Was the FBI Raid on a Washington Post Reporter’s Home an Act of Retribution?

Investigators “assisted” Hannah Natanson in applying her right index finger to a Post-owned MacBook Pro, accessing all its data.

In 2022, Kash Patel, now the director of the FBI, published The Plot Against the King, the first in his series of illustrated children’s books. In The Plot and its two sequels, which draw on the stolen-2020-election conspiracy theory and the Trump-Russia probe, Patel appears as a wizard in a pointy blue hat (“Kash the Distinguished Discoverer”) who helps “King Donald” battle a series of foes who seek to usurp his throne. These include “Hillary Queenton,” “Baron Von Biden,” “Comma-la-la-la,” and “the heralds,” Patel’s name for the press, who spread rumors and lies about King Donald being a cheater. The heralds hold trumpets labeled “NYT,” “CNN,” and “The Post.” “Don’t just trust the person with the loudest trumpet,” Patel urges readers at one point.

It’s easy to laugh at Patel’s books, which are marketed as “a fantastical retelling of the terrible true story.” But they also capture something of the Trump administration’s alarming desire for retribution, which Patel is intent on weaponizing the FBI to achieve. Patel, who is forty-six, rose rapidly through the ranks during Donald Trump’s first term in a variety of national security roles, distinguished less by his competence than by his unswerving loyalty to the president. As he said on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast in 2023, “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 you all on notice.”