Critics of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI have expressed doubts that he is qualified to lead the US government’s principal law enforcement agency.
Some also raised fears that Kash Patel, a marginal figure in Trump’s first administration known for his loyalty, aims to dismantle an apolitical federal security service and refashion it into a means of partisan retribution.
“Look, 99.9% of the bureau is made up of hard working agents who adhere to the principles of fidelity, bravery and integrity,” Jeff Lanza, a former FBI agent, said. “But he’s said that he’s coming in to just decimate the agency. How is that going to go well and how will that play into the morale of the agents who have to work under him?”
The FBI director leads 37,000 employees across 55 US field offices. They also oversee 350 satellite offices and more than 60 other foreign locations expected to cover almost 200 countries.
Former FBI and Department of Justice officials who spoke to BBC said the job is difficult, and it would be nearly impossible for someone like Patel, who has limited management experience, to operate effectively.
Gregory Brower, a former FBI assistant director and deputy general counsel who worked closely with the past two directors, called the job “nonstop”.
“It’s relentless. It’s high stakes. It requires expert judgment, stamina, experience, and a strong ethical and moral compass,” he told the BBC.
When he announced his pick for FBI director, Trump called Patel “a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and ‘America First’ fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People”.
Patel began his career as a federal public defender in Miami before working as a terrorism prosecutor at the Department of Justice between 2014 and 2017. He then spent two years as senior aide to Republicans who led the House Intelligence Committee, reportedly fighting the investigation of Trump and Russian collusion in the 2016 election.
When Democrats took control of the House in 2019, he was hired as a staffer on Trump’s National Security Council. In February 2020, he became principal deputy in the Office of Director of National Intelligence – then led by acting director Richard Grenell.
By November of that year, he had moved to the Pentagon to serve as chief ofstaff to Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller – a position he held until Trump left office two months later.
“Kash Patel has served in key national security positions throughout the government. He is beyond qualified to lead the FBI and will make a fantastic Director,” Alex Pfeiffer, a Trump transition spokesman, told the BBC.
Those critical of Patel cite past FBI directors, many of whom worked their way up through the justice department or FBI for decades, as a better measure of the qualifications needed to lead the agency.
“It’s certainly not like the backgrounds that we’ve seen other directors of the FBI and those who have overseen other similarly sized and important federal agencies bring to their jobs,” Brower said of Patel’s experience.
Some pointed to former US Attorney General Bill Barr’s recollection in his 2022 memoir of Trump’s attempt to place Patel in a senior FBI position in his first term to stress the point further.
“I categorically opposed making Patel deputy FBI director. I told Mark Meadows it would happen ‘over my dead body,’” he wrote. “Someone with no background as an agent would never be able to command the respect necessary to run the day-to-day operations of the bureau.”
Since leaving office, Patel has promised in interviews that, if Trump returns to office, he and others will use the government to go after political opponents – including politicians and members of the media who he alleges without evidence helped overturn the 2020 US presidential election results.
“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel told Steve Bannon, a White House chief strategist in Trump’s first term, on the War Room podcast.
“We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly. We’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice… We’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.”
Trump said during his reelection campaign that he considers Patel’s book – titled Government Gangsters – to be a “blueprint” for his next administration.
In the memoir, which criticises the so-called deep state, Patel calls for “comprehensive housecleaning” of the FBI by firing “the top ranks”.
On a recent podcast, he said the incoming Trump administration intends to retain about 50 members of the FBI’s Washington staff, and the remaining workforce would be put into the field. They would, in essence, “close that building down”, he said, referring to FBI headquarters.
“Open it up the next day as the museum to the deep state,” he added.
The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr Grenell and other former Trump administration officials who worked with Patel have praised his nomination and characterised him as a hardworking public servant.
“I have no doubt that Kash Patel will inspire our line FBI agents who want to fight crime, destroy the cartels, capture spies, and jail mobsters, thugs, fraudsters and traffickers,” Robert O’Brien, Trump’s last national security adviser, said on X.
Few, however, mentioned current FBI Director Christopher Wray, who was appointed by Trump after the then-president fired the agency’s last leader – James Comey – or that he still has three years remaining on his term.
Ultimately, it remains up to the Senate who will vote on whether Patel’s nomination will be confirmed.
While most senators have remained relatively quiet about Patel and a few Republicans have praised the pick, there is some apparent scepticism.
Senator Mike Rounds, a Republican from South Dakota, seemed to raise some doubt that he would receive the necessary votes.
“I think the president picked a very good man to be the director of the FBI when he did that in his first term,” Rounds told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.
“We’ll see what his (Trump’s) process is, and whether he actually makes that nomination,” Rounds commented about Patel. “We still go through a process, and that process includes advice and consent, which, for the Senate, means advice or consent sometimes.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, a Democrat who will soon hand his gavel to Republicans, stressed that Trump knows Wray’s term has not yet expired and called for his colleagues to block Patel’s confirmation.
“Now, the President-elect wants to replace his own appointee with an unqualified loyalist,” Durbin said in a statement. “The Senate should reject this unprecedented effort to weaponize the FBI for the campaign of retribution that Donald Trump has promised.”
