On Thursday, the United States Senate narrowly confirmed Kash Patel to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Patel is a loyalist to President Donald Trump who has frequently expressed a desire to use the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI to target the commander-in-chief’s political opponents.
Every Democratic and independent senator — plus two Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — voted against Patel. In a statement before the vote, Collins said she couldn’t support Patel’s nomination because he wasn’t an “apolitical” choice to lead the agency.
“Mr. Patel’s recent political profile undermines his ability to serve,” Collins said.
Despite bipartisan opposition against him, the remaining 51 Republican senators backed Patel to lead the FBI, thereby confirming him.
Patel has previously worked as a DOJ attorney, a congressional staffer, chief of staff for the Department of Defense, and as a counterterrorism adviser within the National Security Council during Trump’s first term. He has frequently promulgated conspiracy theories, including those falsely alleging that a “deep state” is working against Trump.
Following his confirmation vote, Patel wrote on social media that he would use his position to go after “those who seek to harm Americans” and to pursue an agenda that he described as “America always.”
“We will hunt you down in every corner of this planet,” he said, directing his statement to a vague set of “enemies,” which, in his past statements, have included those in opposition to Trump.
Patel has a long history of controversy throughout his career.
While working in the government, for example, he broke protocol by publicly commenting “without authorization” on a hostage negotiation regarding two Americans being held captive in Yemen, an incident that could have cost those individuals their lives, experts said.
Patel’s loyalty to Trump seems to have no bounds. He falsely claimed, for example, that Trump, as an outgoing president, was allowed to transfer hundreds of classified documents to his personal, unsecured Mar-a-Lago property, citing the Presidential Records Act. The law does not give ex-presidents that authority.
“When you’re president and you leave, you can take whatever you want. And when you take it, whether it’s classified or not, it’s yours,” Patel claimed in 2023.
Patel also wrote a series of children’s books called “The Plot Against the King,” featuring a character that looked and acted like Trump. (Notably, Trump described himself as a “king” in a social media post earlier this week.)
And in a 2022 book entitled “Government Gangsters,” Patel listed dozens of individuals, mostly Democratic Party officials or figures who otherwise opposed Trump, who he believed should be targeted by a future Trump administration. Many experts have described the list as Patel’s “enemies list.”
Questioned on these and other controversies during his nomination hearing before the Senate, Patel largely avoided answering at all.
Critics lambasted Senate Republicans for pushing through Patel’s nomination.
“We cannot give Trump’s henchmen the benefit of the doubt — especially when they’re in full control of federal law enforcement. … Patel’s confirmation puts our basic rights and national security at risk,” said Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin.
Joyce Vance, a former U.S. Attorney who is currently a law professor at the University of Alabama, noted that “Patel’s primary qualification for the job is his loyalty to Donald Trump.”
She added:
Now that we have a president who rejects a rule of law system of government, anyone could find themself beyond the due process protections the law gives us from unjust treatment. Only the courts and Congress can check the president, and they must be willing to do so. The Senate failed at that today when they confirmed Kash Patel.
Maya Wiley, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, also condemned Patel’s confirmation, recognizing that Patel would likely carry on the FBI’s long tradition of weaponizing investigations.
“As a civil rights community, we know firsthand what it was like to have an ideological FBI that surveilled and infiltrated the civil rights movement and its leaders — most notably through its COINTELPRO operation that famously and shamefully targeted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., student activists, and people fighting poverty,” Wiley said. “Name-calling, driving fear, and targeting the victims of crimes because of their viewpoints is a dark part of our past. We cannot allow it to again become our reality.”
“Based on Mr. Patel’s record and what we have already seen at the FBI in recent weeks, it is clear that the agenda of this administration is to seek retribution against perceived foes and target vulnerable communities,” Wiley added.
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