President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Saturday that he wants to replace Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, with Kash Patel, a hard-line 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.”
Mr. Trump’s planned nomination of Mr. 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 F.B.I., which Mr. Trump and his allies have come to view as part of a “deep state” conspiracy against him.
Mr. Patel has been closely aligned with Mr. 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 Mr. Trump and his allies.
Mr. Patel “played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability and the Constitution,” Mr. Trump said in announcing his choice in a social media post.
Mr. Patel, a favorite of Mr. 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 F.B.I. directors.
He served in a series of administration positions at the tail end of Mr. Trump’s first term, including posts on the National Security Council and in the Pentagon. Before leaving office in early 2021, Mr. Trump floated the idea of making Mr. Patel deputy director of either the C.I.A. or the F.B.I. William P. Barr, the attorney general at the time, wrote in his memoir that Mr. Patel would have become deputy F.B.I. director only “over my dead body.”
The announcement also underscores Mr. Trump’s intense dislike of Mr. Wray, the current director, whose 10-year term does not expire until 2027. Mr. Trump, who appointed Mr. Wray to the job, suggested earlier this year that Mr. Wray resign. In declaring well before being sworn into office that he wants a new director, Mr. Trump was pushing Mr. Wray to resign before he is fired.
Current and former law enforcement officials have worried that a second Trump term would feature an assault on the independence and authority of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, and for many of them, the selection of Mr. Patel would confirm the worst of those fears.
Mr. Patel laid out his vision for wreaking vengeance on the F.B.I. and 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 Mr. 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 Mr. Wray from atop the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, Mr. Trump would be echoing one of the most defining acts of his first term, his dismissal of James B. Comey as F.B.I. director as investigations of Trump associates began to heat up.
Mr. Patel became enmeshed in one of the federal prosecutions of Mr. Trump directed by Jack Smith, the special counsel. He was called to testify before the grand jury hearing evidence about Mr. 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.
Mr. Patel’s testimony was sought to help prosecutors understand what defense, if any, Mr. Trump and his associates could offer that the former president might have declassified some of the material.
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