Democrats are demanding a second hearing for Kash Patel, President Trump’s pick to head the FBI. According to Politico, one of several media outlets the DOGE team has revealed was on the Biden administration/USAID payroll, the lawmakers want to question Patel “over the recent personnel shakeup at the FBI” and “then-special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s retention of classified documents.” One of the most strident Democrats against Patel was Alex Padilla, the senator nobody voted for, an appointee of California Governor Gavin Newsom and, not coincidentally, also the loudest voice against the appointment of Pam Bondi at U.S. attorney general.

“The president has chosen a nominee—a disappointing choice—in Kash Patel,” Padilla told reporters. “Will they [Republicans] choose the rule of law? Or will they choose loyalty to a reckless president?” Teaming with the Democrats is The Federal Bureau of Investigation Agents Association (FBIAA) —worried, as they are, about the “criminal events” of Jan. 6, 2021. On it goes, in entirely predictable ways, none of which are of much significance. The most serious FBI opposition to Patel, however, may lie in criminal events involving homicide, withholding evidence, and obstruction of justice.

This Feb. 21 will mark five years since Department of Homeland Security whistleblower, Philip Haney, who was then 66, was found dead by gunshot in Amador County of California’s Sierra foothills. The UC Riverside alum, previously an entomologist in the Middle East, was the author of See Something Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government’s Submission to Jihad, published in 2016. In 2019, Haney told reporters he was planning a sequel for release in the spring of 2020, when the election season kicked into high gear.

In the early going after Haney’s death, the Amador County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO) dismissed rumors of suicide as “misinformation,” and veteran forensic pathologist Katherine Raven, M.D. signed out on a “homicide autopsy,” which certifies the death of a person by the hand of another.

Parties with the strongest motive to kill Haney were Islamic terrorists and their collaborators in the government. The death by gunshot of the DHS whistleblower, the people might expect, should launch a vast manhunt and produce a list of suspects. Nothing of the kind took place, and news reports took a decidedly different tone.

“Haney’s controversial accusations that the Obama administration could have prevented terrorist attacks were polarizing among Americans,” Laura Hoy of CNN reported on Feb. 23, just days after his death was discovered. As Hoy explained, “Haney’s death is likely to become political ammo for Republicans heading into the 2020 presidential elections.”

The ACSO tapped the FBI to assist in analyzing documents, phone records, and a laptop recovered from Haney’s motorhome. On July 22, 020 the ACSO announced plans to “compare the FBI’s analysis with what we have already collected and analyzed within a few weeks after receipt.” A week after the 2020 election, the FBI “analysis” had not come to light. Material on the case began to disappear from the ACSO website and by the first anniversary of the homicide, the FBI failed to reveal the contents of Haney’s devices and documents.

In April 2021, Sheriff Martin Ryan retired and was replaced by former undersheriff Gary Redman, a graduate of the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Redman told the local Ledger Dispatch that there was no estimated time of arrival for evidence “out of Virginia.” As the second anniversary of Haney’s death approached, Amador authorities revealed no updates on his case. The next month, Redman proclaimed Haney’s death a suicide and declared the case to be officially closed.

A March 9, 2022 report from the Associated Press, another outfit that takes government money, contended that Haney’s death “generated right-wing conspiracy theories,” but had now been ruled a suicide. Customs and Border Patrol (CPB) had determined that Haney’s devices contained “contraband” and possible violations of “CBP policy and numerous United States Codes.” Two years after the homicide, the brave whistleblower was “fundamentally transformed” by his government … into a criminal.

Making a murder look like suicide is the oldest trick in the book. As Sidney Hook noted in Out of Step, Soviet defector Gen. Walter Krivitsky was “suicided” in a Washington hotel room by Stalin’s NKVD, forerunner to the KGB. Danish diplomat Povl Bang-Jensen refused to reveal names of Hungarian patriots who testified to the UN about Soviet atrocities during the 1956 invasion. In 1959, after going missing for two days, Bang-Jensen was found dead in a New York park, shot through the right temple. The scene looked staged, but the case was officially declared a suicide. The Strange Death of Vincent Foster, another “apparent” suicide, also comes to mind.

Kash Patel needs to find out what the FBI knew about the homicide of Philip Haney and what, exactly, is on those supposedly “contraband” devices and documents the FBI seized. Also awaiting attention is the case of Seth Rich, the DNC official who possibly leaked emails to Wikileaks, gunned down in Washington, D.C. in 2016. The FBI has Rich’s laptop but despite a court order, it continues to conceal the contents.

To paraphrase Sheriff Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger) in In the Heat of the Night, we have the bodies, which are dead. What we don’t have is an investigation of possible suspects and full revelation of the evidence by the FBI. For all but the willfully blind, the bureau has been functioning as a kind of secret police and KGB. That explains the Democrats’ jihad against Kash Patel, who should bring it all to light. As Republicans like to say: The people have a right to know.