Kash Patel and Trump's web of lawyers, lies, and money

Two Oath Keepers, one White House valet, and a former Pentagon aide share a lawyer connected to Trump. Are you with me so far? Read on.

Kash Patel has found himself in trouble this week for one thing:  his loyalty to the twice-impeached sexual abuser and grifter, Donald Trump.  The Washington Post reported last week that 11 Trump associates, campaign aides, allies and friends “have been convicted or pleaded guilty in recent years to various offenses, with their total sentences nearing 30 years of imprisonment.”  Patel, a lawyer and former aide to looned-out former California Representative Devin Nunes, also served in some mysterious capacity on Trump’s national security council, as the chief of staff to the Director of National Intelligence, and as chief of staff to Trump’s final Secretary of Defense, Christopher Miller.  Currently, Patel is on the board of the company that owns Trump’s Truth Social media platform, along with his former boss, Nunes, who is CEO of the company.  In the tradition of other aides, followers, partners, employees, and political associates of Donald Trump, Patel now finds himself where so many have gone before him:  in the crosshairs of the Department of Justice.

Trump had wanted to appoint Patel as a deputy director of the FBI and when that notion was shot down, as deputy director of the CIA, but that appointment also failed under pressure from within his own camp.  Patel, it seems, wasn’t very popular among other Trump sycophants.  Attorney General William Barr, for example, told White House Chief of staff Mark Meadows that Patel would become deputy director of the FBI “over my dead body.” 

Patel is what they used to call in the old U.S. Cavalry a horse-holder:  an enlisted aide who saddled and held onto the bridle of a cavalry officer’s horse as he prepared his gear and mounted.  They were a necessary part of the cavalry as constituted for deployment in battle.  In later years, after the Cavalry was disbanded, the term “horse-holder became a  pejorative used to describe junior officers who put themselves at the beck and call of senior officers, ever-seeking a chance to kiss their superiors’ asses and get promoted.  

Another apt word for the Patels of the political world, especially those around Donald Trump, is puppies.