his bashing of Kash Patel:
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) December 1, 2024
"He is one of the top people who has been has destroyed the reputation of the FBI…They’re conflating retribution with accountability."
100% correct. This is brutal:
"First, let's talk about former… pic.twitter.com/DMTn0cqFg4
Pavlich went on to describe Patel’s extensive qualifications and role in exposing the FBI’s illegal wiretapping of the Trump campaign in 2016.
“And he calls the current nominee ‘unqualified.’ Let’s take a look at Kash Patel’s qualifications. He was the Deputy Director of National Intelligence, overseeing 17 intelligence agencies. He was in the Department of Justice under Barack Obama prosecuting ISIS. During the Trump administration the first time around, he was in charge of taking out ISIS cells in the Middle East, which the administration did successfully,” Pavlich explained.
“On the domestic side, he’s the one who wrote that memo exposing the fact the FBI was illegally wiretapping, issuing FISA warrants, against American citizens who worked for a political campaign, the first Trump campaign. He has gone through and exposed all the civil liberty violations the FBI has engaged in with again, no accountability over the past ten years. This started at the IRS under Barack Obama, by the way. It wasn’t just in the FBI.”
“So people like Andrew McCabe are trying to claim this is somehow retribution. They’re conflating retribution with accountability,” she continued.
“And Kash Patel not only has the experience on foreign policy, but also on domestic policy as well, with all of his work rooting out this corruption used for political purposes against political enemies inside the intelligence communities and on Capitol Hill,” she added.
The memo Pavlich referred to is known as the “Nunes Memo,” which Patel worked on along with former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) while he was a staffer on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in 2017 and 2018.
The memo detailed how the Justice Department illegally obtained a warrant to surveil former Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page as part of its corrupt “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into the Russia collusion hoax masterminded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and Obama.