No part of the FBI mission would be safe with Kash Patel in charge

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said the agency would be threatened if Kash Patel, a former aide to President-elect Trump, is nominated and confirmed to lead the agency.

“No part of the FBI’s mission is safe with Kash Patel in any leadership position in the FBI, and certainly not in the deputy director’s job,” McCabe told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Thursday night. “The power of authority is enormous.

“If you go into that position with nothing but a desire to disrupt and destroy the organization, there’s a lot of damage someone like Kash Patel can do,” he said.

Patel has remained loyal to the president-elect after serving as a senior adviser to then-acting director of national intelligence and chief of staff to former acting defense secretary Chris Miller during Trump’s first term. But he has never been directly employed by the FBI.

Earlier in the interview, McCabe mentioned the years of experience within the agency required to understand its complex structure.

“I can tell you from my own experience: There is no way I could have been successful in that role without having spent the first 10 years of my career doing criminal work in the FBI,” he said on CNN’s “The Source .”

Former FBI Special Agent Daniel Brunner also said Patel’s leadership would do “massive damage” to the agency.

“To put someone like Kash Patel in the position of director of the FBI is, I think, extremely, extremely dangerous because … his resume is not traditional,” Brunner said Sunday on CNN.

However, Trump’s selection is on par with other appointments. Some have questioned the backgrounds of former “Fox & Friends” host Pete Hegseth, who was nominated to lead the Department of Defense, and former Hawaii representative Tulsi Gabbard, who was named director of national intelligence.

The president-elect has prioritized a reformist administration with the help of billionaire Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur – and former GOP primary rival – Vivek Ramaswamy, who will co-head the new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), which was created to do away with “wasteful” federal agencies.

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