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Here is the full story on FBI chief Christopher Wray announcing that he will resign:
Wray received a standing ovation following his remarks before a standing-room-only crowd at FBI headquarters and some in the audience cried, according to an FBI official who was not authorized to discuss the private gathering by name and spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press.
Trump applauded the news on social media, calling it “a great day for America as it will end the Weaponization of what has become known as the United States Department of Injustice” and saying that Patel’s confirmation will begin “the process of Making the FBI Great Again.”
If you’re just joining us, FBI Director Christopher Wray told bureau workers Wednesday that he plans to resign at the end of President Joe Biden’s term in January, an announcement that came a week and a half after President-elect Donald Trump said he would nominate loyalist Kash Patel for the job.
Wray said at a town hall meeting that he would be stepping down “after weeks of careful thought,” roughly three years short of the completion of a 10-year term during which he tried to keep the FBI out of politics even as the bureau found itself entangled in a string of explosive investigations, including two that led to separate indictments of Trump last year as well as inquiries into Biden and his son.
“My goal is to keep the focus on our mission – the indispensable work you’re doing on behalf of the American people every day,” Wray told agency employees. “In my view, this is the best way to avoid dragging the bureau deeper into the fray, while reinforcing the values and principles that are so important to how we do our work.”
The intended resignation was not unexpected considering that Trump had settled on Patel to be director and had repeatedly aired his ire at Wray, whom he appointed during his first term. But his departure is nonetheless a reflection of how Trump’s norm-breaking style has reshaped Washington, with the president-elect yet again flouting tradition by moving to replace an FBI director well before his term was up and Wray resigning to avert a collision with the incoming administration.
“It should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway – this is not easy for me,” Wray said. “I love this place, I love our mission, and I love our people – but my focus is, and always has been, on us and doing what’s right for the FBI.”
Americans spend more time living with diseases than people from other countries, according to a new study.
On Wednesday, the American Medical Association published its latest findings, revealing that Americans live with diseases for an average of 12.4 years. Mental and substance-use disorders, as well as musculoskeletal diseases, are main contributors to the years lived with disability in the US, per the study.
Women in the US exhibited a 2.6-year higher so-called healthspan-lifespan gap (representing the number of years spent sick) than men, increasing from 12.2 to 13.7 years or 32% beyond the global mean for women.
The latest overall healthspan-lifespan gap in the US marks an increase from 10.9 years in 2000 to 12.4 years in 2024, resulting in a 29% higher gap than the global mean.
Trump expected to be named Time 'Person of the Year' – report
In case you missed it: Donald Trump will ring the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday on the same day he is expected to be named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year”, according to two people familiar with the selection and plans.
A spokesperson for Time declined to comment on the selection.
The Republican president-elect built his fortune as a New York real estate investor before turning to politics. During his first term as president, he measured his success in part by the strength of the stock market, which has so far welcomed his re-election.
The ringing of the bell signifies the start or closing of the trading day at the world’s largest stock exchange, and is considered an honor. The act has historically been reserved for company executives celebrating an initial public offering or other major corporate milestones, but celebrities and politicians like Ronald Reagan, Nelson Mandela and Arnold Schwarzenegger have also rung it.
Politico first reported the news of Trump’s selection and plans.
A US appeals court on Wednesday ruled that Nasdaq could not impose rules requiring companies listed on the exchange to have women and minority directors on their boards or explain why they do not.
The New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit court of appeals on a 9-8 vote sided with two conservative advocacy groups in finding that the rules approved by the US Securities and Exchange Commission ran afoul of federal securities law.
US, Israel oppose ceasefire in UN vote overwhelmingly supporting resolution
The UN General Assembly overwhelmingly approved resolutions Wednesday demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and backing the UN agency for Palestinian refugees that Israel has moved to ban.
The votes in the 193-nation world body were 158-9, with 13 abstentions to demand a ceasefire now and 159-9 with 11 abstentions in support of the agency known as UNRWA. The votes culminated two days of speeches overwhelmingly calling for an end to the 14-month war between Israel and the militant Hamas group.
Israel and its close ally, the United States, were in a tiny minority speaking and voting against the resolutions.
Summary
The FBI director, Christopher Wray, will resign once Donald Trump takes office.
Trump appointed Wray to a 10-year term leading the federal law enforcement agency in 2017, but has since criticized him for the FBI’s search of his Mar-a-Lago resort for classified documents and other actions the president-elect says are proof the bureau has been “weaponized” against him. After winning the presidential election, Trump nominated former national security official Kash Patel to serve as FBI director, who has so far received a positive reception from Senate Republicans.
Here’s a recap of today’s developments:
Progressive thinktank Public Citizen called on Wray to rethink his decision to resign as FBI director. “If Donald Trump fires him, so be it. But Wray should not aid and abet the effort to weaponize the FBI by bowing out in advance,” the group’s co-president Robert Weissman, said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Patel was on Capitol Hill making a case for his candidacy, but his ex-boss, Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, says he’s unqualified to lead the bureau because he inflated his résumé and was known for exaggerations and fibs.
Independent senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who became notorious for opposing major parts of Joe Biden’s legislative agenda during the first half of his term, have prevented Democrats from appointing a majority on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
Nancy Mace, a Republican congresswoman who introduced a bill to bar the first-ever openly transgender House lawmaker from using the bathroom that corresponds with her gender identity, said she was attacked. Capitol police confirmed the arrest of an Illinois man on a charge of assaulting a public official.
Conservative activists have launched a pressure campaign, which includes threats to launch primaries, against lawmakers who are less than enthusiastic in their support Trump’s cabinet picks.
John Fetterman has become the first Democratic senator to join Trump’s X-like Truth Social. In his first post, he called both the president-elect’s hush-money case and the prosecution of Hunter Biden “bullshit”.
The House of Representatives passed a $895bn defense policy bill on Wednesday, despite the inclusion of a policy – pushed by Republican speaker Mike Johnson – that prohibits gender-affirming care for the transgender children of service members.
Updated
Veteran prosecutors warn that if the Senate confirms Bondi and Patel, they could create a climate for violence against Trump’s foes.
“I’m more worried about threats, harassment and political violence than I am in the success of baseless investigations,” said Barbara McQuade, a former top prosecutor in eastern Michigan. “Bondi and Patel will be unable to get bogus charges past a grand jury, a judge or a trial jury, but someone who believes this deep state nonsense could decide to take matters into their own hands.”
Looking ahead, Bromwich stressed too that if Patel and Bondi pursued baseless inquiries, they could boomerang.
“Lawyers and investigators who willingly participate in the pursuit of a revenge and retribution agenda risk losing not only the respect of their peers but their future livelihoods. In particular, lawyers who initiate investigations and pursue prosecutions without factual predicates risk being the subject of ethics complaints and the loss of their law licenses.”
Updated
Why Trump’s FBI and DoJ picks scare civil liberties experts
Kash Patel and Pam Bondi, who Trump has nominated to run the FBI and Department of Justice, respectively, have been unswerving loyalists to Trump for years, promoting Trump’s false claims that his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden was due to fraud.
Ex-justice department prosecutors worry that Trump’s two picks will exact retribution against Trump foes, undermining the independence of both the justice department and the FBI and damaging the rule of law.
“The rhetoric of Bondi and Patel is incredibly harmful to public trust in our government institutions and the reputations of individual public servants,” said Barbara McQuade, a former top prosecutor in eastern Michigan who now teaches law at the University of Michigan. “There’s absolutely no public evidence of wrongdoing to ‘rig’ the 2020 election.
“Pledges to prosecute the prosecutors and investigate the investigators based on the complete absence of evidence is reckless because even if investigations do not materialize, unhinged members of the public will hear these bombastic accusations as a call to action.”
Similarly, the former justice department inspector general Michael Bromwich said: “Bondi and Patel are election deniers, in the face of the adjudication of more than 60 cases rejecting claims of election fraud in 2020. This is alarming.
“Members of the Senate judiciary committee have a duty to explore the basis of those often-repeated beliefs. If Bondi and Patel maintain that the election was stolen, they either are liars – and lying under oath is a crime – or they are so detached from reality that they shouldn’t be trusted to run a two-person convenience store, much less the DoJ and the FBI.”
The former federal prosecutor and Columbia law professor Daniel Richman likens Trump’s nominees to his heavy reliance in his real estate career on Roy Cohn, the late mafia lawyer and chief counsel to rightwing senator Joseph McCarthy.
“Still casting about for a Roy Cohn replacement, Trump has gone to people like Bondi and Patel whose loyalty comes from their utter dependence on his favor,” Richman said.
Read the full story here:
Updated
The House of Representatives passed a $895bn defense policy bill on Wednesday, despite the inclusion of a policy – pushed by Republican speaker Mike Johnson – that prohibits gender-affirming care for the transgender children of service members.
The tally was 281-140 in favor of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which will now head to the US Senate for approval.
Lawmakers from both parties lauded certain provisions of the bill, which authorizes pay increases for junior troops and designates funds for housing and child care for troops, as well as funding new military technologies and strengthening US defenses against China.
But Johnson’s last-minute push to include a provision on healthcare for transgender children, after months of compromise and negotiations between lawmakers from both parties, has thrown off the bill’s bipartisan support.
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Wray urges FBI employees to keep 'following the facts wherever they lead, no matter who likes it'
In his parting message, Christopher Wray told employees at the FBI that if they stick to the core values of the agency, that the agency would “just fine”:
If we stick together and stick to our core values – as individuals committed to doing the right thing, the right way – then as a team we’ll be doing that at scale.
And ultimately, we’ll be just fine.
Our great strength is each other – that we’re all committed to the same mission, and to accomplishing it the same way – the right way, every time. That’s what the rule of law is all about.
Unfortunately, all too often in today’s world, people’s standard for whether something was fair or objective – a Supreme Court decision, a verdict in a high-profile case, the investigation we brought, or the one we didn’t bring – is whether they liked the result, whether their side won or lost.
But that’s not how independence and objectivity work. We’re not on any one side. We’re on the American people’s side – the Constitution’s side. And no matter what’s happening out there, in here we’ve got to stay committed to doing our work the right way every time – with rigor and integrity.
That means following the facts wherever they lead, no matter who likes it, or doesn’t – because there’s always someone who doesn’t like it. It means conducting investigations without fear or favor. And it means not pursuing investigations when the predication is not there.
Now let me be clear: We’re accountable to the American people, and we welcome the tough questions. But in terms of how we do the work, we’ve got to maintain our independence and objectivity – staying above partisanship and politics.
Updated
Montana supreme court blocks ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors
Montana’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors has been temporarily blocked by the state supreme court on grounds that it is likely to violate the right to privacy enshrined in the state’s constitution.
The top court in Montana sided on Wednesday with an earlier district court decision blocking SB 99, the ban introduced last year by the Republican-controlled state legislature. The decision will allow under-18 transgender girls and boys to continue gender-affirming medical treatment pending a full trial.
Montana’s supreme court justices agreed with the district court judge Jason Marks who put a stop to the ban in September 2023, just days before it came into effect. Marks ruled: “The legislature has no interest … to justify its interference with an individual’s fundamental privacy right to obtain a particular lawful medical procedure from a healthcare provider.”
The decision to allow gender-affirming treatment to continue for the time being was greeted with delight by the young plaintiffs and advocacy groups. Zooey Zephyr, a Democrat who is the first out trans member of the state legislature, said on social media: “Montana has a constitutional right to privacy, including in our healthcare decisions. Today our constitution continues to protect individuals from government overreach.”
Zephyr was propelled into the national limelight in the spring of 2023 when she spoke passionately against the ban in the Montana house. She was banished from the chamber by the Republican leadership prompting large protests.
Montana is among at least 26 states that have introduced bans on gender-affirming medical care for minors. By contrast, 15 states have enacted protections for under-18s seeking treatment.
The state’s supreme court ruling comes at a critical moment in the nationwide battle over medical care for trans youth. Earlier this month the US supreme court heard oral arguments in a landmark case brought by the ACLU and others against Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming hormonal therapies for trans minors.
Read the full story here:
Updated
Merrick Garland praises Wray for his service
Attorney general Merrick Garland praised Wray for his service.
“The director of the FBI is responsible for protecting the independence of the FBI. from inappropriate influence in its criminal investigations. That independence is central to preserving the rule of law and to protecting the freedoms we as Americans hold dear,” Garland said in a statement.
Updated
Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, has been on Capitol Hill promoting his candidacy.
“We look forward to a very smooth transition at the FBI and I’ll be ready to go on day one,” he told reporters.
It is unclear the level of support Patel can expect from Republicans, who have so far seemed positive about the nomination. Still, Patel is an extreme and controversial pick. The firebrand loyalist has said he sees the department he would lead as part of a “deep state” and pledged to shut its Washington headquarters.
Updated
The Democratic chair of the Senate select committee on intelligence, Mark Warner, had a measured response to the resignation of FBI chief Christopher Wray.
“As we look ahead to the process of confirming a new leader for the FBI, it is essential that the next director be someone who shares director Wray’s commitment to fairness, transparency, and the rule of law, so that the men and women of the FBI can continue their vital work safeguarding national security, fighting crime, and ensuring justice for all,” he said.
Updated
Manchin and Sinema prevent Democrats from creating majority on powerful labor board
Independent senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who became notorious for opposing major parts of Joe Biden’s legislative agenda during the first half of his term, have prevented Democrats from appointing a majority on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
Manchin and Sinema, both former Democrats who left the party this year and in 2022, respectively, voted against reappointing Lauren McFerran to a five-year term on the NLRB, which enforces labor laws and oversees unionization efforts. Together with opposition from Senate Republicans, McFerran’s nomination failed, preventing the Democrats from having a majority of their appointees on the board through 2026. Instead, her seat will become open next week, and is likely to be filled by an appointee picked by Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate’s incoming Republican majority.
Manchin and Sinema’s votes were a parting shot to Democrats, after both opted to retire rather than seek another term in the Senate. Biden’s allies are rushing to approve as many federal judges and other appointees as possible before the GOP takes the majority in January, with an eye towards frustrating Trump’s ability to enact the sorts of radical policies he campaigned on implementing.
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Trump calls FBI director-nominee Patel 'most qualified' candidate to lead bureau in history
In his post cheering Christopher Wray’s plan to depart as FBI director, Donald Trump also sang the praises of Kash Patel, his nominee to lead the bureau:
Kash Patel is the most qualified Nominee to lead the FBI in the Agency’s History, and is committed to helping ensure that Law, Order, and Justice will be brought back to our Country again, and soon. As everyone knows, I have great respect for the rank-and-file of the FBI, and they have great respect for me. They want to see these changes every bit as much as I do but, more importantly, the American People are demanding a strong, but fair, System of Justice. We want our FBI back, and that will now happen. I look forward to Kash Patel’s confirmation, so that the process of Making the FBI Great Again can begin.
Patel has promised to make radical changes to the bureau, including dramatically downsizing its Washington headquarters, and opening investigations of journalists and others who have been critical of Trump. Republican senators have thus far signaled support for his nomination.
Here’s more about Patel’s ideas, and the concerns that have been raised about them:
Trump says Wray's resignation will 'end the weaponization' of justice department
Christopher Wray’s plans to step down as FBI director once he takes office will “end the weaponization” of federal law enforcement, Donald Trump said.
Referring to the justice department as “the United States Department of Injustice”, Trump said of Wray, the outgoing FBI director whom he appointed in 2017: “I just don’t know what happened to him.” The president-elect has repeatedly claimed the bureau has become politicized, after FBI agents searched his Mar-a-Lago resort and found classified documents. He’s also criticized the justice department under Joe Biden, whose attorney general, Merrick Garland, appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to lead Trump’s prosecution on charges of hiding classified documents, and attempting to overturn the 2020 election.
Here’s more from Trump:
The resignation of Christopher Wray is a great day for America as it will end the Weaponization of what has become known as the United States Department of Injustice. I just don’t know what happened to him. We will now restore the Rule of Law for all Americans. Under the leadership of Christopher Wray, the FBI illegally raided my home, without cause, worked diligently on illegally impeaching and indicting me, and has done everything else to interfere with the success and future of America. They have used their vast powers to threaten and destroy many innocent Americans, some of which will never be able to recover from what has been done to them.
Updated
The Senate judiciary committee’s outgoing Democratic chair, Dick Durbin, had this to say about Christopher Wray’s announcement that he will step down as FBI director once Donald Trump takes office:
The FBI is critical to our nation’s security and our families’ safety. It will soon embark on a perilous new era with serious questions about its future. I want to thank Director Wray for his service to our nation, and all the men and women of the FBI for their continued efforts to protect our security and liberty.
The committee is set to consider Donald Trump nominee Kash Patel’s qualifications for the FBI director job – but when it do so sometime next year, it’ll be Trump-aligned Republicans in the majority, not the Democrats.
Updated
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the US was “looking at the question” of whether there was evidence of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces committing genocide in Darfur when asked by Democratic congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove this afternoon at a House foreign affairs committee.
Kamlager-Dove said a genocide determination was “overdue” as she pressed Blinken on what was causing the delay. Blinken said: “In terms of atrocities, war crimes, we’ve been making determinations already; we’re looking at the question of genocide. Whether we complete that review in the time we have left, I can’t tell you.”
Blinken also said that Sudan, which has been at war since April 2023, was the “worst humanitarian situation in the world by orders of magnitude”, adding that modest progress had been made on getting aid into the country.
Updated
Progressive thinktank Public Citizen called on Christopher Wray to rethink his decision to resign as FBI director once Joe Biden’s presidency ends.
“FBI director Christopher Wray should stay. He should rethink his decision to resign and finish out his 10-year term,” the group’s co-president Robert Weissman, said in a statement.
He continued:
It is especially important that Wray stays in office in light of Donald Trump’s announced intention to appoint Kash Patel to the position. Patel is not only unqualified, he is a danger to America. Patel has already announced his intention to weaponize the FBI against Trump’s perceived enemies – threatening a return to the agency’s most sinister history, or worse.
If Donald Trump fires him, so be it. But Wray should not aid and abet the effort to weaponize the FBI by bowing out in advance.
Updated
Christopher Wray announced his resignation plans in a message to FBI employees today, Reuters reports.
“After weeks of careful thought, I’ve decided the right thing for the bureau is for me to serve until the end of the current administration in January and then step down,” Wray said, according to a statement from the bureau seen by Reuters.
FBI Director Wray will resign at end of Biden presidency
The FBI director, Christopher Wray, will resign once Donald Trump takes office, Reuters reports.
Trump appointed Wray to a 10-year term leading the federal law enforcement agency in 2017, but has since criticized him for the FBI’s search of his Mar-a-Lago resort for classified documents and other actions the president-elect says are proof the bureau has been “weaponized” against him. After winning the presidential election, Trump nominated former national security official Kash Patel to serve as FBI director, who has so far received a positive reception from Senate Republicans.
Patel’s nomination was a clear warning to Wray that if he did not resign, he would be fired.
Updated
Time magazine to name Trump 'person of the year' – report
Donald Trump will be Time magazine’s person of the year this year, picking up the accolade for a second time, Politico reports.
Trump previously won the honor in 2016, when he won his first term as president. Politico reports he beat out Kamala Harris, Elon Musk, Benjamin Netanyahu and others for the title, and will celebrate by ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange tomorrow.
Here’s more, from Politico:
Last year, pop superstar Taylor Swift won the honor. To mark the magazine cover reveal, Time CEO Jessica Sibley rang the opening bell.
Trump was also named Time Person of the Year in 2016 after he won the presidential election. He joins 13 other U.S. presidents who have received the recognition, including President Joe Biden.
A short list for Time Person of the Year was announced Monday on NBC’s “The Today Show” and included Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris, Kate Middleton, Elon Musk and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Time already announced NBA star Caitlin Clark as Athlete of the Year, Elton John as Icon of the Year and Lisa Su of Advanced Micro Devices as CEO of the Year.
A spokesperson for Time said the magazine “does not comment on its annual choice for Person of the Year prior to publication. This year’s choice will be announced tomorrow morning, Dec. 12, on Time.com.”
Updated
Witnesses dispute Republican congresswoman's allegation of assault by activist – report
Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace yesterday said she had been assaulted by an activist who supports transgender rights, but witnesses to the incident say no such attack occurred, and they are puzzled as to why police made an arrest.
The Washington Post and the Imprint report that the alleged attack took place at an anniversary celebration for a child welfare law, which Mace attended. The man who police would later go on to arrest on a charge of assaulting a government official, James McIntyre, is a former foster child who now advocates for their rights. Far from attacking Mace, he went up and shook her hand and spoke to her, the reports say.
From the Imprint:
At tonight’s event, Mace, who co-chairs Congress’ bipartisan foster care caucus, joined a group of legislators at a House reception celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Foster Care Independence Act of 1999. The act created the John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for Successful Transition to Adulthood, legislation that significantly expanded federal support for foster youth who leave the system after turning 18 without a permanent home.
In her remarks at the House event, Rep. Mace told the crowd that while she was not an adoptee or former foster youth, she had been a victim of sexual abuse as a child. She called the dozens of advocates and foster youth in attendance — McIntyre among them — “the cream of the crop.”
“I look forward to working with each and every one of you. God bless you, I will be praying for you,” Mace said.
As she finished her comments and moved to leave the room, McIntyre approached her near an exit door, witnesses said.
Elliott Hinkle, a former foster youth and advocate for LGBTQ rights, said McIntyre shook her hand, and made a comment about how many transgender youth are in foster care, adding: “They need your support.”
“From what I saw, it was a normal handshake and interaction that I would expect any legislator to expect from anyone as a constituent,” said Hinkle, a consultant who has advised the federal government on issues affecting youth in foster care.
Later, Hinkle said, one of Mace’s aides returned to the reception and asked McIntyre his name and whether he would repeat what he had told the legislator. Two other people who witnessed the interaction confirmed that description of the brief episode.
McIntyre left the celebration, but he was later summoned back to the Rayburn Building by police.
Updated
The day so far
Donald Trump’s nominees for powerful cabinet positions are back on Capitol hill to make their cases to the Republican senators who will decide if they get the job. Pete Hegseth is making the rounds, after picking up apparent support from a senator who had grown wary of the defense secretary nominee following the emergence of a sexual assault allegation and stories of excessive drinking and poor treatment of women. Nominee for FBI director Kash Patel is also on the Hill, but his ex-boss, Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, says he’s unqualified to lead the bureau because he inflated his résumé and was known for exaggerations and fibs.
Here’s what else has been happening:
Nancy Mace, a Republican congresswoman who introduced a bill to bar the first-ever openly transgender House lawmaker from using the bathroom that corresponds with her gender identity, said she was attacked. Capitol police confirmed the arrest of an Illinois man on a charge of assaulting a public official.
Conservative activists have launched a pressure campaign, which includes threats to launch primaries, against lawmakers who are less than enthusiastic in their support Trump’s cabinet picks.
John Fetterman has become the first Democratic senator to join Trump’s X-like Truth Social. In his first post, he called both the president-elect’s hush-money case and the prosecution of Hunter Biden “bullshit”.
Updated
Former national security adviser John Bolton says Kash Patel is unqualified to lead FBI
Former national security adviser John Bolton said Kash Patel, whom he supervised during his time in Donald Trump’s first administration, is the wrong choice to lead the FBI.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Bolton says Patel inflated his résumé and was prone to exaggerations or outright fibs that jeopardized national security:
Rep Devin Nunes pushed Mr Patel for the National Security Council staff after Republicans lost the House in 2018. Notwithstanding Mr Patel’s lack of policy credentials, the president ordered him hired. NSC staff has long been divided into directorates responsible for different policy areas. Charles Kupperman, my deputy, and I placed Mr. Patel in the International Organizations Directorate, which had a vacancy.
Some five months later, we moved him to fill an opening in the Counter-Terrorism Directorate. In neither case was he in charge of a directorate during my tenure as national security adviser or thereafter, as he contends in his memoir and elsewhere. He reported to senior directors in both cases and had defined responsibilities. His puffery was characteristic of the résumé inflation we had detected when Mr Trump pressed him on us. We found he had exaggerated his role in cases he worked on as a Justice Department lawyer before joining Mr Nunes’s committee staff. Given the sensitivity of the NSC’s responsibilities, problems of credibility or reliability would ordinarily disqualify any job applicant.
He proved to be less interested in his assigned duties than in worming his way into Mr Trump’s presence. Fiona Hill, NSC senior director for Europe, testified to Congress during Mr Trump’s first impeachment hearings that Mr Patel, at that time assigned to the International Organizations Directorate, participated in a May 2019 Oval Office meeting on Ukraine, and that he had engaged in various other Ukraine-related activities. Whatever he did on Ukraine while an NSC staffer, at least during my tenure, was unrestrained freelancing. (He has denied any communication with Mr Trump on Ukraine.)
He also said Patel nearly compromised a hostage rescue mission by falsely stating that approval for US troops to enter a country had been granted:
According to former Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s memoir, during an October 2020 hostage-rescue mission, Mr Patel, then in the Counter-Terrorism directorate, misinformed other officials that a key airspace-transit clearance had been granted. In fact, Mr Esper writes, the clearance hadn’t been obtained, threatening the operation’s success, and his team “suspected Patel made the approval story up” but wasn’t certain. Typically, Mr Patel’s version of this episode in his memoir denies any error – though, ironically, it also boasts of his acting beyond the authority of NSC staffers. Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also knew the day’s details, including about the clearance issue. He hasn’t spoken publicly about the incident. He should.
Bolton, who was national security adviser from 2018 to 2019 and has since broken with Trump, said the president-elect likely nominated Patel simply because he would do whatever he is told – a dangerous qualification for a FBI director:
Too many of Mr Trump’s personnel selections evidence his assiduous search for personal fealty, not loyalty to the Constitution. Kash Patel’s nomination as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation squarely fits this pattern.
Updated
Also expected on Capitol Hill today is Kash Patel, a former defense official whom Donald Trump nominated to lead the FBI.
Republican senator Josh Hawley of Missouri said he would be meeting with Patel this morning.
Yesterday, Patel met with several Republican senators, who generally praised him, despite his plans to radically change the FBI and potentially use it to go after Trump’s opponents.
After their meeting yesterday, Senator Thom Tillis said on X:
Kash Patel is the real deal. President Trump campaigned on the promise to enforce our laws equally and fairly and restore the integrity of the FBI. I look forward to supporting @Kash_Patel ’s confirmation.
Senator Tommy Tuberville expressed a similar sentiment:
Just met with the next FBI Director, @Kash_Patel. He will support our law enforcement officers and get the FBI back to working for the PEOPLE again.
Updated
The outgoing Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, has spoken out against isolationism, arguing that staying out of wars doesn’t work.
“The cost of deterrence is considerably less than the cost of war,” he told Financial Times.
His position on the issue is notably contrary to that of others within his party, particularly president-elect Donald Trump and vice president-elect JD Vance, who have spoken against spending more money to support Ukraine against Russia.
Updated
John Fetterman of Pennsylvania seems to be making history in a strange way by becoming the first Democratic senator to join Truth Social, Donald Trump’s far-right social media site.
In his first post, Fetterman wrote in support of bipartisanship:
My first truth 👇
The Trump hush money and Hunter Biden cases were both bullshit, and pardons are appropriate.
Weaponizing the judiciary for blatant, partisan gain diminishes the collective faith in our institutions and sows further division.
Updated
Two years ago, Tulsi Gabbard left the Democratic party and called it an “an elitist cabal of warmongers who are driven by cowardly wokeness”.
Now, Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence can’t get a meeting with members of her old party. Real Clear Politics reports that Gabbard has so far failed to secure a meeting with any Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee, which will hold her confirmation hearing.
Republicans and Democrats alike are skeptical of Gabbard, who in the past has failed to condemn Bashar al-Assad, then president of Syria, and the atrocities carried out against his own people under his regime.
Updated
Also expected on Capitol Hill today is Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman who Donald Trump nominated for the role of director of national intelligence. The Guardian’s Andrew Roth reports that her connections to Syria’s now-former president Bashar al-Assad and other US adversaries have caused deep concern among the national security community:
In 2018, a Syrian dissident codenamed Caesar was set to testify before the House foreign affairs committee about the torture and summary executions that had become a signature of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal crackdown on opposition during Syria’s civil war.
It was not Caesar’s first time in Washington: the ex-military photographer had smuggled out 55,000 photographs and other evidence of life in Assad’s brutal detention facilities years earlier, and had campaigned anonymously to convince US lawmakers to pass tough sanctions on Assad’s network as punishment for his reign of terror.
But before that hearing, staffers on the committee, activists and Caesar himself suddenly became nervous: was it safe to hold the testimony in front of Tulsi Gabbard, the Hawaii representative on the committee who just a year earlier had traveled to Damascus of her own volition to meet with Assad?
Could she record Caesar’s voice, they asked, or potentially send a photograph of the secret witness back to the same contacts who had brokered her meeting with the Syrian president?
GOP congresswoman who targeted transgender lawmaker attacked on Capitol Hill
Nancy Mace, a Republican congresswoman who responded to the election of the first ever openly transgender member of Congress by proposing a bill to restrict her bathroom use, said she was attacked on Capitol Hill.
“I was physically accosted tonight on Capitol grounds over my fight to protect women. Capitol police have arrested him. All the violence and threats keep proving our point. Women deserve to be safe. Your threats will not stop my fight for women!” Mace wrote on X.
In a statement, US Capitol Police said James McIntyre, a 33-year-old from Illinois, was arrested yesterday in the Rayburn House Office Building, and faces a misdemeanor charge of assaulting a government official. The building was open to the public at the time, and McIntyre was screened before entering, the police force said.
“One new brace for my wrist and some ice for my arm and it’ll heal just fine,” Mace wrote on X after the assault, adding that “violence and threats on my life will only make me double down”.
Mace’s proposed bill would restrict Sarah McBride, a Delaware Democrat who will become the first openly transgender person in Congress when she is sworn in next month, from using a bathroom that corresponds to her gender identity. Here’s more:
Updated
Several Republican senators have said they plan to support Pete Hegseth to lead the defense department.
Here’s what John Cornyn of Texas wrote on X:
Great catching up with @PeteHegseth. As Secretary of Defense, he will disrupt the bureaucratic status quo, reestablish deterrence, and help restore American leadership on the world stage.
And fellow Texan Ted Cruz, in an interview with CNN:
I’ve met with Pete twice … If you look at his background, he’s a decorated combat veteran. He has spent virtually his entire adult life as a campion and advocate for the military, for veterans. And I think he has a very clear-eyed focus on moving the Department of Defense back to its core mission of number one, supporting the warfighter, and number two, being prepared and ready to defeat our enemies if necessary.
Updated
The Guardian’s Ben Makuch reports that experts in extremism in the US military have warned that confirming Pete Hegseth as defense secretary would make the problem worse:
Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s embattled choice for secretary of defense, will struggle to handle the serious problem of extremism in the US military due to his own far-right political views, experts in the subject have warned.
“I think it’s going to be an absolute disaster,” said Kristofer Goldsmith, an Iraq war veteran and the CEO of nonprofit watchdog Task Force Butler. “Pete Hegseth is a domestic extremist.”
One of president Joe Biden’s earliest policy initiatives was tackling extremism among government workers, including soldiers in the military.
Fresh off January 6, when scores of active duty or former US servicemen were caught participating in trying to overthrow the Capitol, current secretary of defense Loyd Austin issued a historic “stand-down order” in February 2021, demanding all servicemen in every branch of the military reflect on the issue of extremism.
Not long after that, the DoD rolled out expanded guidelines, a broad definition of extremism and extremist activities while in uniform, policing of soldiers’ social media accounts and new recruitment requirements. But Republicans, clearly sensing a campaign issue, began attacking the Pentagon’s working group and criticizing its counter-extremism activities as a recruitment killer.
“They gave it a good start, but the lack of backing for many efforts, and the failure to support the extremism working group left the effort rather bereft,” said Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE). “Just as the insurrection was downplayed by Republicans, so too has extremism in the military.”
Allies of Donald Trump have put pressure on Republican senators who have signaled skepticism of cabinet picks like Pete Hegseth.
Last week, when Republican senator Joni Ernst was sounding uneasy about the allegations of sexual assault and poor behavior circling around Hegseth, Charlie Kirk, the powerful conservative activist, wrote on X:
Here is Joni Ernst praising trans in the military. She says she wants a [transgender] fighting force. Maybe this is why she’s leading the charge against Hegseth? People in Iowa have a well-funded primary challenger ready against her. Her political career is in serious jeopardy.
Iowa attorney general and Trump ally Brenna Bird issued a veiled threat to Ernst in an op-ed published by Breitbart. While she did not say the senator’s name, Bird wrote:
In recent days, it’s become clear that D.C. politicians think they can ignore the voices of their constituents and entertain smears from the same outlets that have pushed out lies for years.
When voters select a president, they are selecting that president’s vision for a cabinet that will enact his agenda. On November 5, America voted for change, and for Washington to work for America – not the other way around.
Key GOP senator signals willingness to support Hegseth to lead Pentagon
Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host who Donald Trump nominated to lead the defense department, has faced allegations of sexual assault, excessive drinking and financial mismanagement.
While several Republican senators have nonetheless signaled support for him, his nomination’s fate is seen as resting with Joni Ernst, an Iowa senator who is an army veteran and survivor of sexual assault. The Republican initially signaled hesitation towards giving Hegseth her vote, but after meeting with him again on Monday, issued a statement that was more supportive. Here’s what Ernst said:
I appreciate Pete Hegseth’s responsiveness and respect for the process. Following our encouraging conversations, Pete committed to completing a full audit of the Pentagon and selecting a senior official who will uphold the roles and value of our servicemen and women — based on quality and standards, not quotas — and who will prioritize and strengthen my work to prevent sexual assault within the ranks. As I support Pete through this process, I look forward to a fair hearing based on truth, not anonymous sources.
Hegseth, meanwhile, has said he has no intention of pulling himself out of contention to lead the Pentagon, and both Trump and JD Vance have spoke up in support of his candidacy. Here’s more:
Gabbard, Hegseth head to the Capitol as Republican senators weigh controversial nominations
Good morning, US politics blog readers. It’s another big day for Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees on Capitol Hill, including two whose appointments have raised a substantial number of eyebrows. Senators are expected to meet with Tulsi Gabbard, the nominee for director of national intelligence whose positive comments about Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin are sure to be scrutinized, and Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary nominee who has been dogged by reports of excessive drinking and poor treatment of women, along with a sexual assault allegation. Also heading to the Hill are less-contentious picks like Treasury secretary nominee Scott Bessent, commerce secretary choice Howard Lutnick and John Ratcliffe, Trump’s pick to lead the CIA.
Trump’s cabinet confirmations got off to a rocky start when he selected congressman Matt Gaetz as attorney general, only for the nomination to go down in flames amid allegations of sexual misconduct. Hegseth has faced similar headwinds, but Trump and his allies have fought back, including with a pressure campaign against senators that appear skeptical of putting him in charge of the Pentagon. We’ll see what lawmakers have to say about their meetings today.
Here’s what else is going on:
Trump announced more nominations for ambassadorial and agency posts like night. Among those selected was Kimberly Guilfoyle, who had been engaged to his son Donald Trump Jr, as ambassador to Greece.
Joe and Jill Biden will convene the first-ever White House Conference on Women’s Health Research at 11.30am.
A federal judge blocked the Onion from buying conspiracy theory site InfoWars in the bankruptcy sale of its owner Alex Jones.
