Trump Loyalist Kash Patel Reportedly Being Considered to Head FBI

Trump is reportedly considering Kash Patel to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation. CNN is reporting that the president-elect is” weighing a push from right-wing allies” to fire current director Christopher Wray, and install the 44-year-old Indian American, who is “a fierce Trump ally.” Meanwhile, The New York Times has reported that he could also be appointed to the National Security Council “if the Senate won’t confirm him.”

According to CNN, the lobbying for Patel is “one of the clearest indications the president-elect plans to stick by his vow to fire Director Christopher Wray before his 10-year term ends and replace him with a loyalist.” Furthermore, the “interest in Patel speaks to Trump’s urge to fill top law enforcement and intelligence positions with supporters who may be open to carrying out his demands for specific investigations as well as inoculating the president against possible future investigations,” the report said. However, although he’s part of the president-elect’s inner circle, some Trump loyalists view him as “a controversial figure and relentless self-promoter whose value largely derives from a shared disdain for the so-called deep state,” the report added. 

Patel was one of the names being floated for CIA chief, but Trump chose John Ratcliffe, former director of national intelligence instead.

A former Republican House staffer, Patel rose from an obscure Hill staffer to become one of the most powerful players in the national security apparatus. He served in various high-ranking staff roles in the defense and intelligence communities during the first Trump administration.

Patel 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. He Steve Bannon on his “War Room” podcast 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.” 

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A lawyer by trade, Patel briefly served in the Justice Department during the Obama administration before moving to the House after Trump took office, spending two years as senior counsel to former Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., when he led the House Intelligence Committee in 2017. He played “a very large role” in 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. 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.