'Why me?' Ex-Mike Pence adviser attacks Kash Patel then cries victim when met with defamation legal notice

Establishmentarians struggling with the likelihood of having little to no representation in the incoming administration have spent weeks attacking several of President-elect Donald Trump's picks to helm federal agencies of consequence.

Although Pete Hegseth, Trump's pick to run the Pentagon, has taken an inordinate amount of abuse, former National Security Council official Kash Patel has similarly become a top target for champions of the status quo, including Olivia Troye, a middling intelligence official in the George W. Bush administration who later served as an adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence.

In conversation with identitarian MSNBC host Joy Reid this week, Troye viciously attacked Patel. Although accustomed — like most in the liberal media — to hurling verbal bombs without fear of personal consequence, the former Pence adviser was promptly met with a legal notice. Troye responded by playing the victim and bemoaning a potential state of things where talking heads might be answerable for their accusations.

Shot

Troye, an ardent critic of Trump who defended censorship before Congress and endorsed Kamala Harris, told Reid Monday that nameless unelected officials in Washington, D.C., believe Patel is dangerous.

"I worked with Kash Patel in the White House. I was Vice President Mike Pence's counterterrorism adviser so I had to coordinate with Kash a lot. Kash Patel is a delusional liar. Let me just be very clear about that," said Troye. "And he would lie about intelligence. He would lie about making things up on operations. I think Mark Esper has talked about that as well, where he put the lives of Navy Seals at risk in an operation when it came to Nigeria."

'This is a complete fabrication.'

"At some point, I realized I need to check Kash's work to make sure that I wasn't misinforming Mike Pence by relying on his word. So I had to go around him. And this is a guy who openly has contempt for people in national security, for people especially at DOJ and the FBI."

Troye noted further that "there is a little bit of fear here from people where they know that someone like Kash Patel is fully capable of just doing partisan investigations, whatever it takes. It will be insane if he becomes the director of the FBI."

Chaser

Jesse Binnall of the Binnall Law Group, which represents Patel, sent a letter to Troye's counsel Wednesday threatening to take legal action against the MSNBC guest unless she publicly retracts her "defamatory statements."

The legal notice further advised Troye to "identify and preserve all hard copy and electronically stored documents, information, and data that relate, in any way, to Mr. Patel and to [her] statements about him on MSNBC."

Binnall focused on Troye's allegations that Patel would "lie about intelligence"; that he would "lie about making things up on operations"; that he was misinforming Pence; and that he "put the lives of Navy Seals at risk."

"This is a complete fabrication," wrote Binnall. "And you know it is false by virtue of your former position in the White House. At no point did Mr. Patel ever lie about national intelligence, place Navy Seals at risk, or misinform the Vice President. Not only did you have actual knowledge of the falsity of this smear, but you also did so with the malicious intent of degrading his character and of cynical self-promotion."

'You're insufferable and so is your lawyer.'

"This is, of course, not the first time you have milked your former title as a means of spreading lies about associates of President Donald J. Trump," added Binnall, referencing Troye's 2022 smear of former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, which resulted in a defamation lawsuit.

Grenell's complaint indicated that Troye, who alleged Grenell tried to get Pence to attend a white supremacist event while overseas, "is a disgruntled former government employee who is on a malicious smear campaign against her political rivals."

Unless Troye retracts her comments in a public statement on X by next week, Patel will apparently take legal action.

Hangover

Troye cried foul upon receipt of the legal notice, stating on X, "This aligns with [Patel's] threats against the media & political opponents, revealing how he might conduct himself if confirmed in the role."

"I stand by my statements — my priority remains the safety & security of the American people," continued Troye. "I am not the only one who has expressed concerns about him. So why me? And so it begins."

The account for the Georgia GOP offered a possible answer to Troye's "Why me?": "Because you defamed him on national television, perhaps."

Jeff Clark, a former assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice's environment and natural resources division, responded to Troye, "You're insufferable and so is your lawyer. The good news is that your MSNBC platform is an oasis pod that is rapidly dehydrating before our eyes. Ratings circling the drain. We won't miss you when channel surfing and over time seeing you less and less."

Troye is not the only former federal operative concern-mongering about Patel at MSNBC and at similar liberal media outfits.

Frank Figliuzzi, a former assistant director for counterintelligence at the Federal Bureau of Investigation who now writes for MSNBC, noted Tuesday that Patel sounds like a "wannabe cop planning on false arrests and fabricated evidence" and insinuated that the FBI might resume its practice of illegal wiretaps, blackmail, and suggesting civil rights leaders kill themselves were Patel to take over.

Former FBI Special Agent Daniel Brunner told CNN last month that "putting someone like Kash Patel in the position of director of the FBI is, I believe, extremely, extremely dangerous."

Andrew McCabe, the former FBI deputy director who undermined the Trump presidency with Crossfire Hurricane, told CNN on Sunday, "The installation or the nomination, I guess we should say at this point, of Kash Patel's FBI director can only possibly be a plan to disrupt, to dismantle, to distract the FBI, and to possibly use it as a tool for the president's political agenda."

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