() – Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s pick to head the FBI and an ardent supporter of the president-elect, has vowed to help dismantle the very organization he is set to lead.
The former public defender is considered a controversial figure, whose value to the president-elect derives largely from their shared disdain for the establishment in Washington.
Putting him in charge of the FBI would require forcing the departure of the current director, Christopher Wray, appointed by Trump in 2017, before his 10-year term expires in three years, a possible move that has already drawn bipartisan criticism.
The FBI director must also be confirmed by the Senate, where members are already preparing to see how they will navigate a series of unorthodox Trump picks.
Until late last week, some people close to Trump believed the FBI pick was a “heads or tails” between Patel and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, according to a source familiar with the discussions.
However, some in Trump’s inner circle were unhappy with either option, the source said, adding that an unknown third candidate likely would have emerged in the next week or two if Trump had not made a decision by then.
Patel, in particular, is not seen as a consensus choice, the source said, noting that it was always going to come down to what Trump wanted and, potentially, the last person he spoke to on any given day.
Meet Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to head the FBI
In his 2023 book, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” Patel lays out his arguments against what he calls “the deep state” — an amorphous term that he says includes elected leaders, journalists, Big Tech moguls, and “members of the unelected bureaucracy”—and calls for “a thorough cleanup” of the Justice Department, which he says has protected senior Democratic Party officials while unfairly persecuted Republicans and their allies.
Trump has praised the book as a “plan to take back the White House and drive these gangsters out of the entire Government,” according to promotional messages for the book.
Patel has been a harsh critic of the FBI, and in a podcast interview in September called for the agency’s headquarters in Washington to be dismantled and turned into a “deep state museum.”
“The FBI’s footprint has gotten so f***ing big,” Patel said on the “Shawn Ryan Show,” criticizing the agency’s intelligence-gathering operation.
During the interview, Patel also ridiculed the FBI for its 2022 search warrant of Trump’s residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, which led to charges being filed against the former president for withholding classified documents. The judge overseeing that case ultimately dismissed the charges against Trump after determining that the special counsel had been appointed illegally.
In a 2023 interview with Steve Bannona former Trump adviser, Patel said the Justice Department under the Trump administration would “go after” members of the media.
“We have to put American patriots in the Justice Department from top to bottom,” Patel said, adding that under the Trump administration the government “will go out and find the conspirators, not just in the government but in the media.” .
“Yes, we are going to go after the media people who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig the presidential election: we are going to go after you,” he said.
When Trump, during his first term, reportedly considered naming Patel deputy director of the FBI, former Attorney General Bill Barr wrote in his memoirs that Patel “had virtually no experience that qualified him to serve at the highest level of the preeminent law enforcement agency in the United States.” world,” adding that Patel would become the FBI’s No. 2 “over his dead body.”
Patel, who describes himself as a New Yorker by birth, was raised in Hinduism by his immigrant parents, according to what he says in his book. He wrote that he grew up apolitical, but became more right-wing during his studies at the University of Richmond. This, he wrote, made his eventual career as a public defender an “odd adjustment” and he described his colleagues in that field as “the far left of the left.”
Patel graduated from Pace University School of Law in 2005 and, according to his book, worked for about nine years as a public defender in Florida. He spent stints in the public defender’s office in Miami-Dade County and the Southern District of Florida.
Patel then went on to work as a federal prosecutor in the Justice Department’s National Security Division, according to his book. He called it a “dream job” for any young lawyer.
At the Justice Department, Patel oversaw the prosecution of criminals linked to Al Qaeda, ISIS and other terrorist groups, according to a Defense Department profile. He also acted as the department’s liaison officer with the Joint Special Operations Command during operations against “high-value terrorist targets.”
Patel has claimed to be the “lead prosecutor” in the Justice Department’s case against the perpetrators of the 2012 attack on a US diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans were killed. But The New York Times reported in October that Patel was a junior official at the time and was not part of the trial team.
In 2018, Patel went to work as an aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee at the time. Patel played a key role in Nunes’ efforts to discredit the FBI’s Russia investigation into the Trump campaign, including a controversial classified memo that alleged FBI abuses of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act orders on Trump advisers.
In 2019, Patel went to work for Trump on the National Security Council before becoming chief of staff to acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller toward the end of Trump’s first term. Trump briefly raised Patel as a possible replacement for then-CIA Director Gina Haspel, whom he had considered firing after the 2020 election. Patel was also in charge of the Pentagon transition during Trump’s first term. , supervising the coordination with the incoming Biden-Harris administration.
Patel also became embroiled in the classified documents case against Trump, which has now been dismissed. During the summer of 2022, he became one of Trump’s appointees to interact with the National Archives and the Department of Justice as both agencies sought to recover classified records Trump had kept from his presidency. Patel was one of a handful of Trump advisers who may have legal risks related to the Mar-a-Lago situation, reported at the time, and appeared before the grand jury in the case. Patel was not charged.
In 2021, he also met with the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol, which at the time found that “there is compelling reason to believe” that Patel had important information about how the Department of Defense and the White House prepared and responded to the attack.
In a statement at the time, Patel said he had appeared before the panel “to answer questions to the best of my ability.”
Patel, seen even among Trump loyalists as a relentless self-promoter, has used his apparent closeness to the president-elect to prop up his public image through books and positions at foundations and think tanks.
Since the first Trump administration, Patel has written a trilogy of children’s books titled “The Plot Against the King.” The first book tells the story of “Hillary Queenton and her cunning knight,” who “spread lies that King Donald had cheated to become king.” The second tells the story of the “search for the truth and the discovery of evidence of a terrible plot to elect Sleepy Joe instead of King Donald on Election Day.” And his latest book, published in September, tells the story of the “MAGA king” on a journey to “take down Comma-la-la-la and reclaim his throne.”
Patel founded Fight With Kash — now the Kash Foundation — which is “dedicated to providing financial assistance to active duty service members and veterans, legal defense funds and educational programs,” according to the organization.
Patel — and his foundation — came under scrutiny last year after two of Republican House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan’s witnesses said Patel had paid his legal fees in his quest to prove that The federal government has been “weaponized” against conservatives.
According to his foundation, Kash also sits on the board of directors of Trump Media Technology Group, the parent company of Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social.
Kash has also been a senior fellow for national security and intelligence at the Center for American Renewal, a think tank founded by Russell Vought, Trump’s pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget and one of the key authors of the conservative Project 2025. .
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