The Enforcer: Trump to Nominate Indian American Kash Patel to Head the FBI, a Move Seen as Retribution Against Deep State

President-elect Trump wants to replace current Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Christopher Wray with his staunch ally and former national security adviser Kash Patel. Wray, also a Trump appointee, would have to resign or be fired to create a vacancy. Trump appointed Wray in 2017 for a 10-year term. 

MAGA’s reaction when Donald Trump announced Kash Patel as the next FBI Director:

A MASSIVE WIN FOR AMERICA 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/SGU1wwlC7p

— Marjorie Taylor Greene Press Release (Parody) (@MTGrepp) November 30, 2024

“Kash is a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and “America First” fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People. He played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution,” Trump said in a post today (Nov. 30) on his social media site.

🚨 President Donald J. Trump announces Kash Patel as the next Director of the FBI pic.twitter.com/x2t42K3tdd

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) November 30, 2024

The Indian American has been making headlines for his views on the FBI and Trump’s second term as president. Speaking to podcaster Shawn Ryan, he said he’d “shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one… and reopen it as a Deep State museum.” He would even “send the 7,000 employees in the building ‘across America’ to go be cops instead of having them in D.C.” 

He has also broadly vowed to retaliate against Trump’s “enemies” during a second stint in the White House. Steve Bannon on his “War Room” podcast said that he wanted to go after perceived enemies “not just in government but in the media.” They are going “to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel said, referring to the 2020 election. “We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly. … We’re putting you all on notice.” 

Additionally, Patel laid out his vision for retribution against the FBI and Justice Department” in a book, “Government Gangsters,” in which he called for “clearing out the top ranks of the bureau, which he called a threat to the people,” according to The New York Times. He also wrote a children’s book, “The Plot Against the King,” in which he reveals “the major players and tactics within the permanent government bureaucracy, which has spent decades stripping power away from the American people and their elected leaders,” according to its synopsis. 

Meanwhile, The New York Times notes that Patel’s nomination “could run into hurdles in the Senate, and is sure to send shock waves through the FBI, which rump and his allies have come to view as part of a ‘deep state’ conspiracy against him.” It also has “echoes of his failed attempt to place another partisan firebrand, Matt Gaetz, atop the Justice Department as attorney general,” the publication adds. 

Patel played “a very large role” in Devin Nunes’ attempt to undermine the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. He  flew to England in the summer of 2108, where he tried unsuccessfully to meet with Christopher Steele, the author of the Steele dossier that purported to detail links between the Trump campaign and Russia. Patel was a primary author of a 2018 memo, released by Nunes over the objections of the FBI, that accused federal investigators of bias against Trump and his team.

Patel’s rise in the administration and possible new appointments were mentioned in a Dec. 26, 2020 opinion piece in the Washington Post by columnist David Ignatius. Warning that the country “will be in the danger zone until the formal certification of Joe Biden’s election victory on Jan. 6, because potential domestic and foreign turmoil could give President Trump an excuse to cling to power,” he speculated that “the Pentagon would be the locus of any such action,” due to “some unusual recent moves” which suggest “pro-Trump officials might be mobilizing to secure levers of power.” Citing Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin, he mentioned Patel’s “abrupt” return home from an Asia trip in early December. “Patel didn’t explain, but in mid-December, Trump discussed with colleagues the possibility that Patel might replace Christopher A. Wray as FBI director,” Ignatius said, quoting an unnamed official “Wray remains in his job,” he said. 

A lawyer by trade, Patel briefly served in the Justice Department during the Obama administration before moving to the House after Trump took office. He joined the Trump administration after Democrats took back the House in 2018, going from serving as Trump’s senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council to senior adviser for Trump’s directors of national intelligence, and then finally being promoted to chief of staff to acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller during Trump’s final months in office. During that time, Trump pushed the idea of installing Patel as the deputy director of the CIA. He dropped those plans after CIA director Gina Haspel threatened to resign and Attorney General William Barr argued against it. 

He was also questioned by the Jan. 6 committee and was asked about Trump rebuffing initial requests to deploy the National Guard to the Capitol. In a statement he said that his boss, then-Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, spoke to the then-president “multiple times this week about the request for National Guard personnel in D.C. During these conversations the President conveyed to the Acting Secretary that he should take any necessary steps to support civilian law enforcement requests in securing the Capitol and federal buildings.” He also wrote that there was “substantial reason to believe” that the Jan. 6 committee has “additional documents and information relevant to understanding the role played by the Department of Defense and the White House in preparing for and responding to the attack on the U.S. Capitol, as well as documents and information related to your personal involvement in planning for events on Jan. 6 and the peaceful transfer of power.” Patel has also played a role in Trump’s Florida documents case.

Patel was born and raised in Garden City, New York to parents with Gurajati roots who immigrated from East Africa — who came to the U.S. by way of Canada in 1970. He graduated from the University of Richmond in 2002 with a B.A. in history and criminal justice. He obtained an International Law Certificate from University College London Faculty of Laws in 2004, and his Juris Doctor from Pace University School of Law in 2005.

After his schooling in New York, college in Richmond, Virginia, and law school in New York, Patel went to Florida where he was a state public defender for four years and then a federal public defender for another four years. From Florida, he moved to Washington, D.C. as a terrorism prosecutor at the Department of Justice. Here he was an international terrorism prosecutor for about three and a half years, and worked on cases all over the world, in America in East Africa as well as in Uganda and Kenya. 

While still employed by the Department of Justice, he went as a civilian to join Special Operations Command at the Department of Defense. At the Pentagon, he sat as the Department of Justice’s lawyer with Special Forces people and worked inter-agency collaborative targeting operations around the world. In 2014, he joined the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), National Security Division (NSD) – Counter Terrorism Section as a Terrorism Prosecutor. In this important position, he ran a wide range of high-profile counterterrorism prosecutions.