Donald Trump is keeping his controversial adviser Kash Patel in the running to be the next FBI director, according to two people familiar with the matter, as the transition team conducted interviews for the role on Monday night at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago club.
The existence of the interviews, made public in a since-deleted post by the vice president-elect JD Vance, underscored the intent to fire the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, years before his current term is up.
Vance revealed that he and Trump had been interviewing finalists for FBI director in a post responding to criticism he received for missing a Senate vote last night that confirmed one of Joe Biden’s nominees for the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit.
“When this 11th circuit vote happened, I was meeting President Trump to interview multiple positions for our government, including for FBI director,” Vance wrote.
Trump has a special interest in the FBI, having fired James Comey as director in 2017 over his refusal to close the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and then complaining about perceived disloyalty from Wray.
Patel’s continued position as a top candidate for the role makes clear Trump’s determination to install loyalists in key national security and law enforcement positions, as well as the support Patel has built up among key Trump allies.
The push for Patel – who has frequently railed against the “deep state” – has come from some of the longest-serving Trump advisers, notably those close to former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, a faction that got Trump’s personal lawyers picked for top justice department roles.
That faction has also suggested to Trump in recent days that if Patel gets passed over for the director role, he should be given the deputy FBI director position, one of the people said – a powerful job that helps run the bureau day to day and is crucially not subject to Senate confirmation.
Patel has made inroads with Trump by repeatedly demonstrating his loyalty over several years and articulating plans to restructure the FBI, including by dismantling the firewall between the White House and the bureau.
During the criminal investigation into Trump’s retention of classified documents, for instance, Patel refused to testify against Trump before a federal grand jury in Washington and asserted his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination.
Patel ultimately testified only after he was forced to, when the then chief US district judge Beryl Howell allowed the justice department to confer limited immunity from prosecution to him to overcome his fifth amendment claim.
But Patel also has multiple detractors among other Trump advisers who came from the presidential campaign and carry outsize influence. That group is said to prefer former House intelligence committee chair Mike Rogers, who left Congress in 2015.
Rogers is generally seen as a more establishment pick who has experience dealing with intelligence agencies, one of his allies said. But Trump has also suggested to advisers he is less interested in Rogers than Patel, the person said.
Still, Trump has increasingly paid little attention to whether a nominee is likely to be confirmed by the Senate, evidenced by his move to pick Matt Gaetz for attorney general and Pete Hegseth for defense secretary despite both being dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct.
Patel rose to notoriety in 2018 when he served as an aide to Devin Nunes, who was the top Republican on the House intelligence committee, and became involved in attempts by the White House to discredit the Russia investigation.
He then went to work for the Trump administration in 2019 on the national security council, before becoming chief of staff to the defense secretary in the final months of the presidency.
In 2020, when Trump weighed firing the then CIA director Gina Haspel, he floated Patel as a potential replacement. Patel was also briefly considered to become the deputy FBI director in the waning months of the presidency but was talked out of the appointment.
