Trump taps Kash Patel for FBI director, a loyalist who would aid effort to upend law enforcement

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Kash Patel to serve as FBI director, turning to a fierce ally to upend America’s premier law enforcement agency and rid the government of perceived “conspirators.” It’s the latest bombshell Trump has thrown at the Washington establishment and a test for how far Senate Republicans will go in confirming his nominees.

“I am proud to announce that Kashyap ‘Kash’ Patel will serve as the next Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Trump posted Saturday night on Truth Social. “Kash is a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and ‘America First’ fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People.”

The selection is in keeping with Trump’s view that the government’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies require a radical transformation and his stated desire for retribution against supposed adversaries. It shows how Trump, still fuming over years of federal investigations that shadowed his first administration and later led to his indictment, is moving to place atop the FBI and Justice Department close allies he believes will protect rather than scrutinize him.

Patel “played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution,” Trump wrote Saturday night.

It remains unclear whether Patel could be confirmed, even by a Republican-led Senate, though Trump has also raised the prospect of using recess appointments to push his selections through.

Patel would replace Christopher Wray, who was appointed by Trump in 2017 but quickly fell out of favor with the president and his allies. Though the position carries a 10-year term, Wray’s removal was not unexpected given Trump’s long-running public criticism of him and the FBI, including after a search of his Florida’s property for classified documents and two investigations that resulted in his indictment.

Patel’s past proposals, if carried out, would lead to convulsive change for an agency tasked not only with investigating violations of federal law but also protecting the country from terrorist attacks, foreign espionage and other threats.

He’s called for dramatically reducing the FBI’s footprint, a perspective that dramatically sets him apart from earlier directors who have sought additional resources for the bureau, and has suggested closing down the bureau’s headquarters in Washington and “reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state” — Trump’s pejorative catch-all for the federal bureaucracy.

And though the Justice Department in 2021 halted the practice of secretly seizing reporters’ phone records during leak investigation, Patel has said he intends to aggressively hunt down government officials who leak information to reporters and change the law to make it easier to sue journalists.

During an interview with Steve Bannon last December, Patel said he and others “will go out and find the conspirators not just in government but in the media.”

“We’re 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 presidential election in which Biden, the Democratic challenger, defeated Trump. “We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly. We’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.”

Trump also announced Saturday that he would nominate Sheriff Chad Chronister, the top law enforcement officer in Hillsborough County, Florida, to serve as the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Chronister is another Florida Republican named to Trump’s administration. He has worked for the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office since 1992 and became the top law enforcement officer in Hillsborough County 2017. He also worked closely with Trump’s choice for attorney general, Pam Bondi.

Patel, the child of Indian immigrants and a former public defender, spent several years as a Justice Department prosecutor before catching the Trump administration’s attention as a staffer for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

The panel’s then-chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., was a strong Trump ally who tasked Patel with running the committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. Patel ultimately helped author what became known as the “Nunes Memo,” a four-page report that detailed how it said the Justice Department had erred in obtaining a warrant to surveil a former Trump campaign volunteer. The memo’s release faced vehement opposition from Wray and the Justice Department, who warned that it would be reckless to disclose sensitive information.

A subsequent inspector general report identified significant problems with FBI surveillance during the Russia investigation, but also found no evidence that the FBI had acted with partisan motives in conducting the probe and said there had been a legitimate basis to open the inquiry.

The Russia investigation fueled Patel’s suspicions of the FBI, the intelligence community and also the media, which he has called “the most powerful enemy the United States has ever seen.” Seizing on compliance errors in the FBI’s use of a spy program that officials say is vital for national security, Patel has accused the FBI of having “weaponized” its surveillance powers against innocent Americans.

Patel parlayed that work into influential administration roles on the National Security Council and later as chief of staff to acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller.

He continued as a loyal Trump lieutenant even after he left office, accompanying the president-elect into court during his criminal trial in New York and asserting to reporters that Trump was the victim of a “constitutional circus.”

In addition to his 2023 memoir, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” Patel has published two children’s books that lionize Trump. “The Plot Against the King” features a thinly veiled Hillary Clinton as the villain going after “King Donald,” while Kash, a wizard called the Distinguished Discoverer, exposes a nefarious plot.

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Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report.