A dangerous and unqualified choice for the FBI

President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of uber-loyalist Kash Patel to be FBI director is a hair-on-fire moment. Trump is poised to install a team of toadies at the Justice Department — a flotilla of his criminal defense lawyers but most ominously an attorney general, Pam Bondi, who has vowed that “the prosecutors will be prosecuted,” and now, with Patel, an FBI director who would add journalists to that list.

“Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel said of Trump’s plans in a 2023 podcast with Trump ally Stephen K. Bannon. “We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly — we’ll figure that out.”

This is not...