US President-elect Donald Trump announced Saturday (November 30) that he will nominate his former aide and “‘America First’ fighter” Kash Patel to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
“I am proud to announce that Kashyap ‘Kash’ Patel will serve as the next 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 posted on Truth Social on Saturday evening.
Patel would thus replace incumbent FBI director Christopher Wray, whom Trump had appointed for a 10-year term in 2017. With three years left for Wray’s term, he is expected to resign or be fired. Patel will also need to be confirmed by the Senate, and could likely face some opposition.
Here is all you need to know about Kash Patel.
01
Born in New York
Kashyap Pramod Patel or Kash Patel was born to Gujarati-Indian parents in New York’s Long Island. He was raised a Hindu and has described a “very deep connection” with India. He secured an undergraduate degree in Criminal Justice from Richmond University as well as a law degree from Pace University, and holds a certificate of international law from University College London.
He worked as a county and federal public defender in Florida between 2005 and 2013. In 2014, he joined the Department of Justice as a trial attorney, and simultaneously served as a legal liaison to the Joint Special Operations Command.
His Department of Defense biography also describes him as a “life-long ice hockey player, coach, and fan.”
02
The Nunes memo
During Trump’s first term, Patel advised both the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense.
However, he reportedly endeared himself to the former president with his role in the 2018 investigation by the FBI into Russian involvement in Trump’s presidential campaign two years earlier. A report from The New York Times describes Patel as the primary author of the secret “Nunes Memo” at the centre of this investigation.
Patel in 2018 served as an aide to Representative Devin Nunes who headed the House Intelligence Committee at the time.
By authoring the memo, Patel was key to Nunes’s efforts to discredit the FBI’s Russia investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign. The Nunes memo alleged that the FBI had abused the Foreign Intelligence Service Act to serve warrants on Trump’s advisors. Thus, the memo “fueled bogus claims by Mr. Trump, Republicans and conservative media that politics drove the Russia investigation and that the government had spied on the Trump campaign itself,” according to the NYT.
03
On Trump’s legal entanglements
Patel has been prominently seen with Trump at his New York court hearing that named him a convicted felon, and told reporters that Trump was the victim of an “unconstitutional circus.”
After securing immunity, Patel testified in support of Trump in 2022 before a Washington grand jury investigating the classified documents case. He also appeared at a Colorado court hearing on Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election leading to the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol. Patel, then chief of staff to the acting defence secretary, testified that Trump had “pre-emptively authorized 10,000 to 20,000 troops to deploy days before the attack.” However, the court later found that Patel was “not a credible witness” on the subject.
Patel’s proximity to Trump marks a sharp contrast to his predecessors James Comey or Christopher Wray who toed the modern-day precedent of FBI directors keeping presidents at arm’s length.
04
Past criticism of the FBI
If appointed, Patel is expected to go through with his stated intent of radically overhauling the FBI.
In an appearance on the “Shawn Ryan Show”, Patel said, “The FBI’s footprint has gotten so freakin’ big.” He also criticised the FBI’s 2022 search warrant of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, which formed the basis for the case involving classified documents against the latter.
In his book ‘Government Gangsters’, Patel mentions moving the FBI headquarters out of Washington and reducing the general counsel’s office within the FBI as among the “top reforms to defeat the deep state.”
“I’d take the seven thousand employees that work in that building and send them across America to go chase down criminals,” he told Shawn Ryan.
05
Criticism of a perceived “deep state”
In ‘Government Gangsters’, Patel comes down heavily on “the deep state”, an umbrella term he uses to describe elected politicians, technology mavens, journalists and “members of the unelected bureaucracy”. He describes this as “the most dangerous threat to our democracy.” Trump undoubtedly approves, and has called this book a “blueprint to take back the White House”.
In an interview with Trump loyalist and conservative strategist Steven Bannon, Patel promised to investigate and “come after” journalists who had “lied” and “helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.”
“We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly,” he said. “We’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.”