What to know about Kash Patel, Trump’s FBI director
FBI Director Kash Patel announced Friday his office had arrested a Milwaukee judge who allegedly helped an undocumented immigrant evade arrest in her courthouse.
The big picture: Patel is a Trump loyalist who has flirted with the QAnon conspiracy theory and has embraced Trump’s call use law enforcement against political enemies.
- Patel vowed last year to target members of the media and government officials during a second Trump administration, saying on Steve Bannon’s podcast, “We will go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media.”
- He has drawn criticism recently — including from among Trump’s base — for spending his time jet-setting to hockey games and UFC matches rather than running day-to-day operations at the FBI.
The latest: Patel said Judge Hannah Dugan had been charged with obstruction, but quickly deleted his X post announcing her arrest.
Here’s what to know about Patel.
Kash Patel’s background
Patel is the child of Indian immigrants, the AP reports, and is described in his Defense Department biography as a “native of New York.”
- He attended the University of Richmond for his undergraduate studies and received his law degree from Pace University in New York after completing a certificate in international law at the University College London Faculty of Laws.
He began his career as a public defender in Florida.
- In a Saturday Truth Social post announcing his intent to nominate Patel, Trump wrote that his pick had “tried over 60 jury trials.”
Friction point: The New York Times reported that colleagues from his time in the Sunshine State recalled he held deep animosity for Justice Department prosecutors. And Michael Caruso, who led the Southern District of Florida office at the time, said Patel avoided filing motions he would likely lose.
- But Patel continued to climb through the legal ranks, becoming a terrorism prosecutor at the Justice Department.
Catching Trump’s eye
As a staffer for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, he was tasked with spearheading the panel’s investigation into Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential election at the direction of then-chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).
- He was a key actor in Nunes and House Republicans’ efforts to undermine the investigation into Russian influence.
- Patel also assisted in writing a charged memo that accused FBI and DOJ officials of bias against Trump and abuse of their surveillance powers when spying on a former campaign adviser, Axios reported in 2019.
The intrigue: He was the primary author of the “Nunes memo” — a role that impressed Trump, who ordered the staffer be given a post with the National Security Council, the Times reported.
- The memo alleged that the Steele dossier played “an essential part” in justifying the surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in the Russia investigation.
- The FBI, in a rare public statement, expressed at the time “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”
Flashback: In an endorsement promoting the 2023 book, Trump is quoted as saying he will “use this blueprint to help us take back the White House and remove these Gangsters from all of Government!”
- Patel named a list of “deep state” officials to target in his book.
Patel’s role in Trump’s first administration
Patel served on the National Security Council toward the end of the Trump’s first term, becoming chief of staff to then-acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller.
As a senior NSC official, Patel was accused of running a covert backchannel to Trump on Ukraine matters — but he denied ever discussing Ukraine with the then-president.
- Both Fiona Hill, Trump’s former top Russia adviser, and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, then the NSC’s top Ukraine expert, mentioned Patel in their testimonies to impeachment investigators.
- Hill alleged she heard Trump thought Patel was his Ukraine director (he was not) and that Patel was moving Ukraine-related “materials” outside of normal channels.
When Trump reportedly considered making Patel deputy director of the FBI, then-Attorney General Bill Barr told then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that Patel would only achieve the post “over my dead body,” Barr wrote in his memoir.
- Ex-CIA Director Gina Haspel also threatened to resign in December 2020 over Trump’s plan to make Patel her deputy.
Charity and children’s books
In the years since the first Trump administration, Patel has repeatedly promoted the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen and that “deep state” bureaucrats were out to get Trump.
- In an interview on the “Shawn Ryan Show” earlier this year, Patel said he would “shut down” the FBI headquarters building in D.C. and “reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state.'”
He launched “Fight with Kash,” an organization to fund defamation lawsuits, shortly after Trump left office, per the AP. The group has since been rebranded as The Kash Foundation, a nonprofit formed to support whistleblowers, among other purposes.
- But inconsistencies and vague language in media interviews that contrasted with IRS reporting raised eyebrows about the work his charity was doing.
Beyond the book he published last year, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” Patel also penned a series of children’s books titled “Plot Against the King.” Spoiler alert — Trump is the “king.”
- He cast himself as a wizard: “Kash the Distinguished Discoverer.”
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Editor’s note: This story was updated with additional developments.
