Donald Trump is making perhaps his most controversial personnel move yet.
On Saturday, the president-elect announced he intends to nominate Kash Patel to be FBI director. Patel, a former public defender, prosecutor, congressional staffer, and bureaucrat in the first Trump administration, is a firebrand figure: A hardcore Trump loyalist, he has called for fundamentally restructuring the bureau from an intentionally apolitical agency to enforcer of the president’s agenda.
Nominating Patel at all is notable: The current FBI director, Christopher Wray, still has years left in his term. Wray became director after Trump fired another head of the bureau, James Comey, in 2017. The decision to replace Wray with Patel is yet another sign Trump is serious about transforming the federal government in the coming years. While several Republicans have already backed him, Patel could face a challenging confirmation battle in the Senate.
“I’d shut down the FBI Hoover building on day one and reopen the next day as a museum of the deep state,” Patel said on the “Shawn Ryan Show” podcast earlier this year. “And I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals.”
“We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media. 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. Whether it's criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out,” Trump’s FBI pick previously told Steve Bannon on “War Room.”
Watch to see more of Patel’s comments.
