Kash Patel, the nominee for F.B.I. director, is expected to face bruising questions at his Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday about his relative lack of experience, his promise to persecute his enemies and whether he will preserve the bureau’s independence from President Trump.
The nomination of Mr. Patel, 44, a self-described Trump campaign surrogate, has upended the post-Watergate tradition of picking nonpartisan directors. If confirmed, Mr. Patel could provide Mr. Trump with a direct line into the F.B.I., eliminating guardrails meant to insulate the bureau from White House interference.
Christopher A. Wray, the previous director, stepped down this month after Mr. Trump made plain that he would fire him if he did not leave and make way for his nominee.
It is unclear whether Mr. Patel has enough Republican votes to be confirmed, although his allies believe he will prevail. But his unflagging loyalty to Mr. Trump and past inflammatory comments about the FB.I. have yet to incite the backlash that his critics had expected when Mr. Trump announced him as his pick in November.
Democrats have already signaled that they will not support Mr. Patel’s nomination.
“After meeting with Kash Patel, I have grave concerns about his fitness for the role of F.B.I. Director,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. “Mr. Patel has neither the experience, the temperament, nor the judgment to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Mr. Patel is surely to get grilled about a list of enemies he published in his book, “Government Gangsters,” a pugilistic takedown of bureau officials that takes aim at two current employees, among others.
Mr. Trump’s choice to run the Justice Department, Pam Bondi, already assured senators that there would be no such list if she were confirmed as attorney general. But the abrupt firings of prosecutors who investigated Mr. Trump raises the question of whether Mr. Patel will carry out a campaign of retribution, as both he and the president have long promised.
In particular, former and current agents are concerned that Mr. Patel will target investigators who worked on the inquiry into Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia given that he and the president have repeatedly decried it as hoax. The department’s top watchdog and a special counsel examining the origins of the inquiry have concluded it was legitimate.
The two employees on his enemies list were both involved in the Russia investigation, and Mr. Patel singles out one repeatedly in “Government Gangsters.”
Some agents are not waiting around. At least one who played a central role on the Russia investigation known as “Crossfire Hurricane” recently retired. The agent was already disciplined for making mistakes on the application for a secret surveillance warrant.
Others on the seventh floor of the headquarters where the director’s leadership team sits are bracing for Mr. Patel’s possible arrival. Mr. Patel threatened to fire the top ranks of the bureau and has called the F.B.I. “a threat to the people.”
Questions about his fealty to Mr. Trump and the future of the bureau, including its independence, will be front and center.
He has repeatedly vowed to change the agency, promising to tear apart the intelligence division or turn headquarters into a museum for the so-called deep state that he and Mr. Trump have railed against.
The broadsides reflect Mr. Patel’s skepticism toward critical national security agencies where Mr. Patel also spent time. Previously, Mr. Patel worked as federal prosecutor at the Justice Department’s National Security Division, the National Security Council, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and briefly at the Pentagon before leaving government after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election.
Indeed, while a federal prosecutor, Mr. Patel was once accused of being a “spy” when he flew to Texas to assist with a terrorism case and was berated by a federal judge in 2016.
“So, what is the utility to me and to the people of America to have you fly down here at their expense, eat at their expense and stay at their expense when there are plenty of capable people over there, in this room plus over there?” the judge said. “You’re just one more nonessential employee from Washington.”
The judge added, “You don’t add a bit of value, do you?”
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