The Patel nomination inverts the rationalizations of GOP senators

There’s not much question that the primary reason President-elect Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Kash Patel to run the FBI is that Patel is a fervent champion of Trump’s FBI-hostile worldview.

When Trump was scrambling to undermine the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election that brought him to the White House, he seized on a congressional memo — primarily written by Patel — that attacked a foreign-surveillance warrant application targeting someone who had worked for Trump’s campaign. The FBI took the unusual step of publicly disputing the memo and its claims, assertions that a report from the Justice Department inspector general would later suggest were often exaggerated.