About a week into his second term, Donald Trump’s revenge tour took an unsettling turn when the president started pulling security details from a variety of former officials, including former White House national security adviser John Bolton, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former special envoy to Iran Brian Hook and Dr. Anthony Fauci — apparently out of spite.
Asked by a reporter if he’d feel partially responsible if something awful were to happen to any of these former officials, Trump said he would not, adding, “Certainly, I would not take responsibility.”
Soon after, Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Tom Cotton of Arkansas publicly urged the president to rethink his approach.
He did not rethink his approach.
Last month, as his revenge tour continued, Trump also pulled the security detail for his former Defense secretary, Mark Esper. This week, as NBC News reported, the list grew:
President Donald Trump said Monday that he is terminating Secret Service protection for his predecessor’s two adult children: Hunter and Ashley Biden. ‘Please be advised that, effective immediately, Hunter Biden will no longer receive Secret Service protection,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social. He added that Ashley Biden also ‘will be taken off the list.’
Oddly enough, these developments unfolded with remarkable speed. Roughly three hours before the Republican announced his decision by way of his social media platform, someone asked the president at a press Q&A, “There were 18 Secret Service agents protecting Hunter Biden in South Africa this weekend. Who’s paying for that, and do you plan to revoke his Secret Service protections?”
Trump, who apparently hadn’t heard anything about this, thanked the person for bringing this to his attention and vowed to look into the matter “this afternoon.”
Evidently, he meant it.
For the record, there is no modern precedent for an American president effectively wielding security details as a political tool, stripping protections from those he deems unworthy. It’s one of the many ways Trump is breaking new ground.
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FBI Director Kash Patel’s tenure hasn’t quite reached the one-month mark yet, but the conspiracy theorist and partisan operative is already off to a difficult start.
In recent weeks, Patel has misstated key elements of the FBI’s recent work. He reportedly confused intelligence and counterintelligence. He said he planned to spend a lot of time in Las Vegas, where he’s been living. He ordered officials to relocate 1,500 employees from Washington, D.C., and when told the bureau didn’t have the resources for such a restructuring, he reportedly told his subordinates to simply figure out a way to execute his directive.
But perhaps most importantly, the highly controversial new FBI director has taken steps to break down the firewalls that used to exist between his office and the White House. NBC News reported last week that Patel went so far as to ask about creating a possible hotline that would facilitate direct communication between him and Donald Trump.
And now Patel will have a likeminded partner at the bureau’s headquarters. The New York Times reported on right-wing provocateur Dan Bongino declaring on his podcast late last week that he wouldn’t be “some partisan” as he joins the FBI as its new deputy director.
His arrival on Monday as the F.B.I.’s second in command will test that promise, cementing a major shift at the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, where he joins its director, Kash Patel, in overseeing a bureau of about 38,000 people. It puts two staunch Trump loyalists in charge of an agency long known for its tradition of independence. Collectively, they have the least leadership experience of any pair overseeing the F.B.I. since its founding more than a century ago.
At this point, some readers might wonder why Bongino only arrived at the bureau this week. If the president appointed the conservative media personality to the position nearly a month ago, and Bongino didn’t require Senate confirmation, why didn’t he get to work sooner?
As it turns out, Bongino delayed his arrival at the FBI to fulfill contractual obligations with advertisers who sponsored his podcast.
Time will tell how Bongino, who’s never worked at the bureau in any capacity, is received, but NBC News reported last month that current and former FBI officials “expressed shock and dismay” after Trump selected the right-wing podcaster — and ardent FBI critic — to help run the bureau’s day-to-day operations.
As we discussed soon after, the disconcert was understandable. The podcaster has condemned the FBI as “irredeemably corrupt” and called for mass firings within the bureau. Bongino, an unabashed election denier, is even on record falsely accusing the FBI of playing a role in instigating the Jan. 6 attack.
Just as notably, he’s been equally disdainful of Americans who dare to disagree him. “My entire life right now is about owning the libs,” Bongino has said. “That’s it. The libs, because they have shown themselves … to be pure, unadulterated evil.”
The New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg added in a recent column, “When a New York jury found Donald Trump guilty on 34 felony counts last year, the conservative podcaster Dan Bongino made a veiled threat on social media. ‘The irony about this for the scumbag commie libs, is that the cold civil war they’re pushing for will end really badly for them,’ he wrote. Liberals, said Bongino, had been playing at revolution, and would now get a taste of the real thing. ‘They’re not ready for what comes next.’”
What comes next will soon come into focus, as the least-experienced FBI leadership team in the history of American law enforcement gets to work.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
