Part three of the children’s book, The Plot Against the King, written by Kash Patel, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), talks about the “MAGA king” and his quest to “take down Comma-la-la-la and reclaim his throne”. One can safely assume that the ‘king’ here is Mr. Trump and ‘Comma-la-la-la’, the incumbent U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris. This also gives us an idea of what Mr. Patel, who owns a charitable foundation called Fight with Kash which among other things funds defamation lawsuits, and a clothing line which sells a variety of merchandise with his logo ‘K$H’, stands for — unabashedly brazen and unapologetically loyal to the incoming U.S. President.
Mr. Patel, who was born in 1980 to Indian immigrant parents (who first moved to Canada from East Africa in the 1970s and then to the U.S.) started his career as a public defender in the State of Florida, following which he joined the U.S. Justice Department as a counter-terrorism prosecutor. A member of the Republican party, he was then appointed to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) in 2017. He worked as senior aide to Devin Nunes, the chair of the HPSCI and a staunch Trump supporter. Mr. Patel rose up the ranks within Mr. Trump’s inner circle when he scathingly criticised the FBI’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. He, along with Mr. Nunes, authored the ‘Nunes memo’ which accused the FBI of being politically motivated in its investigation. The release of the memo was vehemently criticised by the Justice Department as exposing intelligence secrets.
From then on, Mr. Patel rose swiftly through administrative ranks. In 2019, he became a member of the National Security Council and was later appointed Chief of Staff to the interim Defence Secretary. President Trump in his last months in office wanted to promote Mr. Patel to deputy FBI director but then Attorney-General William Barr opposed it, writing in his memoir that he told the then White House Chief of Staff that such an appointment would be ‘over my dead body’.
After Mr. Trump’s first presidential term, Mr. Patel continued being a Trump loyalist as well as a decrier of intelligence bureaucracies. His experience within the Justice Department had made him deeply suspicious of the FBI and other intelligence agencies. He has repeatedly stated that these agencies are controlled by the ‘deep state’ — a term used to refer to allegations that actors within bureaucracy control and run the government. He authored a book called Government Gangsters, which is part memoir and part tirade against the ‘deep state’, and lists out individuals who are enablers of the system such as President Joe Biden, William Barr, Hilary Clinton etc.
Massive upheaval
He has stated in his book that top officials of the FBI need to be fired and the organisation be given a massive upheaval and reorganisation. He has been a vocal proponent for reform within the FBI stating that the organisation’s footprint has gotten too big. “I’d shut down the FBI. Hoover Building on Day 1 and reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state,’” Mr. Patel said in an interview. “And I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals.”
He has vowed to go after journalists who leaked intelligence reports and the officials who facilitated such leaks. In an interview with Steve Bannon last year, he stated “We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you…we’re putting you all on notice.”
Mr. Trump has repeatedly vowed to go after his political enemies and institutions which conducted investigations on him after his Presidential term in 2020.
Having Mr. Patel — a man who has appeared with him for hearings, testified for him and is also now serving on the board of the parent company of Truth Social, Mr. Trump’s social network — at the helm of the FBI could give the President-elect access to potential and ongoing investigations.
Published – December 08, 2024 01:32 am IST
