Olivia Troye is a Republican who worked as the Homeland Security advisor to former VP Mike Pence, but became an outspoken critic of Pence’s boss after leaving the White House in 2020. Among the things she’s criticized him for lately is his nomination of, shall we say, less-than-qualified candidates for many important positions.

One of those is his nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, whose main qualifications seem to be love of conspiracy theories, subservience to Trump, eagerness to use the FBI to punish critics, and his efforts to educate youth via children’s books such as The Plot Against the King, in which Patel portrayed himself as a wizard helping defend “King Donald” from … well, you know.

Probably less interesting than J. Edgar Hoover’s book How to Tell If Your Parents Are Members of the Communist Party, but at least the artwork’s in color.

Troye is among many members of both parties who’ve criticized the nomination and Patel himself, and she said a couple of weeks ago (among other things) that she believed Patel would “lie about intelligence” (and not just his own), “lie about making things up on operations,” and by doing so had “put the lives of Navy SEALs at risk.” This prompted Patel to get his lawyer to threaten Troye with a defamation suit if she didn’t retract her comments.

Troye has a lawyer too, though, and he writes much funnier letters:

For email subscribers who may not get embedded images for a reason I haven’t yet figured out, Troye’s lawyer, Mark Zaid, thanked Patel’s lawyer Jesse Binnall for his letter and said he was replying on his client’s behalf. “I respectfully note,” he continued, “that many—if not all—of her statements have been previously or similarly stated by a wide swath of the knowledgeable population.” He also expressed doubts that the threatened lawsuit would “thrive.” But the important part is how he conveyed his client’s “intentions as to a retraction,” which was to post a picture of the French knight taunting King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

I don’t know whether there’ll be a lawsuit or how that might go, but the letter is terrific work. See also “Cleveland Browns Lawyer Letter Is Apparently Real” (Mar. 18, 2011) (discussing the best response to a cease-and-desist letter ever written, just attaching the original and stating “I feel that you should be aware that some a$$hole is signing your name to stupid letters.”).