Trump nominates Kash Patel to serve as FBI director

President-elect Donald Trump announced Saturday that he would pick Kash Patel, the former chief of staff to the acting defense secretary during the first Trump administration, to serve as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“Kash is a brilliant lawyer, investigator and ‘America First’ warrior who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending justice and protecting the American people,” Trump wrote in a post to Truth Social, arguing that Patel would “bring fidelity, bravery and integrity back to the FBI.”

Patel, who must win Senate confirmation to become FBI director, has built a reputation as the ultimate Trump loyalist, calling for a purge of perceived enemies in the Justice Department and the intelligence agencies.

A former public defender who rose to increasingly senior national security positions in the final year of Trump’s first term, Patel has promoted the lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump as well as baseless claims that federal bureaucrats in “the deep state” tried to overthrow the former president.

Patel has called for replacing “anti-democratic” law enforcement and intelligence officials with “patriots” who he says will work for the American people, describing in his memoir the current political moment as “a struggle between the people and a corrupt ruling class .”

“The Deep State is an unelected cabal of tyrants who believe they should decide who Americans can and cannot elect as president, who believe they should decide what the president can and cannot do, and who believe that they have the right to choose what the American people can and cannot know,” Patel wrote in “Government Gangsters.”

Former intelligence officers, Democratic lawmakers and Western officials worry that a hard-line Trump loyalist like Patel could reshape the makeup and mission of the nation’s intelligence apparatus, stripping it of its apolitical outlook and skewing assessments to comply with a White House agenda. And they fear a worst-case scenario in which spy agencies could be turned into tools to target political opponents.

During the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, Patel gained favor with Trump as a congressional staffer after drafting a memo accusing the FBI of making mistakes in how it obtained a warrant to conduct surveillance on a former Trump campaign volunteer.

Many of the memo’s claims were later disproved. An inspector general report found flaws in the FBI’s surveillance during the Russia investigation, but also found no evidence that federal authorities had acted in a politically biased manner.

Patel went on to serve on Trump’s National Security Council in the White House, briefly as an adviser to the acting director of national intelligence, and as chief of staff to Defense Secretary Chris Miller at the end of Trump’s first term.

During the final months of Trump’s tenure, the former president proposed Patel to serve as deputy director of the CIA or to take over the FBI. Then-CIA Director Gina Haspel, a career intelligence officer, threatened to resign if Patel was installed, and then-Attorney General William Barr strongly objected. Trump ended up dropping his plans.

“Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s premier law enforcement agency,” Barr later wrote in his memoir.

Patel and some other Trump loyalists suspected there was information hidden away in the intelligence community that could shed more light on bureaucratic schemes against Trump and to benefit Joe Biden, former officials said.

“It was a pretty conspiratorial environment at the time,” said Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to then-Vice President Mike Pence.

An echo of Trump’s “deep state” rhetoric

Patel has echoed Trump’s rhetoric calling journalists traitors and calling for “clean up” allegedly disloyal federal bureaucrats. In an interview last year with longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon, Patel vowed to go after “conspirators” who he claimed had abused their positions in government.

“The one thing we learned in the Trump administration is that we have to deploy American patriots from top to bottom,” Patel told Bannon.

“And the one thing we will do that they will never do is we will follow the facts and the law and go to the courts and correct these judges and lawyers who have prosecuted these cases based on politics and actually issue them as law , he said.

“We’re going to go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media — yes, we’re going after people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig the presidential election. Whether it’s criminal or civil, we’ll find out — but yes, we’re making you all aware,” Patel said.

Trump and his allies first began referring to a “deep state” shortly after the 2016 election, viewing the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the election — and its outreach to the Trump campaign — as an attempt to sabotage his presidency.

Patel joined Trump on the 2024 campaign trail and has promoted his memoir, a film adaptation of the memoir and a series of children’s books that portray him as a “wizard” defending “King Donald.”

He has touted his charity, the Kash Foundation, as a way to help those in need and provide legal defense to whistleblowers and others. But the foundation has released few details about its finances.

According to tax declarations for 2023, revenue for the foundation rose to $1.3 million last year compared to $182,000 in 2022, with much of the money coming from donations. The foundation reported expenses of $674,000, of which about $425,000 was spent on advertising and marketing.

He has that too appeared about Truth Social selling “Warrior Essentials” anti-vaccine supplements that are supposed to “reverse” the effects of Covid-19 vaccines.

In his memoirs, Patel recounts how, after law school, he dreamed of getting a job at a law firm and a “skyrocketing salary,” but “no one would hire me.” Instead, he became a public defender in Miami.

Citing his stint at the Justice Department after his work as a public defender, Patel has claimed he was the “lead prosecutor” in a federal case against a Libyan accused of taking part in the deadly 2012 attack on a US compound in Benghazi.

“I was the lead prosecutor for Justice for Benghazi,” Patel said in an interview on a YouTube channel hosted by former Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan.

But in Justice Department announcements at the time, Patel was not listed as the lead prosecutor or as part of the legal team.

At a 2016 trial in Houston for a case involving a Palestinian refugee who pleaded guilty to supporting ISIS, a federal judge, Lynn Hughes, dressed down Patel and threw him out of chambers, according to a court transcript.

The judge repeatedly questioned why Patel had flown all the way from Central Asia to be present at the case, as the judge said his presence was unnecessary. And he scolded Patel for not dressing appropriately.

“Act like a lawyer,” the judge said. He accused Patel of being a Washington bureaucrat who wanted to interfere in a case where he was not needed. “‘You’re just another non-essential employee from Washington.’

In his memoirs, Patel wrote that he had rushed back from Tajikistan and did not have a suit to wear to the courtroom, and that he chose not to speak back to the judge “who had it out for me” to avoid harming government terrorism. matter.