Kash Patel, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice as director of the F.B.I., does not have the typical background for that position. A former federal prosecutor and public defender, he has little management or law enforcement experience. The president-elect cites as a key credential Mr. Patel’s unflagging efforts to discredit the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election in favor of Mr. Trump.
Here are five takeaways from a recent New York Times profile of Mr. Patel, who has denounced his critics as biased against Mr. Trump and has said he led efforts to expose F.B.I. “corruption.”
Former colleagues question his qualifications.
Mr. Trump said in his social media post announcing his choice for the F.B.I. that Mr. Patel had “tried over 60 jury trials.” Colleagues from Mr. Patel’s time as an entry-level public defender in Florida recall him as a middling performer with a deep animosity toward the Justice Department prosecutors he found himself up against. His former supervisor, Michael Caruso, a federal public defender who led the Southern District of Florida office at the time, said that Mr. Patel shied away from filing motions that he was likely to lose.
Mr. Patel spent about three years as a terrorism prosecutor at the Justice Department. He has repeatedly claimed he was the “lead prosecutor” in the government’s pursuit of the perpetrators of the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans. In fact, Mr. Patel was a junior Justice Department staff member at the time, and he was not part of the trial team.
He is the author of the ‘Nunes Memo.’
Mr. Trump ordered that Mr. Patel be given a job on the National Security Council staff after Mr. Patel, then a House Intelligence Committee staffer, impressed Mr. Trump as the primary author of what has come to be called the secret “Nunes memo.” The document was a key element in the effort of House Republicans to undermine the Justice Department’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Mr. Patel’s memo, which Mr. Trump declassified over the objections of the intelligence agencies and Democrats, fueled bogus claims by Mr. Trump, Republicans and conservative media that politics drove the Russia investigation and that the government had spied on the Trump campaign itself. He sells pro-Trump merchandise under the logo K$H.
Since the end of the Trump administration, Mr. Patel has parlayed his association with the former president into enterprises he promotes under the logo “K$H.” He sells pro-Trump T-shirts and other items as well as a series of his children’s books that pay homage to “King Donald.” Mr. Patel also collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees from the 2024 Trump campaign and from Friends of Matt Gaetz, the campaign committee for the former House Republican from Florida, who withdrew from consideration as Mr. Trump’s attorney general after criticism over allegations of sex trafficking and drug use.
He was a would-be ‘political executioner.’
In 2019, as President Trump battled public outrage and a looming impeachment over his effort to enlist Ukraine in digging up dirt on former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., he proposed to a group of top advisers that Mr. Patel, a backbench staffer on the National Security Council, begin vetting White House aides for loyalty. He would have served as a “political executioner,” in the words of Charles Kupperman, the deputy national security adviser at the time. Mr. Kupperman and White House legal advisers talked the president out of it, saying it would create legal and morale problems.
He says his nonprofit helps Jan. 6 defendants.
The Kash Foundation is a nonprofit that Mr. Patel has said offers financial help to a range of recipients, including the families of people charged for their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Tax filings for 2023 show the foundation’s revenue surged from $182,000 in 2022 to $1.3 million last year. Its expenses rose fivefold over 2022 to $674,000. Almost half of that was spent on promotion and advertising, an expense that totaled more than the foundation gave away in contributions and grants last year.
He sells pro-Trump merchandise under the logo K$H.
Since the end of the Trump administration, Mr. Patel has parlayed his association with the former president into enterprises he promotes under the logo “K$H.” He sells pro-Trump T-shirts and other items as well as a series of his children’s books that pay homage to “King Donald.” Mr. Patel also collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees from the 2024 Trump campaign and from Friends of Matt Gaetz, the campaign committee for the former House Republican from Florida, who withdrew from consideration as Mr. Trump’s attorney general after criticism over allegations of sex trafficking and drug use.
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