US president-elect Donald Trump on Saturday said he wanted former National Security official and firebrand loyalist Kash Patel to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), signalling an intent to drive out the bureau’s current director, Christopher Wray.
Patel, who during Trump’s first term advised both the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defence, has previously called for stripping the FBI of its intelligence-gathering role and purging its ranks of any employee who refuses to support Trump’s agenda.
“The biggest problem the FBI has had has come out of its intel shops. I’d break that component out of it. I’d shut down the FBI Hoover building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state,” Patel said in a September interview on the conservative Shawn Ryan Show.
“And I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals. Go be cops. You’re cops. Go be cops.”
With the nomination of Patel, Trump is signalling that he is preparing to carry out his threat to oust Wray, a Republican first appointed by Trump, whose 10-year term at the FBI does not expire until 2027.
FBI directors by law are appointed to 10-year terms to insulate the bureau from politics.