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President-elect Donald Trump has said he will appoint Kash Patel, a loyalist and hardline critic of the “deep state”, to lead the FBI, signalling he will seek to remove Christopher Wray as head of the agency.
Patel, who advised the secretary of defence under Trump’s previous administration, has suggested carving out the FBI’s intelligence-gathering function and purging its ranks of employees who do not support Trump. He has also mused about retribution against Trump’s critics.
“I am proud to announce that Kashyap ‘Kash’ Patel will serve as the next Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Trump wrote on his social media website, Truth Social, on Saturday night.
“Kash is a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and ‘America First’ fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People.”
“This FBI will end the growing crime epidemic in America, dismantle the migrant criminal gangs, and stop the evil scourge of human and drug trafficking across the Border,” Trump added.
A longtime Trump loyalist, Patel has also worked as a federal prosecutor and public defender, but does not have as broad a law enforcement experience as many FBI directors.
He has railed against an alleged “two tier system of justice” he has claimed is “the deep state’s weapon of choice”. The federal criminal case that accused Trump of mishandling classified documents was “the best definition” of such a system, Patel told rightwing podcaster Shawn Ryan earlier this year.
The DoJ is seeking to drop the case, which was dismissed by a federal judge, due to an internal policy that bars prosecution of a sitting president.
In a podcast hosted by Trump ally Stephen Bannon late last year, Patel vowed to investigate and “come after” journalists who “lied” and “helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.”
“Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out,” Patel told Bannon.
In his book Government Gangsters, Patel outlined a list of “top reforms to defeat the deep state” — the supposed permanent government of left-leaning bureaucrats that Trump and his allies believe worked against his first administration.
“The FBI’s footprint has gotten so freaking big, and the biggest problem the FBI has had has come out of its intel shops,” Patel told Ryan. “I’d break that component out of it”.
Patel also vowed to “shut down” the FBI’s historic headquarters in Washington “on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state’”.
He would also “take the 7000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals,” Patel said. “Go be cops, you’re cops”.
Before joining the administration during Trump’s first term, Patel worked as a staff member for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence under Republican congressman Devin Nunes, helping run the committee’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign.
Trump’s effort to place Patel at the head of the US’s premier law enforcement agency will require Senate confirmation.
Trump appointed sitting FBI director Christoper Wray in 2017, and his term does not expire until 2027. Trump has been openly critical of Wray, particularly after law enforcement officials searched his residence in search of classified documents.
A spokesperson for the FBI said that Wray’s “focus remains on the men and women of the FBI, the people we do the work with, and the people we do the work for.”
“Every day, the men and women of the FBI continue to work to protect Americans from a growing array of threats,” the spokesperson added.
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