Trump’s FBI Pick Scored Gig After Frontrunner Flunked Job Interview
Trump named Kash Patel as his nominee to lead the FBI—but only after his first pick failed his audition.
Illustration by Eric Faison/The Daily Beast/Getty Images
Kash Patel may have finally been nominated for the position he craved the most—Federal Bureau of Investigation director. But it’s not like Donald Trump wanted him first.
President-elect Trump said Saturday he would nominate Patel to head the FBI, heralding him as a “brilliant lawyer, investigator, and ‘America First’ fighter” and signaling he would push current FBI Director Christopher Wray out of his 10-year term. But Patel wasn’t Trump’s first choice for the role, according to Axios—he just did a bit better than the other guy.
Trump initially viewed Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey as the prime candidate for the job, with Patel potentially serving as deputy FBI director. That arrangement would have saved Patel from a grueling Senate confirmation fight, where he would likely face questions on his statements on weaponizing federal law enforcement to target Trump’s political enemies and members of the press.
But Bailey didn’t pass his Mar-a-Lago interview with the president-elect, according to Axios, and Trump elevated Patel as his nominee instead. Bailey “looked the part,” sources told Axios, but “just didn’t have the presence in the room.”
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Now, Patel will be tasked with dismantling an agency Trump has long derided. The Patel pick represented a “personal message to the left that was cheering on Jack Smith,” a source told Axios, referencing the special counsel who charged Trump on dozens of federal counts involving his alleged mishandling of classified documents and his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
Patel, a former chief of staff at the Defense Department and a former advisor to the Director of National Intelligence, promised to a podcaster last month he’d “shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen the next day as a museum of the Deep State.” He also told Trump loyalist Steve Bannon last year he would “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,” he said.
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