Trump appoints Kash Patel as FBI director

President-elect Donald Trump announced Saturday that he would nominate Kash Patel, the former chief of staff and acting defense secretary during the first Trump administration, to be 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 on Truth Social, arguing Patel would “bring back Fidelity.” Bravery and integrity to the FBI.

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

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

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

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

Former intelligence officers, Democratic lawmakers and Western officials fear that a die-hard Trump loyalist like Patel could reshape the makeup and mission of the country’s intelligence apparatus, stripping it of its apolitical outlook and distorting assessments to suit the White House’s agenda . And they fear a worst-case scenario in which the secret services could become instruments for targeting political opponents.

During the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Patel won favor with Trump as a congressional staffer after he wrote a memo accusing the FBI of making mistakes in obtaining a warrant to surveil a former Trump campaign aide.

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

Patel subsequently served on the Trump 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 at the end of Trump’s first term.

In the final months of Trump’s term, the former president suggested Patel could serve as CIA deputy director or 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 vehemently objected. In the end, Trump dropped his plans.

“Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him for service at the highest levels of the world’s premier law enforcement agency,” Barr later wrote in his memoirs.

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

“There was a pretty conspiratorial atmosphere at that point,” said Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to then-Vice President Mike Pence.

Following Trump’s “Deep State” rhetoric

Patel echoed Trump’s rhetoric in which he called journalists traitors and called for “clearing out” supposedly disloyal federal bureaucrats. In an interview with longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon last year, Patel vowed to crack down on “conspirators” who he claimed had abused their positions in government.

“The one thing we learned the first time in the Trump administration is that we need to install all-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 court and correct these judges and lawyers who pursued these cases for political reasons and actually passed them off as such “Lawfare,” he said.

“We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in the government, but in the media – yes, we will go after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig the presidential election. “Whether criminal or civil, we will sort it out – but yes, we are bringing it to your attention,” Patel said.

Trump and his allies first began talking about a “deep state” shortly after the 2016 election, viewing the investigation into Russia’s election interference – and its influence on the Trump campaign – as an attempt to sabotage his presidency.

Patel accompanied Trump on the 2024 campaign and has promoted his memoir, a film adaptation of the memoir and a series of children’s books in which he appears as a “wizard” who defends “King Donald.”

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

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

He also appeared on Truth Social selling “Warrior Essentials,” anti-vaccine supplements designed to “reverse” the effects of Covid-19 vaccines.

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

Referring to his stint at the Justice Department after serving as a public defender, Patel claimed he was the “lead prosecutor” in a federal case against a Libyan man accused of involvement in the deadly 2012 attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi be.

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

But Justice Department announcements at the time did not list Patel as a lead prosecutor or as part of the legal team.

At a 2016 trial in Houston over a case involving a Palestinian refugee who pleaded guilty to supporting ISIS, a federal judge, Lynn Hughes, vilified Patel and kicked him out of the courtroom, according to a court record.

The judge repeatedly questioned why Patel traveled all the way from Central Asia to attend the trial, as the judge said his presence was unnecessary. And he scolded Patel for not dressing appropriately.

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

In his memoirs, Patel wrote that he returned from Tajikistan without a suit to wear to the courtroom and that he decided not to talk to the judge “who was targeting me” for terrorism not to harm the government case.