Senate Confirms Kash Patel as FBI Director

The Senate confirmed Kash Patel to become FBI director today on a narrow vote of 51-49.

Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaksa joined Democrats in voting against the nomination.  

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 Catholics churches.  

The final vote came after Senate Democrats managed to delay the confirmation for several weeks. 

Patel has a 16-year career in law and national security, with both career and political positions at the Justice Department, the White House, and the Defense Department. 

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-Qaida leadership such as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Qasim al-Rimi.

Patel also was the principal deputy to the 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. 

Before working on Capitol Hill, Patel was a terrorism prosecutor at the Justice Department. While at the Justice Department, he was also the liaison officer to the Joint Special Operations Command, conducting collaborative targeting operations against high-value terrorism targets.

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