Posted on 11/30/24
| News Source: NBC News
President-elect Donald Trump announced Saturday he would pick Kash Patel, the former chief of staff to to the acting secretary of defense during the first Trump administration, to serve as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
"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 wrote in a post to Truth Social, arguing Patel would "bring back Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity to the FBI."
Patel, who will have to earn Senate confirmation to become FBI director, has earned a reputation as the ultimate Trump loyalist who has called for a purge of perceived enemies in the Justice Department and intelligence agencies.
A former public defender who rose to increasingly senior national security posts in the final year of Trump’s first term, Patel has promoted the falsehood that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump as well as baseless claims that federal bureaucrats in the “deep state” tried to overthrow the former president.
Patel has called for replacing “anti-democratic” civil servants in law enforcement and intelligence with “patriots” who he says will work for the American people, and in his memoir described the current political moment as “a battle between the people and a corrupt ruling class."
“The Deep State is an unelected cabal of tyrants who think they should determine who Americans can and cannot elect as president, who think they get to decide what the president can and cannot do, and who believe they have the right to choose what the American people can and cannot know,” Patel wrote in "Government Gangsters."