Summary
New FBI Director Kash Patel, a Trump ally with no FBI experience, has made unusual security requests, showing distrust of his own agency.
He asked for a private security detail instead of FBI protection and sought a direct secure line to the Oval Office, bypassing the attorney general.
FBI directors since J. Edgar Hoover have maintained independence from the White House, but Patel is closely aligned with Trump.
Known for promoting conspiracy theories, he has also been accused of leading an FBI purge.
The FBI dismissed reports on his requests as “false leaks or distractions.”
The problem is that the Executive Branch is the one that enforces laws, and they have the authority to ignore laws they don’t want to enforce. Discretion is a fundamental part of law enforcement, it is why you can get a warning for speeding instead of a ticket every time, their discretion ability wasn’t codified. That is why generally federal law enforcement like the FBI operates independently even though they’re under the Executive, so they can enforce laws and judicial decisions without interference. Interfering should trigger check and balances from the Legislative branch, and impeachment.
The system was never designed with the possibility of a takeover of all three branches simultaneously as a possibility. That just wasn’t a thing they thought was likely to happen. But the system was also designed at a time when only white landowners could vote, and part of their societal expectation was to be educated, critical thinkers that were up to date, and active with politics. So those voting actually knew what was going on, and were educated to look at the various outcomes, even with media bias of the time.
As we’ve expanded voting rights, we never adjusted the system to account for uneducated voters or an increase in propaganda and outright lying from media outlets in any way. On top of that we’ve artificially limited the expansion of the House of Representatives so it no longer operates as designed. It was designed to represent the people via population, but the limit of 435 means that instead of it being representative of population, there are members representing a couple hundred thousand people and members representing millions, yet they have the same single vote. The House has become a pseudo-Senate, and is no longer capable of doing its job correctly because of it.