This is an adapted excerpt from the Dec. 11 episode of “Alex Wagner Tonight.”
Just weeks before Donald Trump is set to return to the White House, we got the huge news that FBI Director Chris Wray plans to resign at the end of President Joe Biden’s term. For some perspective as to why this is so significant, remember that FBI directors are appointed to 10-year terms precisely to avoid the impact of partisan politics. Moreover, Wray was appointed back in 2017 by Trump himself, after Trump infamously fired the previous FBI director, James Comey.
Wray’s decision to step down — rather than wait for Trump to fire him — is a controversy in its own right, but now that Wray has announced he will vacate his office on Jan. 20, the more pressing matter is whom Trump plans to nominate in Wray’s place: Kash Patel.
Now that Wray has announced he will vacate his office on Jan. 20, the more pressing matter is whom Trump plans to nominate in Wray’s place: Kash Patel.
If you aren’t particularly familiar with Patel, I don’t blame you — he was sort of a tertiary character in the first Trump administration. But since the last administration ended, Patel has been loud and proud about exactly what he would do if he were put in charge of an agency like the FBI in a second Trump term:
“We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media,” Patel told Steve Bannon on his podcast in 2023. “Yes, 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 criminal or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.”
“We’re going to come after you.” Now, on its own, that statement might be seen as a little ambiguous. Patel has since said that he only means people who broke the law. But who exactly does Patel believe fits that description? Whom is he saying he should “come after?” Well, to answer that question, Patel has already published an “enemies list” — and when I say published, I mean Patel literally printed this list in the back of a book.
Last year, Patel published a book called: “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy.” In the appendix to that book is a list titled “Members of the Executive Branch Deep State.” While the list has 60 people on it, the author makes sure to note that it’s “not exhaustive.”
On that list are people like former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr, Hillary Clinton and — wouldn’t you know it — the current FBI director, whom (again) Trump himself appointed, Chris Wray.
It’s not just Patel’s enemies list that makes the idea of him running the FBI concerning. Patel is also an avid conspiracy theorist.
From 2021 to 2023, he hosted a show for a far-right news outlet called The Epoch Times. NBC News reviewed 79 episodes of that show and found that Patel and his co-host pushed “unfounded claims of conspiracies involving government officials, law enforcement agencies, the media and tech companies.” All of those claims were about supposed attempts to “rig elections, silence conservative voices and undermine Trump.”
Patel has also engaged with the far-right conspiracy theory known as QAnon, which asserts that there is a deep state within the U.S. government that works to protect a cabal of pedophile elites who secretly traffic children and harvest chemicals from their blood.
In 2022, during his media tour to promote Truth Social, Patel shared what he thinks of the alleged mastermind behind QAnon, who calls himself Q: “Whether it’s the Q’s of the world — and I agree with some of what he does and I disagree with some of what he does — if it allows people to gather and focus on the truth and the facts, I’m all for it.”
NPR reports that Patel has made more than 50 appearances on various podcasts that have either promoted the QAnon movement or shared QAnon-related conspiracy theories. When promoting one of his books, Patel signed 10 copies with a QAnon slogan, as a sort of promotional gimmick — sort of like the golden ticket in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” but for people who think Hillary Clinton drinks children’s blood. (I should also note that promotion was not for Patel’s adult book. That was for one of Patel’s three children’s books, part of his “Plot Against the King” series. Those books follow a wizard named Kash who sets out to save a king named Donald from characters like “Hillary Queenton” and “Comma-la-la-la.”) Instead of buying Patel’s books, you could just buy one of the bogus Covid vaccine “reversal” supplements he’s promoted, which claim to undo the supposed nefarious effects of the Covid vaccines. Or you could sign up for the right-wing cell service he pushes, which is really just a third-party vendor for companies like AT&T and T-Mobile. Or buy a “Fight with Kash” branded T-shirt. Or a Patel-branded bottle of wine. On top of his questionable merchandise endeavors, on top of the conspiracies, on top of the enemies list, one of the things we really have to worry about when it comes to Patel are his thoughts on the FBI itself. In September, Patel went on “The Shawn Ryan Show” and said he would “shut down the FBI Hoover building on Day 1 and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state.” Sort of like the golden ticket in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” but for people who think Hillary Clinton drinks children’s blood. Not only does Patel think the FBI, as it is currently run, is nothing more than the “deep state,” but when it comes to the biggest case the FBI has handled in the past four years, the prosecution of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Patel thinks that the FBI may have encouraged rioters to commit crimes to entrap Trump supporters for political reasons. “It’s not like they just said, ‘Hey, Jan. 6 is going down, Congress is, you know, being surrounded. Go,’” Patel said on his own show in 2022. “The question that has to be answered is when did the FBI put those guys in and where? And did those confidential human sources engage people who were not going to conduct criminal activity and convince them to do so? That is the definition of entrapment.” To get more of a sense of whom Patel sees as the good guys, and whom he sees as the bad guys when it comes to Jan. 6, all you have to do is listen to that strange mashup of the Pledge of Allegiance and “The Star Spangled Banner” that Trump recorded with about 20 people jailed for their actions during the Capitol riot. Do you remember that one? Well, Patel produced that song. That is the man Trump wants to run the FBI. Allison Detzel contributed.
Alex Wagner
Alex Wagner is the host of "Alex Wagner Tonight," which airs Tuesday through Friday at 9 p.m. ET on MSNBC.
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