Action 19 - Reject Kash Patel for FBI Director
Background:
Kash Patel’s nomination would be a joke if it weren’t so serious and consequential.
He is a proven 100% loyalist to Trump. Patel branded the Trump-Russia investigation a “hoax”: since 2016 he has denied the truth that Trump was elected that year with covert Russian assistance. He has supported Trump’s claim that he won in 2020. He denied that January 6 was an insurrection, and disrespected the DC and Capitol police officers who defended against the mob. He has published an “enemies list” including Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and intends to use the FBI to exact retribution on them. He has publicly threatened media figures, saying “We’re going to come after the people in the media … We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly … we’re putting you all on notice.” He has threatened Trump opponents with jail time. He has no respect for the agency he is nominated to head: on the contrary he wants to shutter the FBI Hoover building and turn it into a “Museum of the Deep State”. (Ironically, earlier in his career a Texas judge described Patel as exactly the kind of federal bureaucrat he vowed toweed out in his crusade against the “deep state”.)
Patel is a grifter. For example, his Kash Foundation which supposedly helps families of incarcerated January 6 insurrectionists, raised $1.3 M in 2023 but spent half of that on promotion and advertising, more than the foundation gave away in assistance. (Charity Navigator has no information about the foundation.) He sells pro -Trump merchandise with the logo K$H. He has published children’s books showing Trump as a king and himself as a wizard.
The FBI director leads an agency that investigates spies, mobsters and kidnappers. These are life and death situations, not political games. Patel developed a reputation for leaking sensitive information to conservative media outlets earlier in his career – a dangerous political game. Will the other members of the Five Eyes international intelligence community be comfortable sharing intelligence with the likes of him?
Patel rose to prominence through ambition and an uncanny survival instinct in a political world. Is he an acceptable person to lead this agency of some 35,000 professional employees who are supposed to be nonpolitical? The FBI Director serves 10 years precisely because the position is supposed to be insulated from politics. Appointing Kash Patel makes a mockery of that.
Action: Call our Senators and ask them to oppose Kash Patel’s nomination
Contact: Senator Collins DC office (202) 224-2523
Senator King DC office (202) 224-5344
Urgency: Patel’s confirmation hearing is January 29, before the Judiciary Committee.
Call Monday.
Extra Credit:https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/12/kash-patel-fbi-donald-trump-russia-scandal-putin-useful-
idiot/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/07/trump-fbi-pick-kash-patel-childrens-books
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/09/politics/kash-patel-government-lawyer-fbi/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/30/us/politics/kash-patel.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
https://www.thefp.com/p/kash-patel-fix-of-break-the-fbi-trump
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/collusion-reading-diary-what-did-senate-intelligence-committee-find
https://www.fbi.gov/about/faqs#:~:text=How%20many%20people%20work%20for,No.
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/dem/releases/durbin-kash-patel-has-neither-the-experience-temperament-nor-judgement-to-lead-the-fbi