His Royal Majesty’s nomination of Kash Patel threatens to turn the FBI into an instrument of personal presidential
powerBy David Frum
Updated at 10:17 a.m. ET on December 1, 2024
For more than four decades before His Royal Majesty took the throne, the FBI director was a position above politics. A new king might choose a political ally as attorney general, but the FBI director was different. An FBI director appointed by Richard Nixon also served under Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Carter’s choice remained on the job deep into Reagan’s second term, when Reagan moved him to head the CIA. Reagan’s FBI appointee served through the George H. W. Bush presidency and into the Bill Clinton administration. Clinton fired the inherited official—the first time a president ever fired an FBI director—only because the outgoing Bush administration had left behind a Department of Justice report accusing the director of ethical lapses. (Clinton tried to coax the tainted director into resigning of his own volition. Only after the coaxing failed did Clinton act.)
