Under Kash Patel, “FBI” Means Foolish, Belligerent, and Incompetent
From J. Edgar Hoover authorizing extensive surveillance of Martin Luther King, Jr. to James Comey relaunching a misguided investigation of Hillary Clinton days before the 2016 election, many of the eight previous non-interim FBI directors have shown terrible judgment. But Kash Patel may have established himself, in less than a year, as the worst FBI director ever. He spent 2025 undermining the bureau’s legitimate investigations while launching illegitimate ones, forcing out some of its best employees while installing cronies, and forcing some of the nation’s most skilled law enforcement personnel to act as chauffeurs for Patel’s girlfriend and her friends.
Even in an administration stocked with unqualified, unethical people in top jobs, personified by Donald Trump himself, Patel stands out. A 115-page report from a group of former and current FBI special agents and analysts that became public a few weeks ago slammed Patel for his lack of experience, “obsession with social media,” and creation of a “culture of fear and paralysis” at the bureau. And his critics brought receipts. The most shocking was that Patel, in Utah after the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, allegedly refused to get off his plane until FBI personnel provided him a raid jacket to his liking.
That was not just any jacket. FBI agents scrambled to find a medium-sized one, because Patel would not wear the large and extra-larges that were available. They eventually had to force a female agent to give up hers, according to the report. Then, Patel noticed the medium-sized jacket did not have certain Velcro patches attached. Agents removed patches from their jackets so Patel could put them on his. Finally, he disembarked. (Patel denies this account, but the specificity makes it very credible.)
Patel being horrible at this job was of course virtually inevitable, because his only credentials for it were a willingness to relentlessly defend Trump and attack the president’s enemies. As a top aide on the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee, Patel had been heavily involved in efforts to undermine the investigation into connections between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia. That put him on the radar of the president’s team. He joined the administration in early 2019 and quickly rose through the ranks, eventually becoming chief of staff at the Defense Department.
The top jobs he held during Trump’s first term virtually guaranteed Patel would be a major figure in a second term. So it wasn’t surprising that Trump pushed Christopher Wray to resign and then nominated Patel to run the FBI. The administration then doubled down on putting unqualified hyper-partisans in charge of a critical agency by naming conservative commentator Dan Bongino as deputy director. Usually that job goes to a longtime agent, not someone like Bongino, who not only never worked for the FBI but once called the bureau “irredeemably corrupt.”
