Free Press

Jacob Sullum | 12.5.2024 5:35 PM

Kash Patel, President-elect Donald Trump's pick to replace Christopher Wray as director of the FBI, has threatened to "come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens" and "helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections." What exactly does he mean by that? Given the position that Patel will hold if he is confirmed by the Senate, the answer could have serious implications not only for the anti-Trump journalists he has in mind but also for freedom of the press generally.

Patel, a former defense attorney and federal prosecutor who held national security positions during Trump's first term, made those remarks during a December 2023 interview with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon. He was responding to this question from Bannon:

Do you feel confident that you will be able to deliver the goods, that we can have serious prosecutions and accountability? And I want the Morning Joe producers that watch us and all the producers that watch us [to understand] this is not just rhetoric. We're absolutely dead serious. You cannot have a constitutional republic and allow what these deep-staters have done to the country. The deep state—the administrative state, the fourth branch of government, never mentioned in the Constitution—is going to be taken apart brick by brick. And the people that did these evil deeds will be held accountable and prosecuted—criminal prosecutions….Do you believe you can deliver the goods on this in a pretty short order, the first couple of months, so we can get rolling on prosecutions?

Absolutely, Patel said: "We will go out and find the conspirators—not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we're gonna come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're gonna come after you. Whether it's criminally or civilly, we'll figure that out. But yeah, we're putting all of you on notice. And Steve, this is why they hate us. This is why we're tyrannical. This is why we're dictators. Because we're actually gonna use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have."

What "crimes" did Patel have in mind? Lying about people might, depending upon the circumstances, amount to defamation, but it is not a crime, and any civil remedy for it would depend on lawsuits by the affected individuals, not the Justice Department. Rigging elections, if it involves the sort of fraud that Trump claims denied him his rightful victory in 2020, is a crime. But Trump never presented any evidence to substantiate his stolen-election fantasy, which in any case did not involve........

© Reason.com