Trump taps longtime ally Kash Patel to lead FBI — putting Christopher Wray on chopping block
By Caitlin Doornbos and Anna Young, The NY Post.com, November 30, 2024
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump has selected Kash Patel to lead the FBI, closing one of the last remaining presidentially appointed positions available two months before taking office — and putting current bureau boss Christopher Wray’s tenure on the chopping block before his term expires.
“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 wrote on Truth Social Saturday night.
“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. Kash will work under our great Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to bring back Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity to the FBI.”
The announcement comes after Trump spent years at odds with Wray, who he nominated to head the bureau in August 2017 after firing James Comey.
Patel brings a wealth of experience as a former public defender and later attorney for the US Justice Department’s national security division and served in multiple intelligence and national security roles in the president-elect’s first administration.
He’d been considered a frontrunner among the MAGA camp, who hope he can shake up the bureau and reverse its record of targeting conservatives in the Trump era.
Meet your next FBI Director, Kash Patel. pic.twitter.com/rNLsvDOoOu
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) December 1, 2024
The New York native is known for his deep loyalty to Trump — which has made him a target of the left despite serving as a National Security Council official, senior adviser to the acting Director of National Intelligence, and later, chief of staff to the acting United States secretary of defense.
Patel, who will have to earn Senate confirmation to become FBI director, was one of the leading Republicans who opposed the investigation into Trump and Russian interference in 2016, long opposing government overreach in how its federal agents surveil Republicans.
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He has written about the need to dismantle the Justice Department and do an overhaul of the intelligence agencies, including the FBI, by firing their “top ranks” and prosecuting “to the fullest extent of the law” anyone who “in any way abused their authority for political ends.”
“[T]he FBI has become so thoroughly compromised that it will remain a threat to the people unless drastic measures are taken,” Patel wrote in his book, “Government Gangsters,” which Trump lauded as a “blueprint” for his next term.
Speaking on his podcast Thursday, Patel said Trump “can expose the documents that these folks have written for decades, allowing [their] corrupt activities.
“He’s going to come in there and maybe give them the Epstein list, and maybe the P. Diddy list,” Patel added, referring to Jeffrey Epstein’s sinister sex trafficking ring and disgraced music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, who is charged in a sweeping racketeering and sex trafficking indictment.
