Kash Patel, President Trump’s choice to run the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has a favorite saying: “There are no coincidences.”
In podcasts, television interviews and public appearances, Mr. Patel supplies that mantra to argue that both the Biden administration and federal agency officials he disparages as the “deep state” or “government gangsters” are perpetually plotting to thwart the will of the people. His now-dormant online show for The Epoch Times, which rose to national prominence after 2016 by promoting right-wing disinformation and Mr. Trump, even featured a graphic with that slogan.
To people who have studied conspiracy theories, Mr. Patel’s suspicion of the government is a public embrace of conspiracist thinking. The approach, some say, raises concerns over how Mr. Patel would run the F.B.I., whose core mission centers on sifting fact from fiction.
“To me, that is a conspiratorial mind-set — believing that there are hidden hands, puppet masters, diabolical groups that are behind the events and incidents of the world, and that it’s a world with no accidents and no mistakes,” said Robert A. Goldberg, a professor at the University of Utah who has long studied conspiracy theories. That someone who views the world that way may soon take control of the F.B.I. is remarkable, he said, given that one of the bureau’s key roles for many decades was to fight the communist conspiracy against the West.
Conspiracy thinking in the age of social media often serves a different function than it did in the 20th century, when conspiracy theorists put more effort into trying to prove a particular case, Mr. Goldberg added. It is now often an “effort to rally supporters or provide an identity to your base,” he said.
Indeed, Mr. Patel’s public comments about the QAnon conspiracy theory movement suggests he sees its adherents more as an audience to be courted, rather than an ideology to follow.
“The Q thing is a movement a lot of people attach themselves to,” he said in a 2022 interview. “I disagree with a lot of what that movement says, but I agree with a lot of what that movement says.”
The QAnon phenomenon began in the first Trump administration, when anonymous social media posts, presented as the secret knowledge of someone with a high-level security clearance, fed outlandish theories about a cabal of child molesters among politicians and celebrities. They teased the idea that some day soon, Mr. Trump would wreak destruction on his critics.
In that same interview, Mr. Patel said the parts of the QAnon worldview he agreed with offer a pro-Trump view of his legal entanglements: the two impeachment inquiries into him; the mob of Trump supporters who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; and the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
Those QAnon claims have been “massively absorbed and pushed by the Q community,” Mr. Patel said. “Good, because that’s the truth, and why not?”
At a Senate confirmation hearing last week for Mr. Trump’s pick for attorney general, Pam Bondi, Democratic lawmakers raised Mr. Patel’s apparent flirtation with QAnon. Praising Mr. Patel, Ms. Bondi said she “looked forward” to his answers to such questions when he appears before lawmakers.
According to Mr. Patel’s book, “Government Gangsters,” his skepticism of government officials stems in no small part from his time as a public defender, particularly a drug case in Florida in which he persuaded the judge that prosecutors had wrongfully withheld key evidence, leading to the collapse of the case.
Prosecutors “were too proud to admit they were wrong and too self-righteous to follow the rules of due process,” he wrote. “Sadly, it wasn’t the last time I would catch federal law enforcement trying to bury exculpatory evidence without facing consequences.”
Many current and former F.B.I. agents cringe at Mr. Patel’s apparent skepticism toward the government and embrace of unfounded theories of government cabals, and what that could mean for an investigative agency that has to sift through vast amounts of rumor, speculation and nonsensical tips to generate the kind of evidence that will win convictions in court.
“From Day 1 at the F.B.I. academy, all agents are taught to follow the facts and to base investigative decisions on evidence,” said Karl Schmae, a former supervisory agent at the bureau. “A director who disregards that foundation will inevitably make poor decisions and ruin the fact-based culture within the F.B.I.”
Mr. Schmae said that, contrary to Mr. Patel’s assertion, investigations deal with coincidences all the time. As a recent example, he cited the New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans by a man who had been inspired by Islamic State, followed by a vehicle explosion hours later by a different man in Las Vegas. Investigators have said they see no direct link between the two, but continue to examine the evidence to be sure.
“Too many people today are prone to believe conspiracy theories and to make assumptions before facts have been established,” he added. “It would be disastrous for a F.B.I. director to promote unfounded accusations and to guide the F.B.I. away from its focus of seeking the truth.”
Mr. Patel has long claimed that the F.B.I. has already lost its way, particularly in its investigation of possible links between the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and Russia. The Trump administration, he has vowed, will put the F.B.I. back on the right path.
In an interview last year with a podcaster, Mr. Patel defined the “deep state” as “an apolitical entity that operates in government to service itself instead of the American people.”
He added, “It’s leadership positions across government combined with underlying positions that are pretty senior up, who work with mainstream media entities to perpetuate frauds on the American people, to commit government corruption and to stay in power and to lie to the American people.”
A frequent guest on Fox News as a Trump campaign surrogate, Mr. Patel has amplified a false accusation of bribe-taking by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter, based on an F.B.I. informant’s claim to have heard about such bribery.
In 2023, Republican lawmakers promoted a secret F.B.I. document, known as a 1023, that recounted the allegations leveled by the informant years earlier. Agents had debriefed the informant and decided his account of the bribery allegations was not credible.
But as those lawmakers pressed loudly for details of the allegations against the Bidens — and accused the F.B.I. of covering up for them — the document was eventually shared with Congress.
“Most of that isn’t verified, but there is new reporting that the F.B.I. did actually verify some of the substantiated claims in the document,” Mr. Patel said in one appearance on Fox News. In another, he referred to “the 1023 on bribery” and accused senior law enforcement officials of lying to Congress.
“These documents yes, are for the members of Congress, but for the American people foremost,” Mr. Patel said.
The key document contained a claim by an informant, Alexander Smirnov, that executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma had paid Mr. Biden and Hunter Biden $5 million each, around 2015. Mr. Smirnov made the accusation in 2020, after prosecutors say he expressed bias against Mr. Biden’s presidential candidacy.
Last month, the informant pleaded guilty to lying about the purported bribes.
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