Who Is Kash Patel?

My VIP for this week is Kash Patel who was confirmed last week to be the FBI director after several weeks of delay. The vote was 51-49 with two Republican senators opposing him. No one should be surprised to learn that the two senators are Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). Fred Lucas discussed the Patel appointment in his article published at The Daily Signal. 

President Donald Trump nominated Patel to reform the FBI, which has been the subject of several whistleblower complaints in recent years and is under scrutiny for being politicized and weaponized, including for targeting parents who spoke out at school board meetings and for plans to infiltrate traditional Catholic churches.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., noted that law enforcement organizations and state attorney generals have supported Patel’s nomination….

Patel has a 16-year career in law and natural security, with both career and political positions at the Justice Department, the White House, and the Defense Department. Patel will bring needed reforms to the FBI, said Ken Cuccinelli, former Virginia attorney general and former acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in the first Trump administration.

“The FBI has been at the heart of weaponization of government,” Cuccinelli told The Daily Signal. “Putting someone in there with as much knowledge and experience as Kash Patel has is an important step forward. He’ll do a great job and will keep America protected, with a less biased FBI. There is an amazing amount to clean up there. He will never get it all cleaned up. But I think he can pick up the bureau up by the ankle and shake the change out of its pockets.”

In 2023, Patel’s book “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy” was published and detailed his critique of federal agencies, including the Justice Department and the FBI. The book was a sticking point for many Democrat senators during the confirmation process.

During the first Trump administration, Patel was chief of staff to acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller.

Before that, Patel was the deputy assistant to the president and the senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council.

While at the NSC, he helped oversee Trump policies that included eliminating the Islamic State terrorist group as well as al-Qaeda leadership such as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Qasim al-Rimi.

Patel also was the principal deputy to former acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell, who oversaw the operations of 17 intelligence agencies.

Before going to the White House, Patel was senior counsel for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence under then-Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and oversaw the investigation into the Russian active measures campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election.

The two-and-a-half-year investigation into whether Trump conspired with the Russian government to win the 2016 election was prompted by information fed to the FBI from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and Democrat operatives. The House panel and later special counsel Robert Mueller concluded there was no evidence that Trump conspired with Russia.

Patel also played a key role in the Nunes memo that showed the FBI relied on partisan “politically motivated or questionable sources” to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page.