A bombshell new report has laid bare the extreme lengths Kash Patel has gone to appease the president.
Patel remains FBI director in part because he is President Donald Trump’s yes-man, repeatedly committing “significant resources” to uncover election fraud even as agents repeatedly find nothing, sources tell The Atlantic.
“Patel has said yes to everything” Trump officials have asked, a former official who was part of an election-related probe in Florida tells the magazine. “Every single thing.”
That has reportedly included pulling FBI personnel from regular duties to hunt for fraud in the 2020 election even after investigators find no wrongdoing—an endeavor The Atlantic writes has come “at substantial cost to taxpayers.”
Things have gotten so dire for Patel, who promised election-related arrests were imminent during an April interview on Fox News, that FBI agents are reportedly being told to simply “look harder” after they find nothing abnormal in voter rolls.
A former FBI employee told The Atlantic that some staff are manufacturing excuses to be unavailable so they do not get asked to participate further in a voter fraud investigation in South Florida.
Other sources told the magazine that Patel has openly cited directions he has received from Trump, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and other White House staff.
“I’ve personally heard him say, ‘I have to do this for the White House,’” a former FBI official told The Atlantic. Others tell the magazine they have heard that certain priorities are “a big deal for the president” or “this is a push from 47.”
The White House did not deny sending directives to the FBI, telling The Atlantic that Miller “interacts with all law-enforcement agencies on a regular basis.”
A specific push came this summer in Georgia, according to the magazine.
Roughly 260 FBI employees were ordered to set aside their normal responsibilities to spend two weeks, including weekends and overtime, comparing Fulton County voting records with information in another database. Sources said that effort was “prone to errors and wasn’t considered up to FBI standards.” A pair of analysts who questioned the process in Atlanta were allegedly escorted out of the room.
The Atlantic reports that the FBI operation in Georgia, which Trump narrowly lost in 2020 but won in 2024, yielded nothing substantive. Prior probes also found no evidence of mass voter fraud in the state.
There are fears within the FBI that similar investigations will continue across the country until someone is in handcuffs—something Trump wants before November’s midterms “no matter how thin” the evidence is, according to a former official who spoke to The Atlantic.
“We have every reason to believe that Patel will aid and abet Trump,” a former official told the magazine.
An ex-FBI official told the publication that Patel has said he “believed the same things as the president” about election conspiracies and that he will accommodate White House requests.
“It was clear that Kash was just trying to hold on to his job, and willing to do anything it takes,” the official told The Atlantic.
An FBI spokesperson told The Atlantic that “election security is and will continue to be one of this FBI’s highest national security priorities, and we will make no apologies for any work to ensure every American citizen’s sacred right to vote is protected from criminal interference.”
The statement further claimed that “there has been a “500% increase in election integrity related investigations and arrests just this year alone.” The bureau also denied that any internal concerns have been raised about the FBI’s approach to election-related investigations.
Reached for comment, an FBI spokesperson referred the Daily Beast to its prior statement.
