Trump Loyalist Pick for FBI Faces Critics Amid DOJ Overhaul
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump’s rapid-fire moves to reshape American law enforcement have come through a flurry of memos and directives demanding that employees across the Justice Department focus on his top priorities like immigration enforcement.
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After the week-long blitz of new marching orders, insiders are bracing for a pullback on everything from complex economic fraud crimes to white-collar cases and those involving civil rights or environmental protections.
Trump’s vision for the department got an early political test on Thursday when his pick to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, faced lawmakers who need to approve him for the post.
Patel, 44, always seemed headed for tough opposition from Senate Democrats, who claim he’ll erode political independence at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Those critics now have fresh fodder to try to convince a handful of Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee to help scuttle his nomination.
“Mr. Patel has neither the experience, temperament nor the judgment to lead the agency,” the top Democrat on the panel, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, said during Patel’s confirmation hearing. “This is someone who’s left behind a trail of grievance through his life, lashing out as anyone who doesn’t believe him or disrespects him.”
Even as upheaval courses through the federal bureaucracy, Trump’s changes at the DOJ stand out because of the vast powers wielded at its “Main Justice” headquarters, US attorneys offices across the country and agencies like the FBI. The department will be on the front lines both enforcing and defending Trump’s agenda.
The redirection has reverberated among career lawyers and officials based in Washington and spread out in DOJ offices around the country, according to current and former employees, who asked not to be identified discussing internal conversations.
How far Patel would go as head of the FBI to pursue Trump’s agenda was a consistent theme at the hearing.
“Protecting the rights of the Constitution is of the utmost importance to me,” Patel said at the hearing.
Patel said if he is confirmed as FBI director, he will “remain focused on the FBI core mission: that is to investigate fully wherever there is a constitutional, factual basis to do so, and to never make a prosecutorial decision that is solely the providence of the Department of Justice and Attorney General.”
Conspiracy Theories
Patel worked to distance himself from controversial statements and social media posts he’s made.
For example, several Democratic senators cited his support for the so-called Jan. 6 choir, which consists of individuals imprisoned for their actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. Senators held up large placards with quotes or social media repostings from Patel supporting the “choir,” noting that some pleaded guilty to violently attacking police.
Patel brushed the criticism aside, saying he didn’t know anything about members of the choir who violently attack police.
Patel was asked about a statement he made that he would shut down the FBI’s headquarters in Washington and turn it into a museum of “the deep state.”
Patel attempted to downplay the statement, saying he is “fully committed” to having thousands of FBI agents who work in the Washington area go out to field offices to fight crime.
Patel also denied that he has an enemies list, even though he identified dozens of people in his book that he claimed were part of the deep state.
“I have no intentions of going backwards,” Patel said. However, he didn’t rule out investigations against those individuals. “No one that did not break the law will be investigated,” he said.
Firing Prosecutors
For backers of the president, the moment seems uniquely suited for Patel’s ascendancy to lead the FBI. In his book Government Gangsters — which Trump called a “blueprint to take back the White House” — Patel endorsed calls to fire government employees who undermine the president’s agenda.
A version of that came to fruition on Monday when Trump’s acting attorney general, James McHenry, fired more than a dozen officials and career lawyers who worked on investigations into the president’s conduct after his 2020 election loss, citing lack of faith that they could be trusted to implement the president’s agenda.
The decision was made by McHenry and approved by the White House, according to a person familiar with the matter. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
As a candidate, Trump vowed to reshape the Justice Department, which in addition to the FBI also includes the Drug Enforcement Administration and the US Marshals Service, among other units. He claimed prosecutors had “weaponized” the justice system against him and threatened to wield the levers of power to go after perceived enemies.
Meanwhile, Trump first signaled he viewed FBI leadership as an enemy under former Director James Comey, who opened an investigation in 2016 into whether Trump’s campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in that year’s presidential election. Trump fired Comey and the investigation was closed without charges against him.
Republican Support
If Patel clears the committee with a majority vote, he can only afford to have three Republicans in the Senate go against him, if all 47 Democrats and independents in the chamber vote to sink his candidacy.
Despite Trump’s strong backing, Patel’s prospects on Capitol Hill appear less certain than those of Pam Bondi, the president’s pick for attorney general. A former lobbyist who served as the attorney general of Florida, Bondi also represented Trump in his first impeachment trial. She could be confirmed for her post to lead the DOJ as soon as this week after sailing through her confirmation hearing and clearing a committee vote.
For now, anxious employees are trying to game out the next moves on the fifth floor at the “Main Justice” building, where a tight circle of acting leaders is busily executing the new administration’s agenda.
Many career prosecutors were taken aback by the flurry of memos from Trump appointees over the past week laying out the new ground rules — and why they were necessary.
In one, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who previously worked as a defense attorney for the president, referred to Trump’s victory in November — an inclusion some staff members read as unusually political. Another memo from McHenry, the acting attorney general, directed employees to report colleagues who pressed ahead with diversity, equity and inclusion efforts despite orders from Trump to effectively erase DEI from the federal government.
Many Justice Department staff are now scrubbing their pronouns from email signatures. Another memo ordered a pause on new civil rights settlements and consent decrees and said the new administration might revisit existing ones.
In some cases, the message has been delivered in smaller groups. In one recent internal meeting, a senior official advised lawyers in DOJ’s civil rights division not to pursue cases that might rankle Trump appointees, including hate crimes against people due to their gender identity, said one current official.
Worried that official department emails might be monitored, some DOJ employees are resorting to encrypted messaging apps like Signal to discuss the changes sweeping through the department. Lawyers are worried about being pulled off important cases and reassigned to ones that align with the Trump immigration push.
‘Political Gamesmanship’
One of the most prominent parts of DOJ, the FBI is headquartered in Washington in a building named for former director J. Edgar Hoover. The bureau has more than 50 field offices across the country that investigate cases from cyberattacks and white-collar crime, to murder and allegations of sexual misconduct.
Patel rose to prominence expressing outrage over the FBI’s investigation into whether Trump’s campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
In Trump’s first administration, Patel held a number of stopgap national security positions, including chief of staff to Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller in the final months of Trump’s White House term. He also served as senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council and as a senior adviser to former Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell.
“This FBI will end the growing crime epidemic in America, dismantle the migrant criminal gangs, and stop the evil scourge of human and drug trafficking across the Border,” Trump said when announcing that he planned to tap Patel for the role. Like Trump, Patel is also a critic of government agencies for actions that he says unfairly target Republicans.
Under his list of “top of reforms to defeat the deep state” outlined in his book, Patel calls for the FBI headquarters to be moved out of Washington to “curb FBI leadership from engaging in political gamesmanship.” He also suggested significantly shrinking the general counsel’s office within the FBI, which he says has taken on “prosecutorial decision-making” instead of operating only as an investigatory body.
--With assistance from Emily Birnbaum, Stephanie Lai, Mike Dorning and Erik Larson.
(Updates with comments from confirmation hearing starting in eleventh paragraph.)
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