Trump names loyalist Kash Patel to serve as FBI director

WASHINGTON (AP) —

President-elect Donald Trump has picked Kash Patel to serve as FBI director, turning to a fierce loyalist 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.”

The child of Indian immigrants and a former public defender, Patel 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.

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

“As DEA Administrator, Chad will work with our great Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to secure the Border, stop the flow of Fentanyl, and other Illegal Drugs, across the Southern Border, and SAVE LIVES,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social announcing the pick.

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Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report.

Eric Tucker And Alan Suderman, The Associated Press