Kash Patel: Demolition Man

TILL HOMELAND SECURITY came along in 2002 the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was the 800-pound gorilla in the US security-intel­ligence complex. At 37 years (48 if we count his tenure as director of the Bureau of Investigation), J Edgar Hoover had been at the helm for far too long. Things were bound to be rotten in the Hoover Building. And we are not talking about swamp gas. The demolition/ rebuilding/ swapping/ sale of the FBI’s head­quarters has been on the cards since 2011 but didn’t go anywhere fast because the Senate and the House didn’t see eye-to-eye. A year ago, a site was reportedly selected for the new HQ but Director Christopher Wray got in the way.

Both Wray, appointed by Donald Trump in his first presidential term and excommunicated when that trust was betrayed, and the ghost of Hoover will be out if Trump’s appointee for director gets congressional approval. For, there are few who have been as uninhibited in voicing their distaste for 935 Pennsylvania Avenue and its occupants as Kashyap ‘Kash’ Pramod Patel, who was reportedly targeted by Iranian hackers as soon as his name was announced.

Born around 1980 on Long Island to Gujarati parents from East Africa, Patel had begun as a public defender in Florida before moving to the Justice Department’s National Security Division as a prosecutor in 2014. He came to Trump’s serious attention as a senior aide to Devin Nunes, then chair of the House Intelligence Committee, and is believed to be the principal author of the 2018 ‘Nunes memo’, a secret report accusing the FBI of illegalities in investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Patel went to the White House as a staffer in the National Security Council in February 2019. In July, Trump created a post—senior director of the Counterterrorism Directorate—for him. Still unknown to most Republicans, let alone Americans, the mystique of ‘the Wizard’ had begun.

There were rumours of clandestine trips (to Syria) and allegations of acting as a backchannel for Trump, long before his appointment as chief of staff to then Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher C Miller in November 2020. Trump had kept his eyes on Patel for CIA or FBI director for his inevitable second coming. But what had got many Trump advisers’ goat was Patel’s unveiling as a Ukraine expert by the president. A prime vocaliser of the stolen election scream, Patel didn’t wither in the wilderness after January 2021. Selling Trump merchandise under the logotype ‘K$H’ or running a non-profit to help January 6 defendants, he never failed to reiterate his connection to Trump. On the board of Trump Media and Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, he has reportedly earned $120,000 a year. But his fealty perhaps came out best in his (children’s) books. In The Plot Against the King, for example, good King Donald is pursued by the evil Hillary Queenton. On a more serious note, Patel’s 2023 memoir Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy was touted by Trump as a “roadmap” for ending the reign of the Deep State. It is Patel’s own blueprint for the FBI, and all 800-pound gorillas to be laid to rest.

“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel had told Steve Bannon, the former White House strategist recently released from jail, who made a movie out of Government Gangsters. The role of ‘political executioner’ is Patel’s true calling. He wants to retain about 50 Washington staffers of the FBI and send the rest of them out as field agents, doing police work, the Bureau’s own original mandate without a role in domestic intelligence. The Hoover Building will be closed down and reopened “the next day as a museum to the deep state.” Doubters and disbelievers question Patel’s qualifications given his lack of managerial experience. Defenders point to his earlier stint inside the security-intelligence tent. Policemen like to be led by true policemen, such as a director coming up the ranks.

Trump is messaging and testing the waters with his picks for the law enforcement troika of FBI, DEA and Attorney General, as with Tulsi Gabbard, his nominee for director of national intelligence. Nobody can deny the Bureau needs reform and restructuring. MAGA loyalist Patel is either the best man for the job. Or the worst.

Donald TrumpFBI directorKash Patelreformer