I see that Steven has already beaten me to it but I’ve got enough time invested in the post that I’m going to go ahead and keep it up.
WSJ (“Trump Picks Kash Patel as FBI Director“):
Donald Trump has chosen Kash Patel to be Federal Bureau of Investigation director, moving to force out the bureau’s current leader, Christopher Wray, before the end of his 10-year term in favor of a fierce loyalist who has promised to upend the nation’s premier law-enforcement agency.
His selection, which could face an uphill confirmation fight next year in the Senate, marks the start of what the president-elect hopes will be a major shake-up of an agency with which he has constantly sparred. Patel has said he would fire its senior leaders and prosecute agents he thinks abused their authority, as part of a far-ranging plan to shrink its size and power.
In a post on Truth Social on Saturday evening, Trump said Patel, 44 years old, has “spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People.” Trump said Patel will “bring back Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity to the FBI.”
[…]
The selection of Patel means Trump effectively is firing Wray, whom he appointed during his first term in 2017 after dismissing Wray’s predecessor, James Comey. And it signals other major changes lie ahead for the bureau. The president-elect has threatened to seek retribution against political rivals.
While Trump had long been considering Patel for top national-security roles, including at the FBI, his selection as director came as a surprise to some within the Justice Department. Trump had been also considering more-mainstream choices such as former Rep. Mike Rogers, who had worked as a special agent, and Chris Swecker, who worked in the bureau for 24 years, including in senior roles.
“The agents and lawyers who think they can hide in the shadows while abusing their positions will be put on immediate notice,” Patel wrote in his book “Government Gangsters.” Trump called it a “brilliant road map” for his second term in the White House.
The position, which requires Senate confirmation, would be a huge step in Patel’s rapid career ascension, which includes stints as a public defender, a federal prosecutor, a top House staffer and an aide in Trump’s first White House and Pentagon.
But his nomination could run into the same turbulence as some other Trump picks. Republicans will control the Senate, 53-47, next year and can afford no more than three defections for any nominee if all Democrats are opposed. Already, Trump’s initial attorney general selection, former Rep. Matt Gaetz, withdrew from consideration after it became clear he faced significant Republican opposition.
By tapping Patel, Trump would be pushing out Wray, the bureau’s restrained and circumspect director who has tried to steer the agency through years of political storms. In his place, he would put a swaggering campaign surrogate who has become one of the president-elect’s most trusted lieutenants. Trump would be doing so about three years before the end of Wray’s 10-year term. He seeks an ally willing to wield the bureau as a weapon against perceived enemies—including some within its ranks.
Republicans for years have accused the FBI of overzealously targeting conservatives, a charge Wray, a Republican who served as a top Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration, called “somewhat insane to me considering my own personal background.” But Patel has long articulated views that are outside the mainstream. Some inside the bureau—including those who have been critical of some of its decisions—have been dreading the prospect of Patel at its helm.
Patel, one of the FBI’s sharpest attackers, said in a September interview on the conservative podcaster Shawn Ryan’s show that he would “shut down the FBI Hoover building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state.” He suggested that the bureau had become too powerful and that he would strip it of its intelligence-gathering role and purge it of employees who refuse to go along with Trump’s agenda.
[…]
Trump’s allies have proposed FBI changes that include potentially giving political appointees at the Justice Department greater oversight of the bureau and its traditionally independent director, shrinking the size and power of its Washington headquarters and affording more resources instead to agents in the field. Some people in Trump’s orbit have suggested reviewing all of the FBI’s investigations and terminating those they find objectionable, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
[…]
Patel has long been known as an ardent booster of causes that Trump favors. As an aide to then-Rep. Devin Nunes (R., Calif.), who was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he played a leading role in attempting to discredit investigations of the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia. Patel was a primary author of a 2018 memo, released by Nunes over the objections of the FBI, that accused federal investigators of bias against Trump and his team.
Since then, Patel has been known for pushing theories on social media that echo many of Trump’s own false claims about stolen elections and Covid vaccines.
In the final year of Trump’s first term, White House advisers floated a plan to replace Wray with another official and install Patel as the FBI’s deputy director. In his memoir, former Attorney General William Barr recalled abruptly leaving a meeting that he viewed as a setup to try to have him agree to a leadership change.
NYT (“Trump Says He Will Nominate Kash Patel to Run F.B.I.“):
President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Saturday that he wants to replace Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, with Kash Patel, a hard-line critic of the bureau who has called for shutting down the agency’s Washington headquarters, firing its leadership and bringing the nation’s law enforcement agencies “to heel.”
Mr. Trump’s planned nomination of Mr. Patel has echoes of his failed attempt to place another partisan firebrand, Matt Gaetz, atop the Justice Department as attorney general. It could run into hurdles in the Senate, which will be called on to confirm him, and is sure to send shock waves through the F.B.I., which Mr. Trump and his allies have come to view as part of a “deep state” conspiracy against him.
Mr. Patel has been closely aligned with Mr. Trump’s belief that much of the nation’s law enforcement and national security establishment needs to be purged of bias and held accountable for what they see as unjustified investigations and prosecutions of Mr. Trump and his allies.
[…]
In declaring well before being sworn into office that he wants a new director, Mr. Trump was pushing Mr. Wray to resign before he is fired.
“This is firing the F.B.I. director,” said one law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.
“It is extremely dangerous to have a change in an F.B.I. director just after a change in administration,” the official said, referring to the longstanding policy of keeping the cycle for appointments of a director separate from the presidential election cycle and partisan politics.
[…]
Current and former law enforcement officials have worried that a second Trump term would feature an assault on the independence and authority of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, and for many of them, Mr. Patel’s ascension to the director’s role would confirm the worst of those fears.
Mr. Patel laid out his vision for wreaking vengeance on the F.B.I. and Justice Department in a book, “Government Gangsters,” calling for clearing out the top ranks of the bureau, which he called “a threat to the people.” He also wrote a children’s book, “The Plot Against the King,” telling through fantasy the story of the investigations into Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign’s possible ties to Russians.
He has vowed to investigate and possibly prosecute journalists once he is back in government, adding that he would “follow the facts and the law.”
“Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you,” he said last year. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”
AP (“Trump taps Kash Patel for FBI director, an ally who would aid in his effort to upend law enforcement“):
President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate 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.
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.
[…]
The decision sets up what’s likely to be an explosive confirmation battle in the Senate not long after Trump’s first pick to lead the Justice Department, Matt Gaetz, withdrew his nomination amid intense scrutiny over sex trafficking allegations. Patel is a lesser-known figure, but his nomination was still expected to cause shockwaves. He’s embraced Trump’s rhetoric about a “deep state,” called for a “comprehensive housecleaning” of government workers who are disloyal to Trump and has referred to journalists as traitors, promising to try to prosecute some reporters.
[…]
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.
[…]
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.”
This is an awful appointment and one that the Senate should handily reject.
I will disagree with Steven in that, in my judgment, Patel is qualified by experience for the job. He isn’t a former FBI agent and, indeed, has no experience in law enforcement. But that’s been true of several previous directors. Still, he has a criminal justice degree and a law degree. He then worked eight years as a public defender—which is actually quite a feather in his cap for this role—before moving on to the Justice Department. His experience on the House Intelligence Committee staff, as principal deputy to the acting Director of National Intelligence, and as chief of staff to the acting Secretary of Defense provides him unique insights into interagency and intergovernmental processes. Further, they constitute sufficient executive experience to believe he can manage a large organization.
Alas, his many public statements—including those in his books, which one can safely presume are not off-the-cuff— highlighted above make him unsuited by temperament for the job. The most benign of them—the accusations that its investigators are corrupt members of a Deep State—makes it impossible for him to lead the Bureau. Literally calling them “gangsters” is vile, indeed. His threats to prosecute journalists are the stuff of fascism.
Further, I agree with critics who believe firing Wray sends a dangerous signal. Even more so than the Attorney General, the FBI Director is not supposed to be a crony of the President but rather an independent actor. That’s why the post comes with a ten-year appointment. Only two Directors have ever been fired before the completion of their terms: Judge William Sessions, fired by Bill Clinton in 1993 amidst allegations of personal ethics violations (and with the stink of the Ruby Ridge and Waco fiascos on him), and James Comey, who was fired by Trump in 2017 while the Bureau was investigating the Trump team’s relationship with Russia during the 2016 campaign. This case is much more like the latter than the former.
