During the confirmation hearing of K$H Patel, Louisiana Senator John Kennedy questioned whether Patel would be party to Trump’s “retribution” tour.

During Mr. Patel’s testimony on Thursday, Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, told Mr. Patel that lawmakers would hold him accountable if he tried to exact revenge at the F.B.I., saying two wrongs did not make a right.

“And there have been and may still be some bad people there, and you’ve got to find out who the bad people are and get rid of them, in accordance with due process and the rule of law,” Mr. Kennedy said. “And then you’ve got to lift up the good people. Don’t go over there and burn that place down. Go over there and make it better.”

Putting aside whether you’re of the view that the Justice Department and the FBI were part of a “weaponized” effort to go after Trump just because he committed crimes or were doing their jobs, not even a friend of the devil like Kennedy was prepared to suffer what would come the next day.

The Trump administration plans to scrutinize thousands of F.B.I. agents involved in Jan. 6 investigations, setting the stage for a possible purge that goes far beyond the bureau’s leaders to target rank-and-file agents, according to internal documents and people familiar with the matter.

The proposal came on a day that more than a dozen prosecutors at the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington who had worked on cases involving the Jan. 6 riot were told that they were being terminated.

According to the memo from the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, fresh off his criminal defense of Trump and now in the number two spot at Main Justice, the purge wasn’t due to cause, per se, but loyalty.

Mr. Bove offered no evidence those targeted had done anything improper, illegal or unethical. Instead, he cited a legal technicality and questioned whether those targeted would allow the U.S. attorney’s office to “faithfully implement the agenda that the American people elected President Trump to execute.”

Why the American people elected Trump is hardly clear, but to claim that it was because Americans supported every whim no matter how idiotic or inane is a surprising stretch, even for a loyalist like Bove. Then again, Trump did promise retribution to his enemies, no matter how far down the food chain they might be.

But purges like this don’t happen.* The unintended consequences of such ham-fisted purges can take Justice and the FBI down a path that exposes the public to enormous harm. It sends a message, no doubt intentional, that disloyalty to Trump and those he prefers at any given moment will not be tolerated, at least if one wants to keep his job. Not only does that mean that Trump and his people can rape and pillage with impunity, but Trump’s enemies, which are definitely not listed in Patel’s book because he swears he would never do that, will be targeted by the mechanisms of power for being enemies of Nation of Trump.

While much of this will seem pretty darn fine with the groundlings who believe that Trump is tall, thin, muscular and handsome, most of the Republican Senators know better. They are well aware of what it means to take a moderately politicized Department of Justice and turn it into a fully politicized cesspool. They know about the terror and cyber threats being handled by the FBI that will get dropped when hundreds, if not thousands, of agents are told to walk.

They know they will be caught in the middle, between Trump (who will throw them under the bus for good, bad or no reason, should it pop into his head at any given moment that it benefits him to burn a senator or two) and the federal law enforcement apparatus that remains after the purges of Trump’s enemies which won’t soon forget their fawning over a weasel like Patel to appease the mercurial Trump.

Unlike the riff-raff that believes the nonsense emitting from the White House, the Senators’ public performance is tempered by the harsh reality that isn’t shared with the public. Sure, there will be some, but not every Senator is as thick as Tommy Tuberville. I suspect they played along because they didn’t believe anybody would be so mindlessly shallow as to do to Justice and the FBI what the ever-loyal Bove did on a Friday afternoon. Trump said lots of inane stuff, but not even Trump could be that foolish, right?

You’ve got your answer now, Senators. Trump has made his decision. Are you going to let him enforce it?

*For the benefit of the thinking impaired, I mean here, in the United States, and not in Stalin’s Soviet Union. I didn’t think this needed to be said. I was obviously wrong.