Summary
FBI Director Kash Patel, appointed by Donald Trump despite lacking law enforcement experience, has frustrated current and former FBI and DOJ officials with what they see as a lack of seriousness and professionalism.
Patel skipped or scaled back key briefings and ended routine field office meetings, citing leaks.
Critics cite a leadership void, public relations stunts, and excessive travel including multiple trips unrelated to work.
Patel also briefly led the ATF but was quietly replaced after being absent.
He wrote a book describing how he would dismantle and reform the FBI into a Trump-supporting organization. See Government Gangsters (2023).
On his Trump loyalty
President Trump has proven that if you don’t bend the knee to the left’s disinformation attacks, you can win. In fact, as Devin Nunes and I learned during the Russia Gate probe, when they attack us, it’s because we are, as a friend once told me, “over the target.” Their attacks got louder and more desperate the closer we got to the truth. So we must stay the course. The more we expose of their machinations and lies, the more the American people will understand the truth and demand reform. That is how public officials keep the mission first, that is how they deliver accountability, and that is how they honor their duty to serve the American people they work for.
How the FBI can be made to stop investigating crimes of the President or Congress (e.g. the Mueller investigation, the Mar-a-Lago raid, etc.)
Congress can remove funding from the Washington, DC, headquarters and instead reassign FBI funding—and therefore FBI personnel—throughout the United States, putting field-level agents back in the field. If Congress wanted to, it could reduce the FBI behemoth in Washington, DC, to just a single field office dedicated to investigating crimes within the district and place the headquarters anywhere else in America. They could even go so far as to have senior FBI leadership run the circuit, as it were, managing the affairs of the bureau from different branches and moving after a set period of time to reduce the chances of entrenched interests and political relationships being formed. Yet even if Congress doesn’t alter funding, the president and a reform-minded FBI director can internally reassign agents outside of Washington, emptying out the DC HQ in order to put agents back in the field. A new FBI director could also change the rules dictating that FBI agents must do a tour of duty in DC before getting a promotion, instead focusing on promoting those with the most experience and success in the field.