President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Saturday that he wants to replace Christopher A. Wray, the FBI director, with Kash Patel, a hardline critic of the bureau who has called for shutting down the agency’s Washington headquarters, firing its leadership and bringing the nation’s law enforcement agencies “to heel”.

(New York-born Patel has his roots in Gujarat, PTI reports. However, his parents are from East Africa — mother from Tanzania and father from Uganda. They came to the US from Canada in 1970. “We are Gujarati,” he had told the news agency in an earlier interview.)

Trump’s planned nomination of Patel has echoes of his failed attempt to place another partisan firebrand, Matt Gaetz, atop the justice department as attorney-general. It could run into hurdles in the Senate, which will be called on to confirm him, and is sure to send shock waves through the FBI, which Trump and his allies have come to view as part of a “deep state” conspiracy against him.

Patel has been closely aligned with Trump’s belief that much of the nation’s law enforcement and national security establishment needs to be purged of bias and held accountable for what they see as unjustified investigations and prosecutions
of Trump and his allies.

Patel “played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability and the Constitution”, Trump said in announcing his choice in a social media post.

He called Patel “a brilliant lawyer, investigator and ‘America First’ fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending justice, and protecting the American people”.

Patel, a favourite of Trump’s political base, has worked as a federal prosecutor and a public defender, but has little of the law enforcement and management experience typical of FBI directors.

He served in a series of administration positions at the tail end of Trump’s first term, including posts on the National Security Council and in the Pentagon. Before leaving office in early 2021, Trump floated the idea of making Patel deputy director of either the CIA or the FBI. William P. Barr, the attorney-general at the time, wrote in his memoir that Patel would have become deputy FBI director only “over my dead body”.

The announcement also underscores Trump’s intense dislike of Wray, the current director, whose 10-year term does not expire until 2027. Trump appointed Wray to the job but soured on him within months, complaining to friends and allies that Wray was not running the agency the way he wanted.

Shortly after Trump lost the 2020 election, he called Wray and said that he was not going to fire him, even as he moved to dismiss other high-profile officials, like his defence secretary Mark T. Esper.

But Trump, whose fury with the FBI deepened after the agency executed a search warrant in August 2022 at his Florida club and home, Mar-a-Lago, in search of classified documents, suggested earlier this year that Wray resign. In declaring well before being sworn into office that he wants a new director, Trump was pushing Wray to resign before he is fired.

“This is firing the FBI director,” said one law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the matter.

“It is extremely dangerous to have a change in an FBI director just after a change in administration,” the official said, referring to the longstanding policy of keeping the cycle for appointments of a director separate from the presidential election cycle and partisan politics.

A statement released by the bureau following Trump’s announcement did not address whether Wray would step aside.

“Every day, the men and women of the FBI continue to work to protect Americans from a growing array of threats,” the statement said. “Director Wray’s focus remains on the men and women of the FBI, the people we do the work with and the people we do the work for.”

While a number of Trump’s allies expected him to announce a replacement for Wray, many did not believe he would ultimately select Patel, whose confirmation process before the Senate could be rigorous. Trump had at one point considered making Andrew Bailey, the Missouri attorney-general, the FBI director, according to two people briefed on the matter.

Natalie Bara, president of the FBI Agents Association, did not directly address Trump’s selection of Patel, but said the group “is committed to preserving the bureau’s independence and effectiveness in protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution”.

Strong leadership, she said, “is critical to maintaining the integrity and mission of the FBI”, and that agents’ commitment to upholding the law and protecting Americans “does not waver when there are changes in a presidential administration or if the leadership in the bureau changes”.

Current and former law enforcement officials have worried that a second Trump term would feature an assault on the independence and authority of the FBI and the justice department, and for many of them, Patel’s ascension to the director’s role would confirm the worst of those fears.

Patel laid out his vision for wreaking vengeance on the FBI and the justice department in a book, Government Gangsters, calling for clearing out the top ranks of the bureau, which he called “a threat to the people”. He also wrote a children’s book, The Plot Against the King, telling through fantasy the story of the investigations into Trump’s 2016 campaign’s possible ties to Russians.

He has vowed to investigate and possibly prosecute journalists once he is back in government, adding that he would “follow the facts and the law”.

“Yes, 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,” he said last year. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”

In planning to remove Wray from atop the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, Trump would be echoing one of the most defining acts of his first term, his dismissal of James B. Comey as FBI director as investigations of Trump associates began to heat up.

That act led to the appointment of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who spent nearly two years examining the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia.

While Trump was out of office, Patel became enmeshed in one of the federal prosecutions of Trump directed by Jack Smith, the special counsel. He was called to testify before the grand jury hearing evidence about Trump’s possession of highly classified documents after leaving office, according to people familiar with the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a secret proceeding.

Patel’s testimony was sought to help prosecutors understand what defence, if any, Trump and his associates could offer that the former president might have declassified some of the material.

New York Times News Service