Pam Bondi and Kash Patel are exactly the partners law-and-order district attorneys like me need at the Department of Justice to punish criminals and make our communities safer.
During her hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Ms. Bondi demonstrated why her confirmation as Attorney General of the United States would be a monumental victory for the American people. Despite bad-faith efforts from Democrat senators to smear Ms. Bondi as a puppet of President Donald Trump, she repeatedly affirmed her independence and commitment to upholding the Constitution.
Ms. Bondi’s record as Attorney General of Florida likewise proves why she is an excellent choice to lead the nation’s top law enforcement agency. Through productive partnerships with local police and federal authorities, she led successful efforts to reduce gang-related violence, shut down “pill mills,” and break up human trafficking rings, among a host of other initiatives.
This experience will prove vital as DOJ under Ms. Bondi works with state and local authorities like me to address the rampant crime plaguing our communities, from the fentanyl crisis to the violent foreign gangs that now have a presence in more than a dozen states, including my home state of Georgia and in Chattanooga, which borders my circuit. Having been on the other side of that intergovernmental relationship, she will understand how to leverage the resources of state and local officials to enforce the law.
In Ms. Bondi, I am confident that I have someone who will pick up the phone when I call. That has not been the case over the past four years. Instead of acting as a helpful partner in the pursuit of justice, the Biden DOJ has instead chosen to champion the legion of soft-on-crime prosecutors funded by the Soros network while weaponizing the department to settle political grudges.
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Nowhere was this more obvious than in the blatantly corrupt crusade to manufacture criminal charges against President Trump – a movement fueled by left-wing local prosecutors with an assist from the Biden DOJ. As hundreds of thousands of actual criminals flooded into our country, drug overdoses soared, and human trafficking became a multi-billion-dollar business, the Biden administration and their liberal DA allies remained fixated on abusing their power to target Democrats’ top political rival.
Of course, it wasn’t just Trump – the Federal Bureau of Investigation under Joe Biden also: labeled dozens of parents as domestic terrorists; infamously conducted a terrifying pre-dawn raid on the home of a father of seven for defending his son from an expletive-hurling pro-abortion activist; targeted
Unsurprisingly, the FBI has seen a steep decline in public confidence, with just 41 percent of Americans now saying they trust the agency. That number was 59 percent in 2014 and 57 percent in 2019.
That’s why Kash Patel’s nomination to lead the FBI is just as vital as Ms. Bondi’s nomination to be Attorney General. Biden’s tenure revealed in stark detail just how politicized the agency has become – and by extension how much it has failed to perform its core duty of protecting and defending the American people.
Democrats and the media have attempted to smear Mr. Patel as a “conspiracy theorist” for warning about the so-called “Deep State.” But there’s now no denying that there are indeed rogue bureaucrats at the FBI (and every other agency for that matter) determined to undermine a duly elected president in service of a personal partisan agenda, usurping the democratic will of the American people in the process.
I served with Mr. Patel in the national security community during the first Trump administration and know his commitment to rectifying this dangerous threat to our constitutional order and ensuring the politically neutral enforcement of the law. His promise to “overhaul the FBI” is a welcome and long-overdue opportunity to restore honor, integrity, and transparency to the agency.
The fact that the very individuals most responsible for politicizing the FBI are now the most strident voices in opposing Mr. Patel’s nomination to lead it is as clear a sign as any that he is the right man for the job. But if that weren’t enough, the National Sheriffs’ Association has also offered its endorsement of Mr. Patel – the first time the group has ever endorsed an FBI nominee.
More than just a matter of prestige, rooting out corruption and insubordination at the FBI is a matter of urgent national security. Hundreds of individuals on the agency’s terrorist watch list have been caught trying to enter the country since 2020 – which means many others on that list are undoubtedly among the more than 1.5 million “gotaways” under President Biden.
Like Ms. Bondi, Mr. Patel also has a sterling record as a prosecutor, putting murderers, rapists, and drug dealers behind bars. Other law-and-order DAs and I know that Mr. Patel is “one of us” and will provide the resources we need to do our jobs.
Pam Bondi and Kash Patel are the transformative leaders DOJ and the FBI desperately need to restore integrity, independence, and effectiveness to our nation's top law enforcement agencies. With their confirmation, local prosecutors will gain invaluable partners in our shared mission to keep our communities safe and uphold justice for all Americans.
Clayton Fuller is a former White House Fellow and currently serves as District Attorney for the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit in Northwest Georgia. You can follow him on X @clay4mainstreet.
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