President Donald Trump announced Saturday he would be nominating Kash Patel, a former National Security Council official in the first Trump administration with posts with the Director of National Intelligence and Pentagon, as the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations.
The announcement is an explicit indication that Trump intends to sack incumbent FBI chief, Christopher Wray, who has roughly three years left in his 10-year term.
Driving the news: Patel, once a Miami-Dade County public defender and Federal defender, has become an active combatant against institutional failings and abuse at the nexus of law enforcement and national security.
- During the course of the 2024 campaign, Patel was an active and loud advocate for Trump’s return to the Oval Office, serving as a critical surrogate in the waning months of the campaign.
- Patel has publicly expressed strong opinions about bureaucracy and corruption within the government, and has authored a book titled “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy.”
The backstory: Patel came to notoriety in 2018 as a top intelligence aide to then-House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R–Tulare) when Nunes issued a memorandum detailing widespread abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI in surveilling the 2016 Trump campaign for ties to Russia.
- After Democrats took control of the House of Representatives, Patel would be hired onto the National Security Council staff. He would later serve as senior advisor to acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell and later chief of staff to acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller.
What he’s saying: “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 said in his announcement.
