WASHINGTON — Kash Patel, a longtime loyalist to President Donald Trump, was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation — an agency he has talked about drastically restructuring while echoing Trump’s claims of the “weaponization” of the bureau’s powers in its Capitol riot investigations and other recent cases.
Patel was opposed by a pair of Republican senators: Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins. But he won support from every other Republican, including Sen. Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, who had opposed some of Trump’s other nominees. The final vote was 51-49, with all Senate Democrats opposing Patel.
Patel’s confirmation comes at time of significant turmoil and turnover at the FBI. Since Trump took office a month ago, an Elon Musk affiliate was among those brought into the bureau, sparking worries about partisan political figures taking the reins of the powerful law enforcement agency. The head of the Washington Field Office — which oversaw the sprawling Jan. 6 probe — was forced out, as were six of the FBI’s most senior executives and multiple heads of FBI field offices around the country.
Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll sparred with Trump-appointed Justice Department superiors over an order that he said would ultimately help them fire FBI agents involved in Jan. 6 cases. The FBI ultimately handed over the names of FBI employees who worked on Jan. 6 cases as requested, and Trump has said he will fire “some” FBI personnel who worked on Capitol riot cases.
Altogether, it adds up to what many within the FBI see as the largest crisis facing the organization since the Watergate era. It stems in large part from FBI investigations into Trump himself, including two separate felony cases that were dropped when Trump was re-elected: one involving Trump’s handling of classified documents, and the other involving his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
Patel previously worked on Capitol Hill and in the first Trump administration, after working as a federal prosecutor in Washington and a federal public defender in Florida. He was considered to take over the FBI during the first Trump administration, but then-Attorney General Bill Barr, among others, vehemently opposed the plan, saying that Patel was unqualified.
Patel, a firebrand who appeared on a broad array of conservative media shows and has spoken about his desire to “come after the people in the media,” has attempted to walk back some of his more pugnacious comments from his podcast appearances.
At his confirmation hearing in late January, Patel distanced himself from Trump’s sweeping pardons of Capitol rioters, saying he disagreed with the commutations of individuals who assaulted law enforcement officers on Jan. 6. Democratic senators also confronted Patel about his repeated false contentions that the 2020 election was stolen.
Patel has a close relationship with a network of conservative former FBI agents who were pushed out over the past several years, one of whom said he was “screaming to the heavens” when Trump nominated Patel.
Julie Kelly, a conservative commentator who described herself as a friend of Patel’s, predicted that Patel would “do what needs to be done” at the FBI, “which is not just dismantle this agency from the top headquarters down to 56 FBI field offices, but also hold accountable those agents who have used their unaccountable power to weaponize the most powerful law enforcement agency in the country against the political foes of the regime.”
Frank Thorp V contributed.
