Trump is choosing Kash Patel as FBI director, an ally who would help him in his efforts to overhaul law enforcement

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump has named Kash Patel as FBI director, turning to a fierce ally to upend America’s top law enforcement agency and rid the government of alleged “conspirators.” It’s the latest bombshell Trump has dropped on the Washington establishment and a test of how far Senate Republicans will go in confirming his nominees.

The choice is consistent with Trump’s view that the government’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies need radical change and his stated desire for retaliation against perceived opponents. It shows how Trump, still angry over the years-long federal investigation that shadowed his first administration and later led to his indictment, is moving to put close allies he believes at the helm of the FBI and Justice Department , that they protect him instead of testing him.

Patel “played a critical role in exposing the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax and stood as a champion of truth, accountability and the Constitution,” Trump wrote in a social media post Saturday evening.

Patel’s nomination sets off a likely explosive confirmation fight in the Senate, just days after Trump’s first nominee to lead the Justice Department, Matt Gaetz, withdrew his nomination amid intense scrutiny of sex trafficking allegations.

Patel is a lesser-known figure, but his nomination was expected to cause a stir. He has embraced Trump’s rhetoric about a “deep state,” called for a “comprehensive purge” of government officials disloyal to Trump and called journalists traitors and vowed to prosecute some reporters.

Trump’s nominees will have allies in a Republican-controlled Senate next year, but his pick is not certain to be confirmed. With a narrow majority, Republicans have few defections to lose in the face of expected Democratic opposition – although JD Vance, as vice president, would be able to break any tie votes.

But the president-elect had also vowed to push through his picks without Senate approval, exploiting a loophole in Congress that allows him to make appointments when the Senate is not in session.

Patel would replace Christopher Wray, who was appointed by Trump in 2017 but quickly fell out of favor with the president and his allies. FBI directors serve 10-year terms designed to protect them from political influence.

His removal is not unexpected given Trump’s long history of public criticism of him and the FBI, particularly in the wake of federal investigations – and an FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago estate for classified documents two years ago – , which led to charges that are now on the verge of evaporating.

In his final months in office, Trump unsuccessfully pushed the idea of ​​installing Patel as deputy director of either the FBI or CIA to strengthen the president’s control over the intelligence community. William Barr, Trump’s attorney general, wrote in his memoirs that he told then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that appointing Patel as FBI deputy director would be “over my dead body.”

“Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him for service at the highest levels of the world’s premier law enforcement agency,” Barr wrote.

Patel’s previous proposals, if implemented, would usher in seismic changes to an agency tasked not only with investigating violations of federal law but also with protecting the country from terrorist attacks, foreign espionage and other threats.

He is calling for a drastic reduction in the agency’s footprint, a perspective that sets him dramatically apart from previous directors who have sought additional resources for the office, and has proposed closing the office’s headquarters in Washington and “calling it the next day.” “To reopen the office museum”. “Deep State” – Trump’s derogatory collective term for the federal bureaucracy.

And although the Justice Department in 2021 ended the practice of secretly seizing reporters’ phone records during leak investigations, Patel has said he intends to aggressively pursue government officials who leak information to reporters and change the law to to make it easier to sue journalists.

During an interview with Steve Bannon last December, Patel said that he and others “will go out and find the conspirators not only in the government but in the media.”

“We will go after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig the presidential election,” Patel said, referring to the 2020 presidential election in which Biden, the Democratic challenger, defeated Trump . We will pursue you, whether criminally or civilly. But yeah, we’re making you all aware.”

Trump also announced Saturday that he would nominate Sheriff Chad Chronister, the top law enforcement officer in Hillsborough County, Florida, to be administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Chronister is another Florida Republican appointed to Trump’s administration. He has worked for the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office since 1992 and was named Hillsborough County’s top law enforcement officer in 2017. He also worked closely with Pam Bondi, Trump’s nominee for attorney general.

Patel, the child of Indian immigrants and a former public defender, served as a prosecutor in the Justice Department for several years before coming to the attention of the Trump administration as a staffer on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

The panel’s then-chairman, California Rep. Devin Nunes, was a strong Trump ally and tapped Patel to lead the committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election campaign. Patel ultimately helped write the so-called “Nunes Memo,” a four-page report , which detailed how the Justice Department made a mistake when it obtained a search warrant to surveil a former Trump campaign aide. The release of the memo was met with strong opposition from Wray and the Justice Department, who warned that it would be reckless to reveal sensitive information.

A later inspector general report found significant problems in FBI surveillance during the Russia investigation, but also found no evidence that the FBI had acted with partisan motives in conducting the investigation and concluded that there was a legitimate basis for opening the investigation.

The Russia investigation fueled Patel’s distrust of the FBI, the intelligence community and also the media, which he described as “the most powerful enemy the United States has ever seen.” Patel cited compliance failures in the FBI’s use of a spying program that officials say is critical to national security, accusing the FBI of “weaponizing” its surveillance powers against innocent Americans.

Patel parlayed this work into influential administrative roles on the National Security Council and later as chief of staff to acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller.

He remained a loyal Trump lieutenant after leaving office, accompanying the president-elect to court during his criminal trial in New York and assuring reporters that Trump was the victim of a “constitutional circus.”

Since leaving the administration, Patel has been embroiled in Trump’s legal troubles, appearing two years ago before a federal grand jury investigating Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida – a matter that Trump was later convicted of was accused.

Typically, although not always, presidents retain the director they inherited: President Joe Biden, for example, kept Wray in office even though the director was appointed by Trump, and former President Barack Obama even asked Robert Mueller to stay in office for two more years to remain despite Mueller being taken over by Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush.

Trump had openly flirted with firing Wray during his first term and took issue with Wray’s emphasis on Russia’s election interference threat at a time when Trump was focused on China. He also described Antifa, an umbrella term for left-wing militants, as an ideology rather than an organization, contradicting Trump, who wants to label them a terrorist group.

The reserved Wray was determined to bring stability to an institution torn by turmoil after Trump fired James Comey in May 2017 amid an FBI investigation into possible ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Wray attempted to clear up some of the controversies of Comey’s time in office. For example, the FBI fired a senior agent in the Russia investigation who sent derogatory text messages about Trump during the investigation, and sidelined a deputy director under Comey who was a key figure in the investigation. Wray also announced dozens of corrective actions to prevent some of the surveillance abuses that marred the Russia investigation.

The FBI has worked to protect Trump this year after multiple assassination attempts and foiled an Iranian assassination plot against the president-elect that led to the dismissal of criminal charges in November.

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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York and Fatima Hussein in West Palm Beach, Florida, contributed to this report.