WASHINGTON — Kash Patel has earned the endorsement of key Republican senators in the days since President-elect Donald Trump picked him to lead the FBI, a move that has put a spotlight on Patel’s pledges to wield the federal agency against Trump’s enemies within the government, politics and the media.
The current FBI director, Christopher Wray, was appointed to a 10-year term by Trump in 2017, but can be fired or choose to resign before Trump takes office in January. The president-elect and his Republican allies have promised a major overhaul of the Department of Justice, including the FBI, in response to years of federal investigations into Trump — including the two criminal cases brought by a special prosecutor, an FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in 2022 and the probe into his 2016 campaign’s connections to Russia.
Patel has echoed Trump’s promises to prosecute and imprison political enemies and has publicly detailed how a second Trump administration could purge the government of the “deep state,” including with a list of so-called members in his 2023 book “Government Gangsters.” Among his targets were top Democrats, current and former leaders of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, lower-level staffers involved in investigations in and around the 2016 election, “the entire fake news mafia press corps,” and former Trump staffers and allies who had defected.
“The agents and lawyers who think they can hide in the shadows while abusing their positions will be put on immediate notice,” Patel wrote of the FBI and the Department of Justice in his book. “Those people must be held accountable. The next president must fire the top ranks of the FBI. Then, all those who manipulated evidence, hid exculpatory information, or in any way abused their authority for political ends must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
The Senate would have to confirm Patel to the position and, with Democrats expected to be universally opposed, the slim Republican majority can afford only a few defections. Wray was appointed by Trump and confirmed in the Senate by a 92-5 vote in August 2017 after the then-president fired his predecessor, James Comey.
“He represents the type of change we need to see in the FBI,” Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty said on NBC News “Meet the Press” on Sunday, adding he “encouraged” Trump to place Patel at the FBI.
"There are serious problems at the FBI. The American public knows it. They expect to see sweeping change and Kash Patel is just the type of person to do it," Hagerty added.
South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Utah Sen. Mike Lee, Florida Sen. Rick Scott, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville and Ohio Senator-elect Bernie Moreno also expressed their support publicly on Sunday or Monday. Cruz, Cotton, Blackburn and Lee are currently members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will be tasked with recommending Patel to the broader chamber. House Speaker Mike Johnson also praised Patel as “an America First patriot” and said he “will bring much-needed change and transparency to the FBI.”
And Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the 91-year-old expected to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee next year, wrote Wray “failed at fundamental duties” and that it was time for a new era of transparency and accountability at the FBI. He added that Patel “must prove to Congress he will reform” the FBI and “restore public trust.”
While Democratic lawmakers have begun to express support for, or a willingness to work with, some of Trump’s nominees for his next administration, Patel has earned only denouncements from the other side of the aisle. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the current chair of the Judiciary Committee, warned Patel is “an unqualified loyalist” who was there to lead an “unprecedented effort to weaponize the FBI for the campaign of retribution that Donald Trump has promised.”
California Rep. Adam Schiff, an incoming freshman senator, wrote that Patel was “willing to do whatever Trump asks. Illegal, unethical or otherwise” and urged his future colleagues to reject Patel’s nomination.
Patel, a longtime Trump loyalist who worked in intelligence and defense roles during his first administration, has signaled through interviews and public statements a determination to upend the FBI and radically reshape its mission.
He’s called for dramatically reducing its footprint and limiting its authority, as well as going after government officials who disclose information to reporters.
In an interview earlier this year on the “Shawn Ryan Show,” Patel vowed to sever the FBI’s intelligence-gathering activities from the rest of its mission and said he would “shut down” the bureau’s headquarters building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., and “reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state.’”
“And I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to go chase down criminals,” he added.
In a separate interview with conservative strategist Steve Bannon, 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.”
Attorney General Bill Barr, a lifelong Republican who was Trump’s attorney general for two years, wrote in his 2022 book that Trump wanted to make Patel deputy FBI director during his first term, but Barr “categorically opposed” the move. Barr cited Patel’s lack of law enforcement experience and experience running anything close to the size of the FBI’s 35,000-person agency.
“The very idea of moving Patel into a role like this showed a shocking detachment from reality,” Barr wrote.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.