Trump’s FBI chief pick, Kash Patel, says the bureau has lost trust and he’s the one to restore it

WASHINGTON (AP) — Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, portrayed himself Thursday as the right leader of a law enforcement agency he said had lost public trust and told senators he would commit himself to “due process and transparency” if confirmed as director.

At his confirmation hearing, Patel braced for deeply skeptical questioning from Senate Democrats about his loyalty to the president and stated desire to overhaul the bureau. He is a Trump loyalist who, before being nominated to lead the FBI, railed against the bureau over its investigations into the president and claimed that Jan. 6 rioters were mistreated by the Justice Department

Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the FBI is critical in keeping America safe from terrorism, violent crime and other threats, and the nation “needs an FBI director who understands the gravity of this mission and is ready on day one, not someone who is consumed by his own personal political grievances.”

Patel was picked in November to replace Christopher Wray, who led the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency for more than seven years but was forced out of the job Trump had appointed him to after being seen as insufficiently loyal to him.

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A former aide to the House Intelligence Committee and an ex-federal prosecutor who served in Trump’s first administration, Patel has alarmed critics with rhetoric — in dozens of podcasts and books he has authored — in which he has demonstrated fealty to Trump and assailed the decision-making of the agency he’s now been asked to lead. He’s also identified by name officials he believes should be investigated.

In one such podcast interview last year, he said that if he were in charge of the FBI, he would “shut down” the bureau’s headquarters building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington and “reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state.’”

“And I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to go chase down criminals. Go be cops,” he added.

In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece published Wednesday night, Patel did not address some of his more incendiary comments or criticism of the FBI, except to say that his time as a House staffer investigating flaws in the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation had shown him how “the FBI’s immense powers can be abused.”

“I spearheaded the investigation that found the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — a tool I had previously used to hunt down terrorists — had been unlawfully used to spy on political opponents,” he wrote. “Such misconduct is unacceptable and undermines public trust.”

Patel pledged to be transparent if confirmed as director and said he would keep the FBI out of prosecutorial decisions, keeping them instead with Justice Department lawyers.

“First, let good cops be cops,” Patel wrote in outlining his priorities. “Leadership means supporting agents in their mission to apprehend criminals and protect our citizens. If confirmed, I will focus on streamlining operations at headquarters while bolstering the presence of field agents across the nation. Collaboration with local law enforcement is crucial to fulfilling the FBI’s mission.”

Patel found common cause with Trump over their shared skepticism of government surveillance and the “deep state” — a pejorative catchall used by Trump to refer to government bureaucracy.

He was part of a small group of supporters during Trump’s recent criminal trial in New York who accompanied him to the courthouse, where he told reporters that Trump was the victim of an “unconstitutional circus.”

That close bond would depart from the modern-day precedent of FBI directors looking to keep presidents at arm’s length.

Several Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee who have met with Patel, including Durbin of Illinois, have issued statements sounding the alarm and signaling their opposition to the pick. The lawmakers foreshadowed their interest in Patel by directing numerous questions about him to Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick for attorney general, when she had her own confirmation hearing this month.

Republican allies of Trump, who share the president’s belief that the FBI has become politicized, have rallied around Patel and pledged to support him, seeing him as someone who can shake up the bureau and provide needed change.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the committee, sought to blunt attacks on Patel preemptively by focusing on the need to reform an FBI that he said had become weaponized.

The FBI in recent years has become entangled in numerous politically explosive investigations, including not just the two federal inquiries into Trump that resulted in indictments but also probes of President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

“It’s no surprise that public trust has declined in an institution that has been plagued by abuse, a lack of transparency, and the weaponization of law enforcement,” Grassley said. “Nevertheless, the FBI remains an important, even indispensable institution for law and order in our country.”

He later added: “Mr. Patel, should you be confirmed, you will take charge of an FBI that is in crisis.”