By President-elect Donald Trump announced Saturday he would pick Kashyap “Kash” Patel, a 44-year-old loyalist with little management experience in federal law enforcement, to serve as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“Kash is a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and ‘America First’ fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People,” Trump wrote in a post to Truth Social. “He played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution.”
Patel, who will have to win Senate confirmation to become FBI director, has earned a reputation as an extreme Trump loyalist who has spread baseless “deep state” conspiracy theories and called for a purge of perceived Trump enemies from the FBI.
“It is the honor of a lifetime to be nominated by President Trump to serve as Director of the FBI,” Patel said in a statement. “Together, we will restore integrity, accountability, and equal justice to our justice system and return the FBI to its rightful mission: protecting the American people.”
The nomination of Patel, who worked as a federal prosecutor in Washington and a public defender in Florida, is likely to again put pressure on Senate Republicans who signaled earlier this month they would reject Matt Gaetz as Trump’s pick for attorney general.
Gaetz, a firebrand Trump loyalist with no experience as a prosecutor, was criminally investigated on allegations of sex trafficking but was never charged. Gaetz has denied the allegations.
A former senior law enforcement official who interacted with Patel in the past said he was not qualified for the position.
“It’s ridiculous. He’s arguably the least qualified person ever nominated for a senior position in federal law enforcement,” said the former official, who asked not to be named citing fears of retaliation from Trump. “I don’t know anything significant that he achieved at the DOJ. He was not well regarded as a prosecutor.”
During the closing months of Trump’s first term, Trump also proposed that Patel run the FBI. William Barr, the attorney general at the time, vehemently objected and Trump dropped his plan.
“Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency,” Barr later wrote in his memoir.
Patel has promoted the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump as well as the baseless conspiracy theory that federal bureaucrats in the “deep state” tried to overthrow the former president.
In an interview last year with longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon, Patel vowed to go after judges, lawyers and journalists who, in Patel’s view, had improperly investigated Trump and stolen the 2020 election.
“We will follow the facts and the law and go to courts of law and correct these justices and lawyers who have been prosecuting these cases based on politics,” Patel said.
“We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media — 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 added.
“Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’re going to figure that out — but yeah, we’re putting you all on notice,” he added. “We’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.”
The U.S. Supreme Court and dozens of federal judges appointed by Republicans and Democrats dismissed Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen. And former FBI and DOJ officials have repeatedly dismissed the “deep state” claims as false and politically motivated conspiracy theories.
They note that special counsel John Durham’s yearslong investigation into the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe produced no criminal charges against senior officials. And they say a purge of FBI officials deemed disloyal to Trump is designed to intimidate anyone who dares investigate the conduct of Trump or other officials in his second administration.
Trump’s nomination of Patel also flouts a post-Watergate norm that FBI directors serve 10-year terms. The goal of the practice is to ensure that the FBI is seen as not serving the political interests of a specific president. The current FBI director, Christopher Wray, is scheduled to complete his 10-year term in 2027.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Sunday raised that issue, pointing out that Wray was nominated by Trump during his first term.
“The Biden administration adhered to the long-standing norm that FBI directors serve out their full terms because the FBI director is a unique player in the American government system,” Sullivan said during an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”
“So that’s how we approach things. And we would like to ensure that the FBI remains an independent institution insulated from politics,” Sullivan added.
After Trump’s announcement, the FBI said in a statement, “Every day, the men and women of the FBI continue to work to protect Americans from a growing array of threats. Director Wray’s focus remains on the men and women of the FBI, the people we do the work with, and the people we do the work for.”
Kash Patel in Minden, Nev., on Oct. 8, 2022.Justin Sullivan / Getty Images file
Echoing Trump’s ‘deep state’ claims
Patel first gained favor with Trump in 2017 as a staffer on the House Intelligence Committee for then-Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif.
Trump and his allies viewed the FBI investigation into Russia’s interference in the election — and Moscow’s outreach to members of the Trump campaign in 2016 — as an attempt to sabotage his presidency. Former FBI officials have said they launched the probe because they viewed Russia’s activities as a threat to U.S. national security.
Patel drafted a memo that accused the FBI of making mistakes in how it obtained a warrant to conduct surveillance of former Trump 2016 campaign adviser Carter Page. Many of the memo’s assertions were later disproven.
An inspector general report found significant faults with the FBI’s surveillance during the Russia investigation but also found no evidence that federal authorities had acted in a politically partisan way.
At the end of Trump’s first term, Patel served in Trump’s White House National Security Council, briefly as an adviser to the acting director of national intelligence and as chief of staff to Defense Secretary Chris Miller.
Trump also suggested that Patel serve as the deputy CIA director. Then-CIA Director Gina Haspel, a career intelligence officer, threatened to resign if Patel was installed.
“It was a fairly conspiratorial environment at that point,” recalled Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to then-Vice President Mike Pence.
In a memoir Patel published last year, “Government Gangsters,” he called for replacing “anti-democratic” civil servants in law enforcement and intelligence with “patriots.” Trump praised the book, saying, “We will use this blueprint to help us take back the White House and remove these Gangsters from all of Government!”
In an interview earlier this year on a YouTube show hosted by former Navy Seal Shawn Ryan, Patel said he would “shut down” the bureau’s headquarters building in Washington, D.C., and “reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state.’”
A ‘wizard’ defending ‘King Donald’
Patel joined Trump on the 2024 campaign and has promoted his memoir, a film adaptation of the memoir and a line of children’s books featuring him as a “wizard” defending “King Donald.”
He has touted his charity, the Kash Foundation, as a way of helping the needy and providing legal defense funds to whistleblowers and others.
According to tax filings for 2023, revenue for the foundation increased to $1.3 million last year, compared with $182,000 in 2022, with much of the money coming from donations. The foundation listed expenses of $674,000, with about $425,000 spent on advertising and marketing.
Patel has also endorsed on Truth Social “Warrior Essentials,” an anti-vaccine diet supplement that he said would “reverse” the effects of vaccines.
In his memoir, Patel recounts how after law school he dreamed of landing a job with a law firm and a “sky-high salary” but that “nobody would hire me.” Instead, he became a public defender in Miami.
Regarding his time as a Justice Department prosecutor, Patel has claimed he was the “lead prosecutor” for a federal case against a Libyan accused of taking part in the lethal 2012 attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi.
“I was the Main Justice lead prosecutor for Benghazi,” Patel said in his YouTube interview with Ryan. But the Justice Department’s 2017 announcement that the Libyan had been charged in the attack and of his conviction in a 2019 federal trial do not list Patel as the lead prosecutor or as part of the prosecution team.
A former senior federal law enforcement official who served under Trump during his first term said that the Patel and Gaetz nominations were signs of Trump’s disdain for the DOJ and FBI and both agencies’ efforts not to be used to settle political scores.
“He’s just going to run roughshod over them. He’s thumbing his nose at the DOJ and FBI with these nominations,” said the former official, who asked not to be named due to fear of retaliation by Trump. “He’s going to effect his will regardless of our norms.”
