Kashyap Pramod Vinod Patel[1][2] was born on February 25, 1980,[7] in Garden City, New York, to IndianGujarati immigrant parents.[8][9] His family originates from Bhadran, Gujarat, and is of Patidar ancestry. The family emigrated to Uganda, where they faced ethnic persecution and were expelled by Idi Amin in the 1970s, briefly returning to India while applying for asylum in the U.S., the UK, and Canada. His parents moved to Canada after it accepted their applications.[10][11][12] Subsequently, they moved to the U.S., and his father started working as a financial officer at an aviation firm.[13] His mother's family lived in Tanzania, but both his parents had studied in India and were married there.[12] Patel was raised in the Hindu faith.[13][14]
Senior aide to House Intelligence Committee chair, Nunes (2017–2018)
In April 2017, Patel became the senior committee aide to House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes.[22][23] Patel played a prominent role in Republican opposition to the investigations into Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 election.[23][4]
According to The New York Times, Patel was the primary author of the 2018 Nunes memo, alleging FBI misconduct in its application for a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) for electronic surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.[24] The committee's staff director, a Nunes spokesman, and unattributed sources interviewed by India Abroad disputed that claim. Patel did not publicly comment on the matter.[21]The New York Times wrote that the memo was widely dismissed as "biased", containing "cherry-picked facts", but "galvanized President Trump's allies and made Mr. Patel a hero among them".[25]
After Democrats gained the majority in the House of Representatives in January 2019,[26] Patel worked for about a month as a senior counsel at the House Reform and Oversight Committee.[27]
Senior director of counterterrorism at National Security Council (NSC) (2019)
In February 2019, Patel was hired as a staffer for the National Security Council (NSC), working in the International Organizations and Alliances directorate.[28] In July 2019, he became senior director of the Counterterrorism Directorate,[29] a new position created for him.[28] According to The Wall Street Journal, Patel led a secret mission to Damascus in early 2020 to negotiate the release of Majd Kamalmaz and journalist Austin Tice, both of whom were being held by the Syrian government. The negotiations were unsuccessful.[18][30][31][32]
Some advisors, including NSC official Fiona Hill, alleged that, soon after joining NSC, Patel had assumed the role of an additional independent back channel for the president—even as he was seen as underqualified for his portfolio, which covered the United Nations.[25][28] Advisors such as Hill, who had an uneasy relationship with Trump,[33] raised red flags when Trump called Patel "one of his top Ukraine policy specialists" and said he wished "to discuss related documents with him". Patel's actual assignment was counterterrorism, not Ukraine. He was thought to have operated independently of Rudy Giuliani's irregular, informal channel. Impeachment inquiry witnesses were asked what they knew about Patel. Hill told investigators that it seemed "Patel was improperly becoming involved in Ukraine policy and was sending information to Mr. Trump". Gordon Sondland and George Kent testified they did not come across Patel in the course of their work.[25]
In an October 2019 story citing an anonymous source it said had formerly worked at the White House, Politico reported that Patel had "unique access" to Trump and had provided "out of scope" advice to him on Ukraine policy.[28][34] Patel denied the claims and sued Politico for defamation, seeking $25 million in damages.[34] The case was dismissed in April 2020 as the court did not have jurisdiction because Patel was not a resident of the state where the suit was filed.[35] This was one of several cases where state residency became an issue for Patel.[36] The case was referred the Henrico Circuit Court of Virgina, where it was ruled a non-suit on March 15, 2022.[37][c]
On December 3, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee's report included phone records, acquired via subpoenas to AT&T and/or Verizon, including a 25-minute phone call between Patel and Giuliani on May 10, 2019.[39]:58 The call occurred after Giuliani and Patel attempted to call each other for several hours, and less than an hour after a call between Giuliani and Kurt Volker.[39]:58 Five minutes after the call between Giuliani and Patel, an unidentified phone number called Giuliani for over 17 minutes, after which Giuliani called his associate Lev Parnas for approximately 12 minutes.[39]:58 In a statement to CBS News on December 4, 2019, Patel denied being part of Giuliani's Ukraine back channel, saying he was "never a back channel to President Trump on Ukraine matters, at all, ever"[40] and that his call with Giuliani was "personal".[41]
Principal deputy with director of National Intelligence (2020)
Foreign Policy magazine connected the move to Trump's "refusal to accept the election results".[49] Based on interviews with defense experts, Alex Ward of Vox suggested that Patel's appointment was "not sinister", would "not change much", and may have served an effort to accelerate the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.[50] According to an unnamed source quoted by Vanity Fair, Miller was a "front man" during his time as Acting Secretary of Defense while Patel and Ezra Cohen-Watnick were "calling the shots" at the Department of Defense.[51] Another source told the magazine that Patel was the most influential person in the U.S. government on matters of national security.[51]
Trump proposed Patel as a potential leader for either the FBI or CIA in early 2021, after the 2020 United States presidential election. Trump had considered installing Patel as either CIA deputy director or acting director, which would have required firing director Gina Haspel.[53] This proposal faced significant resistance, including from Attorney General William Barr, who wrote in his memoir that Patel would become FBI director only "over my dead body".[54][51][53] In his last weeks in office, Trump planned to fire CIA deputy director Vaughn Bishop and replace him with Patel, but was talked out of doing so by Haspel, backed by Vice President Mike Pence and White House counsel Pat Cipollone.[53]
Conflicts with intelligence agencies
In January 2025, CNN reported that Patel had clashed with the FBI and CIA for years, notably with regard to his handling of national security secrets, leading the CIA to ask the first Trump Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into his activities. The CIA alleged that, in an effort to discredit the FBI investigation of Russian interference, Patel had circulated classified information about the Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election to government officials not authorized to see it. Patel denies mishandling classified documents and the DOJ referral did not lead to prosecution. Patel's FBI security clearance file remains flagged to indicate that the CIA referral was made. Patel was one of 43 people whose phone records were secretly obtained in a sweeping leaks investigation during Trump's first presidency. He has suggested the FBI should scale back its national security intelligence operations to focus solely on criminal investigations.[55]
Patel is widely characterized as and has acknowledged being a Trump loyalist.[56][4][22][57] Since 2020, he has invoked his association with Trump in "enterprises he promotes under the logotype 'K$H.'"[15] In April 2022, Patel became a member of the board of directors for the Trump Media & Technology Group, owner of the Truth Social media platform.[58] Patel promoted several pro-Trump conspiracy theories and appeared on podcasts hosted by alt-right personalities such as Stew Peters[59] and co-hosted a talk show on The Epoch Times, a far-right Falun Gong-affiliated media organization.[59][60] Patel also sold branded merchandise such as supplements that he says detoxify the body of COVID-19 vaccines' effects.[59]
On June 19, 2022, Trump sent the National Archives a letter naming Patel and John Solomon "representatives for access to Presidential records of my administration".[66] Also in 2022, Patel created Fight With Kash, a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) charity, to raise donations for "helping other people" in need, though more specifically to bring "America First patriots" together and "help fight the Deep State." Patel said he "funded whistleblowers campaigns", which Democrats on the Republican-controlled House Judiciary weaponization subcommittee said included former FBI employees the FBI claimed endorse "an alarming series of conspiracy theories related to the January 6 Capitol attack ... and the validity of the 2020 election". During a December 2023 appearance on Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast, Patel concurred with Bannon's assertions that Trump was "dead serious" about seeking revenge against his political enemies were he elected in 2024. Patel said:
We will go out and find the conspirators—not just in government, but in the media ... we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections ... We're going to come after you. Whether it's criminally or civilly, we'll figure that out. But yeah, we're putting you all on notice, and Steve, this is why they hate us. This is why we're tyrannical. This is why we're dictators ... Because we're actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.[67]
Patel's remarks came during concurrent reporting in The New York Times about "a series of plans by Mr. Trump and his allies that would upend core elements of American governance, democracy, foreign policy and the rule of law if he regained the White House." Days later, Axios reported that Patel was being considered for a top national security position in a second Trump administration.[67][68][69]
In December 2024, The New York Times reported that Patel had made several misleading claims about his role in the 2012 Benghazi attack investigation while at the Department of Justice. According to current and former law enforcement officials the Times interviewed, Patel overstated his importance in the investigation and distorted the department's broader efforts. Patel said he was "leading the prosecution's efforts at Main Justice", but officials said he held a junior position in the counterterrorism section supporting the investigation, which was run by prosecutors at the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, D.C., along with FBI agents and analysts.[70]
The Times also reported that Patel's claims about the prosecution of Ahmed Abu Khattala were inaccurate. Patel suggested Khattala would be released from prison before the 2028 election, but Khattala was actually sentenced to 28 years in prison in September 2024 after an appeals court ruled his original 22-year sentence was too low.[70]
Involvement in Trump documents investigation (2021–2022)
In 2021, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) found that Trump had taken presidential documents with him to his home in Florida after leaving office. After Trump returned some documents, NARA found others were still missing, including some that were highly classified. NARA referred the matter to the FBI, and after requests and a subpoena to return the documents went unheeded, the FBI entered Trump's home under a search warrant to retrieve them. Patel publicly asserted that Trump had declassified broad sets of sensitive documents before leaving the White House. In October 2022, Patel was summoned to testify before a federal grand jury investigating the matter, but he declined to answer questions by invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Patel was represented in the matter by lawyer Stanley Woodward.[71][72] The Justice Department unsuccessfully sought to persuade a federal judge to compel Patel's testimony. Justice Department prosecutors granted him limited immunity from prosecution, after which Patel testified on November 4, 2022.[72][73]
The Kash Foundation
Kash is president and a board member of the Kash Foundation,[74] which became a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization in 2022. The foundation website includes a link to an online store to products from Based Apparel, which is partly owned by Patel,[75] with "K$H: Fight with Kash" products.[76] Fight with Kash is also a website affiliated with Patel and the Kash Foundation and also has a link to the same Based Apparel store.[77] When the Fight With Kash website was first registered in September 2021, the registrants were the Kash Patel Legal Offense Trust and Believe Media, of which the CEO and founder is a board member of the Kash Foundation.[75]
Director of the FBI (2025–present)
Nomination
In November 2024, Trump nominated Patel to succeed Christopher A. Wray as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.[78] In announcing the nomination, Trump cited Patel's role in "uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax" and his advocacy for "truth, accountability and the Constitution".[78] After his nomination, Patel was targeted by Iranian hackers, who accessed some of his communications.[79] His nomination hearing was on January 30, 2025, with the Senate Judiciary Committee.[80]
Two days before Patel's Senate confirmation hearing, 23 former Republican officials released a letter saying that his confirmation would be "a grievous mistake that would endanger the FBI's integrity and compromise its critical mission" because he is "motivated by revenge" and "has repeatedly vowed to go after individuals on perceived enemies lists. This is a vision of the FBI as an authoritarian weapon for pursuing his and Trump's grievances". The signatories included many Justice Department officials from four Republican administrations. Ty Cobb, a former Trump White House attorney who signed the letter, said Patel "is not qualified remotely by character or experience" to be FBI director and is "somebody who is a real danger to democracy and certainly a dagger in the heart of the FBI."[81][82]
Senate committee claims of possible perjury
As Patel's confirmation was being considered, Senator Dick Durbin said "highly credible information from multiple sources" suggested Patel was covertly directing a purge of FBI officials, asking the Justice Department inspector general to investigate.[83] Durbin suggested Patel might have committed perjury when responding to the question "Are you aware of any plans or discussions to punish in any way, including termination, FBI agents or personnel associated with Trump investigations? Yes or no". Patel replied:[84]
I don't know what's going on right now over there, but I'm committed to you, Senator, and your colleagues that I will honor the internal review process of the FBI.
Based on information from multiple sources, Durbin said Patel had coordinated with Trump deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove to remove certain FBI officials.[e] According to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary site:[86]
if these whistleblower allegations are true, just two days prior, Stephen Miller, at Mr. Patel’s direction, had ordered DOJ leadership not just to terminate a specific list of officials, but to speed up those terminations.
In a letter to the inspector general of U.S. Department of Justice, Durbin wrote:[84]
It is unacceptable for a nominee with no current role in government, much less at the FBI, to personally direct unjustified and potentially illegal adverse employment actions against senior career FBI leadership and other dedicated, nonpartisan law enforcement officers.
Conflict of interest reports to the committee
Unbeknownst to the public until two days after his Senate committee hearing, Patel had filed paperwork disclosing his consulting firm Trishul, a Wilmington, Delaware, corporation, which had Qatar as a client. The company provided national security, defense, and intelligence consulting for Qatar until November 2024.[87] Patel was a consultant to Qatar while a national security advisor for Trump's 2024 presidential campaign. His consulting firm reported business income of $2,114,251,[87] and he has faced scrutiny for not registering as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.[88] He said he would not divest himself from Trishul, but Trishul would remain dormant if Patel were confirmed as FBI director.[88] The FBI is a part of the U.S. Department of Justice, which is led by Attorney GeneralPam Bondi.[89][90] Bondi is a former lobbyist for Qatar.[91]
Patel was also paid between $1 million to $5 million in restricted stock which is unvested in the Elite Depot Ltd., the Cayman Islands-based parent company of Chinese online discount retailer Shein.[92] As restricted stock, the stock can be legally titled in the future to Patel, becoming vested to the recipient later on.[93] The disclosure forms did not say how $1–5 million had been earned as unvested stock for consulting services.[94] The shares vest quarterly until November 1, 2025. The first portion was scheduled to vest on February 1, 2025.[87]
After Patel's original financial disclosure or ethics agreement was filed, he had received 25,946 restricted shares at a value of over $800,000 (as of when reported) in Trump Media & Technology Group, which operates the Truth Social platform and is majority-owned by Trump.[95] Patel is a board member of the company.[96] He received the stock two days before the Senate hearing, on January 28, 2025. Patel's new financial disclosures are not publicly available from the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.
About $200,000 (25% of the Trump Media restricted shares as of when reported) is accessible immediately, and the remainder of the restricted stock will become available in a vesting schedule of installments from March 2025 through March 2027.[95] Of the idea of Patel holding on to the restricted shares while working as FBI director, Washington University in St. Louis School of Law professor Kathleen Clark said: "It gives him a financial incentive not to take any actions that would undermine the value of Trump Media. That would include investigations." Clark specializes in government ethics.[97]
Confirmation
During his confirmation hearing, Patel denied being familiar with right-wing conspiracy theorist Stew Peters "off the top of my head". He had appeared on Peters's podcast eight times.[98] He strongly denied including an "enemies list" at the end of his book Government Gangsters, though the book named 60 "Members of the Executive Branch Deep State" whom the book calls "corrupt actors of the first order". Patel was asked about a remark he had made about prosecuting Justice Department officials on racketeering charges "for criminally organizing the United States government to break the law to rig presidential elections". He did not acknowledge making the remark, saying it was not given in context. He also did not acknowledge remarks about going after government and media figures he made on Steve Bannon's podcast in December 2023. He sought to distance himself from a meme he had shared on social media of him taking a chainsaw to his political enemies, saying he had not created the meme. Patel alleged Democrats on the committee were making "false accusations and grotesque mischaracterizations" of him.[99][100]
Dick Durbin, the committee's top Democrat, asked Patel about "And Justice for All", a song by some of the incarceratedJanuary 6th United States Capitol attack rioters (the J6 choir)[101] that Patel had co-produced, promoted, and sold. Patel has called the rioters "political prisoners".[102] He also produced a podcast with an episode called "What was the FBI doing planning January 6th for a year?".[103] Durbin asked Patel why he had said that the FBI planned the January 6 attack. Patel replied that he had not said that.[104]
Committee chair Chuck Grassley posted on social media, "These latest allegations ... don't hold a candle to Patel's character + credibility."[105]
On February 13, 2025, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 12–10 along party lines to recommend Patel's nomination to serve as FBI director.[106] On February 18, the Senate voted 48–45 along party lines to forward Patel's nomination for a full Senate vote.[107] On February 20, the Senate confirmed Patel in a 51–49 vote.[108] The vote was mostly along party lines, but Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins voted against confirmation.[109]
On the day after he was sworn in, Patel told senior officials that he planned to relocate up to 1,000 employees from the Washington office to field offices around the country and move an additional 500 to an FBI facility in Huntsville, Alabama.[112]
Patel has actively promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory. On Truth Social, he promoted an account with the handle @Q, which distributed messages related to the conspiratorial movement. According to Media Matters, Patel shared an image featuring a flaming Q on it and went on multiple QAnon shows to urge members to join Truth Social.[115] In 2022 Patel said that Truth Social was trying to adopt QAnon "into our overall messaging scheme to capture audiences" and that the figurehead of the QAnon movement "should get credit for all the things he has accomplished".[117][122] Patel has appeared on multiple far-right podcasts, such as Stew Peters's, promoting conspiracy theories, and appeared over 50 times on at least a dozen podcasts that have promoted the QAnon movement.[59]
Patel has signed ten copies of his children's book about "King Donald" with the QAnon motto "WWG1WGA" ("where we go one, we go all"). He has also promoted the #WWG1WGAhashtag on Truth Social.[115][123] Also on Truth Social, Patel has promoted the use of pills that he said reversed the effects of COVID-19 vaccines.[11][124]
Patel expanded on his view of the "deep state" in his 2023 book Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy, which Trump praised as a "roadmap to end the Deep State's reign".[114][116]
In 2024, Patel was paid $25,000 to appear in the six-part film series All the President's Men: The Conspiracy Against Trump. The series was made by a company owned by Igor Lopatonok, a Russian national and U.S. citizen who has produced films alleging deep-state conspiracy theories and promoting narratives of the Russian government. The series ran on the Tucker Carlson media platform in November 2024, with Patel appearing as a supposed victim of the deep state.[129]
Patel resides in both Nevada[132] and Washington, D.C.[19] He plays ice hockey[20] and is a fan of the sport.[133] In 2014, according to the website Above the Law, Patel agreed to participate in a "bachelor auction" of "very handsome lawyers" to benefit Switchboard of Miami, a social services organization.[134] He later withdrew from the auction after noting that his Florida Bar status was inactive at the time.[2][135] Patel has been a regular guest on several podcasts, including those hosted by Tim Pool and Benny Johnson.[133]
Kash Patel has been dating Alexis Wilkins, a country music artist and conservative political commentator, since 2023.[136] During his swearing-in ceremony as FBI director in 2025, Patel was accompanied by Wilkins, who held the Bhagavad Gita while he took oath of office.[137]
Litigation
Between October 23 and November 8, 2019, Politico published articles about Patel that he considered defamatory. On November 18, 2019, Patel sued Politico in the Circuit Court for the County of Henrico, Virginia.[138] The case was ruled a non-suit on March 15, 2022.[37]
On January 21, 2025, the Court of Appeals of Virginia decided the case Kashyap Patel v. CNN. Patel had claimed that Cable News Network (CNN) had slandered him in various stories, with one saying he was a back channel for Trump to Ukraine in the course of events that were to become the first impeachment of Donald Trump. CNN was granted the motion to require the plaintiff to provide documents pertaining to the plaintiff's claim ("crave Oyer" in Virginia law).[139] Some documents presented were the Nunes memo and the Trump-Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Report (Ukraine Report).[140] CNN knew that Patel denied the claim and that the Ukraine Report said exactly what Patel had denied. The court ruled, "Patel's bare conclusory allegation that CNN acted with actual malice was without factual support and insufficient to withstand demurrer."[141] A demurrer is a document that objects to the opposing party's filed pleading.[142]
↑ According to The New York Times, Patel was the primary author of the Nunes memo, but that claim was disputed by the committee's staff director, by a spokesman for Nunes, and by unattributed sources interviewed by India Abroad.[21] Patel did not offer a public comment on the matter.[21]
↑ As of January 2021, the case was heard in the circuit court of Henrico County, Virginia. The cases was later ruled a Non-Suit on 3/15/22.[38]
↑ According to the Senate Committee on the Judicary website: "Durbin went on to reveal that on January 29, 2025, Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll and Acting FBI Deputy Director Robert Kissane scheduled a meeting where it was relayed that a group of Executive Assistant Directors (EAD) and other supervisors must resign or be fired. Contemporaneous notes from that morning meeting read: 'KP wants movement at FBI, reciprocal actions for DOJ.' Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove told meeting attendees that he received multiple calls from Stephen Miller the night before. Mr. Miller was pressuring him because Mr. Patel wanted the FBI to remove targeted employees faster, as DOJ had already done with prosecutors."[85]
References
1 2 3 "Who is Kash Patel, the Trump loyalist tapped to run the FBI?". Archived from the original on December 7, 2024. Retrieved December 7, 2024. What do we know about Kash Patel? Kashyap Pramod Vinod Patel, commonly known as Kash, was born in the city of New York, a child of immigrant parents originally from the Indian state of Gujarat.
1 2 3 4 Feldscher, Jacqueline (November 24, 2020). "Kash Patel, recently installed Trump loyalist, now leading Pentagon transition". Politico. Archived from the original on January 17, 2021. Retrieved January 1, 2021. Patel previously worked for Rep. Devin Nunes (R.Calif.), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, and as a staffer played a key role in helping Republicans discredit the Russia probe.
1 2 Suderman, Alan; Linderman, Juliet (July 9, 2024). "Kash Patel is pushing conspiracies and his brand. He's poised to help lead a Trump administration". The Associated Press. Many who worked with Patel before he joined the Trump administration said he was an ambitious if not exceptional lawyer whose quick rise and far-right tilt have left them stunned ... A trusted aide and swaggering campaign surrogate who mythologizes the former president while promoting conspiracy theories and his own brand.
1 2 Del Rey, Michelle (November 30, 2024). "Trump picks MAGA loyalist Kash Patel as his new FBI director". The Independent. Archived from the original on December 13, 2024. Retrieved December 12, 2024. A conspiracy theorist who wants to restrain federal law enforcement agencies, Patel has advocated for firing workers and going on a prosecution spree to fulfill Trump's promise of retribution.
1 2 "Kash Patel is a crackpot". The Economist. January 29, 2025. Retrieved February 22, 2025. Kash Patel likes conspiracy theories. Luckily for everyone else, conspiracists are normally kept far away from America's federal law-enforcement and intelligence machinery, with all its powers of surveillance, investigation and arrest. Donald Trump has tested this premise in his choice of Mr Patel to lead the FBI.
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