FBI pick Kash Patel to face scrutiny over Trump loyalty at Senate hearing

Kash Patel, nominated by Donald Trump to be the next FBI director, is expected to face scrutiny on Thursday about whether his loyalty to the president would end the independence of the nation’s premier law-enforcement agency from White House political pressure.

The Senate confirmation hearing, scheduled for 9.30am, comes at a fraught moment for the FBI as its parent agency, the justice department, has been roiled by the demotion of scores of top officials and prosecutors deemed to be insufficiently trustworthy to carry out Trump’s agenda.

Patel is expected to face questions from Democratic lawmakers over his close relationship with Trump, which allowed him to become the frontrunner for the position, and his overall competence to lead the FBI at a time when it has weathered sustained attacks not just from Trump but Patel himself.

The greatest challenge for FBI directors in the Trump era has been the delicate balance of retaining the confidence of Trump while resisting overtures to make public proclamations that are untrue or to open politically motivated lines of inquiry that personally benefit the president.

Patel is unlikely to have such difficulties, such is his ideological alignment with Trump on a range of issues including the need to pursue retribution against any perceived enemies like special counsel Jack Smith and others who investigated him during his first term.

That so-called list of enemies also stretches to senior FBI officials in Washington, whom Trump has criticized for allowing agents to obtain a search warrant to search his Mar-a-Lago club for classified documents after he left office and Trump ignored a grand-jury subpoena for their return.

Patel’s dramatic views to reshape the FBI added to broader concerns about his fitness for the role after he was accused of lying about obtaining proper clearances that nearly botched a high-stakes hostage rescue operation by Seal Team Six during the first Trump administration in 2020.

Patel graduated in 2002 from Richmond University and earned his law degree in 2005 at Pace University. After law school, he was hired as a public defender in Florida before joining the justice department in 2014 as a line prosecutor in the national security division.

In 2017, Patel became a top Republican aide on the House intelligence committee, where he authored a politically-charged memo accusing the FBI and the justice department of abusing surveillance powers to spy on a Trump adviser. The memo was criticized as misleading, though an inspector general later found errors with aspects of the surveillance.

His efforts impressed Trump, who brought him into the administration and quickly elevated him to national security and defence roles. By the end of Trump’s first term, he was the chief of staff to defense secretary Chris Miller and briefly considered for CIA director.

While John Durham, the special counsel appointed by Trump, found a catalogue of mistakes by prosecutors in the Russia investigation, he found no evidence that officials had been motivated by political animus and brought no charges – contrary to claims by Trump and Patel.