What To Know About Kash Patel, Trump’s Pick To Lead The FBI

LOADING ERROR LOADING Kash Patel has called for radical changes at the FBI and was a fierce and vocal critic of the bureau’s work as it investigated ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. 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 seven thousand 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. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.” A loud critic of the FBI’s Russia investigation Patel first came to prominence in Trump’s orbit as an outspoken critic of the FBI’s investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Even as Trump was said to be considering more conventional picks for the job whose confirmation prospects were seen as more certain, some conservative backers of the president-elect actively boosted Patel’s candidacy and disparaged other potential selections, including Mike Rogers, a former FBI agent and ex-Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee.