WASHINGTON – Donald Trump's drive to upend the FBI was welcomed by Republican senators although it was not clear on Sunday how strongly members of the incoming majority party would embrace his move to install ally Kash Patel as the next director of the Justice Department's top investigative arm.
Patel, a onetime national security prosecutor who is aligned with the president-elect's rhetoric about a “deep state,” "must prove to Congress he will reform & restore public trust in FBI,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, in line to be the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman when Republicans take control in January, in a post on X.
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Patel lacks the high-level legal and management experience that FBI directors, including Robert Mueller, James Comey and Christopher Wray, who now holds that job, had before their nominations. It's a 10-year term, and Trump named Wray in 2017 after firing Comey. So Trump's announcement late Saturday means Wray must either resign or be fired after Trump takes office on Jan. 20, 2025.
“Every president wants people that are loyal to themselves,” said Sen. Mike Round, R-S.D., on ABC’s “This Week.” But he called Wray “a very good man” picked by Trump himself, and “I don’t have any complaints about the way that he’s done his job right now.”
A president has “the right to make nominations,” Rounds said, before noting the job is normally for 10 years, a length meant to insulate the FBI from the political influence of changing administrations.
“We’ll see what his process is, and whether he actually makes that nomination. And then, if he does, just as with anybody who is nominated for one of these positions, once they’ve been nominated by the president, then the president gets, you know, the benefit of the doubt on the nomination, but we still go through a process” of providing advice and consent under the Constitution, Rounds said.
He added: “That can be sometimes advice, sometimes it is consent.”
Other Republicans who appeared on the Sunday news shows at the end of the Thanksgiving holiday and before returning to work this week were in Patel's corner.
Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., said Patel “represents the type of change that we need to see in the FBI. ... The entire agency needs to be cleaned out.” He told NBC's “Meet the Press” that “there are serious problems at the FBI. The American public knows it. They expect to see sweeping change, and Kash Patel’s just the type of person to do it.”
He said Patel has “relevant experience” to head the FBI and “he's the one that can see through the fix here.”
During Trump's first term, Patel was an aide to the then-Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee before taking roles at the White House National Security Council and later at the Defense Department.
Patel “played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution,” Trump wrote Saturday night in a social media post.
Patel has called for a “comprehensive housecleaning” of government workers who are disloyal to Trump and has referred to journalists as traitors, promising to try to prosecute some reporters.
The selection is in keeping with Trump’s view that the government’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies require a radical transformation and his stated desire for retribution against supposed adversaries. It also shows how Trump, still fuming over years of federal investigations that shadowed his first administration and later led to his indictment, is moving to place atop the FBI and Justice Department close allies he believes will protect rather than scrutinize him.
Grassley said in his post that Wray “has failed at fundamental duties” and that it was time to “chart a new course 4 TRANSPARENCY +ACCOUNTABILITY at FBI.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said Patel was a “very strong nominee” and he thought Patel would be confirmed.
“All of the weeping and gnashing of teeth, all the people pulling their hair out, are exactly the people who are dismayed about having a real reformer come into the FBI,” Cruz told CBS' “Face the Nation.”
To Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Judiciary Committee member like Cruz, Patel “has more experience than just about anybody coming into this position,” she said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
Democrats said they would oppose him.
Trump “wants to replace his own appointee with an unqualified loyalist,” said Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, who is expected to the the ranking Democrat next year on the Judiciary Committee, in a statement. “The Senate should reject this unprecedented effort to weaponize the FBI for the campaign of retribution that Donald Trump has promised.”
That sentiment was shared by Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who said on NBC: “Patel’s only qualification is that he agrees with Donald Trump that the Department of Justice should punish, lockup and intimidate Donald Trump’s political opponents."
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Associated Press staff writers Fatima Hussein in West Palm Beach, Florida, Eric Tucker in Newtown, Pennsylvania, and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.