Good morning. It's Saturday, December 14th, and I'm Charles Coleman, Jr. filling in from my friend and colleague, Ali Belchie. We've got a lot to talk about.

Now, this week marks the halfway point between Election Day and inauguration day. And

President-elect Donald Trump's path to remaking the Justice Department is clearer than it has

ever been. FBI director Christopher Ray announced this week that he'd be resigning from his role

at the end of the Biden administration instead of finishing his 10-year term. This clears the way for Trump's pick, Cash Patel.

Now, Patel is a longtime Trump loyalist who has repeated lies about the 2020 election.

Last year, on Steve Bannon's podcast, he falsely suggested that President Biden rigged

the 2020 election results and vowed that a new Trump administration would, quote,

come after journalists and government officials who helped him.

And listen to what Patel said in an interview that aired just in September.

I'd shut down the FBI Hoover building on day one and reopening the next day as a museum of the deep state.

Yeah, because that's not weird at all.

This week, Patel was on Capitol Hill meeting with senators and the guardians Hugo Lull is now

reporting that he's locked down broad support from Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Now, this is important. Getting buy Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Now, this is important.

Getting buy-in from the Judiciary Committee is a strategic step toward making it politically

harder for skeptical Republicans in the full Senate to vote against his nomination.

Meanwhile, Pete Hexeth, Trump's pick for a Secretary of Defense, spent this week meeting with potential holdouts for his Senate confirmation.

Now, this comes as a pressure campaign continues to grow against those same senators like Iowa's Joni Ernst.

And as for Trump's pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, well, Trump said in an interview published Thursday that he would discuss ending

children's vaccine programs with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

And yesterday, the New York Times reported that a lawyer for RFK Jr., who was helping him

...