I Don't Believe Kash Patel -- Benjamin Wittes

[erronis]

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-situation---i-don-t-believe-kash-patel

The FBI directors shows a “lack of candor” before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The FBI director earlier today made a series of claims before the committee. Let me be blunt: I don’t believe them.

I don’t believe Patel.

To be clear, I’m not accusing him of perjury. To do that requires knowing with a great deal more precision than I know precisely what the underlying reality is regarding the individual issues in question. It requires knowing more than I know about his state of mind when he testified as to those things. And it requires a careful analysis of the precise words that he spoke and their relation to that underlying truth. I don’t want to pretend to know more than I do about any of those things.

But I do know that Patel made a series of statements that don’t comport with anything about my understanding about what’s going on at the FBI. Let me enumerate those statements.

. . .

(Following is a long series of reasons why Patel is not believed. These seem like reasonable suspicions and should be addressed by the play-acting FBI Director.)

[elleng]

1. Not for a second.

[Bettie]

2. Does anyone believe him?

I mean, Republicans all know he's lying every time he opens his mouth....they just like the lies, so they pretend it's true.

[The Roux Comes First]

3. I Appreciate the Caution in Place Here

But I think in the real world, those of us not completely snowed by propaganda and/or terrified of the revenge of the masses realize from prior Patel on the record that he is not savvy enough to properly parse his words, guard his remarkably thin skin, or control his leviathan temper.

[chouchou]

4. If you bet that my dog would not eat a large bowl of delicious, chopped steak..when nobody is not in the house..

....you can guess the odds that Kash Patel is being forthright.

[surfered]

5. You cannot believe any member of this administration.

[Wiz Imp]

6. I'm not sure why the writer is not accusing Patel of perjury

because it's blatantly clear that he has committed perjury repeatedly.

[KS Toronado]

11. Like Epstein was his only customer for his underage girls

I guess asking $22,500 for a used underage model was too much for anybody to pay.

[Marcuse]

7. Lying made them what they are today.

[erronis]

8. I ain't no psych analyst but these seem right.

I do know as a kid that I had an almost instinctive need to tell a lie when truth would have worked better. But it took me a few years to learn that fact. Some may be born with a knowledge that a lie is not right, some learn over time, and some - like the current prevaricator-in-chief will never learn.

[ancianita]

9. Thank you. I read this. It's a VERY long list of what Wittes doesn't believe.

More from his statement:

"...I disagree with the policy views he articulated on any number of issues. But policy disagreements are legitimate. And inflated arrest statistics and overblown claims of crime reductions are—however distasteful in a supposedly apolitical FBI director—the stuff of normal politics.

Flagrantly misleading a congressional committee about one’s basic management of the agency one heads, by contrast, is something very different.

Why exactly Patel thinks he can get away with this I’m not quite sure. As he noted several times, a bunch of the personnel matters he was asked about are issues in current litigation, and that litigation will produce discovery, in which Patel or others will have to testify and opposing litigants will get access to documents. It will also produce court opinions. And when judges confront the question of whose account of these firings is accurate, I venture the guess that Patel’s account will not fare well.

While simpering Republicans keen to overlook everything may not care when the director is revealed to be a liar, Democratic senators and representatives certainly will care—and Patel is likely to have to be FBI director under Democratic leadership of one house of Congress or another at some point.

Federal judges will care too, and FBI agents have to testify in federal courts literally every day.

Most importantly, rank and file FBI agents will care; each and every one of them knows that they are useless to the bureau the moment they show what the bureau calls a “lack of candor” in an official context.
Each and every one of them knows that they would be fired if they responded to official questions as Patel did.

There’s one other thing Patel needs to reckon with: There are a lot of people—like myself—who don’t just not believe him. They know whether he’s lying. There are people in the bureau. There are people outside the bureau...."

[erronis]

10. Thank you so much for this rejoinder. I was going to post almost the same segment.

But our restrictions on copying material made me hesitant. These points are actually the real gist.

I wanted to also add that Patel talks about how much better the agents in the field are feeling now than before (paraphrasing from memory). How the F would he know how they were feeling before since he wasn't there (obviously), and if he is relying on the few remaining ass-wipers to give their opinions ---- we know what color their wipes will be.

[GoCubsGo]

12. Nobody in their right mind believes Kashyap Patel.

Or, anyone else who is associated with him.