Critics of ‘deep state’ foe Kash Patel, President-elect Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, call the veteran official a ‘danger’ to the U.S. who will politicize the bureau – but a review of the agency’s recent history shows the upper echelon of the FBI has long had a politicization problem, and Patel says he’s just the man to end it.
Trump announced over the weekend that he is nominating Patel as FBI director, after years as a public defender and working up the echelons of the federal government, including as senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council under the Trump administration, and chief of staff to acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller toward the end of Trump’s first term.
Patel is an outspoken crusader against the ‘deep state.’ In a book published last year, he explicitly called for revamping the FBI in a chapter dubbed ‘Overhauling the FBI,’ and moving the FBI’s headquarters out of Washington, D.C.
Since 2013, the FBI has seen three directors take the helm: James Comey, who served under the Obama administration before Trump fired him in May 2017; short-term acting-director Andrew McCabe under the Trump administration; and current director, Christopher Wray, whom Trump also appointed.
Amid the political left’s outrage over the Patel pick, Fox News Digital revisited a handful of the agency’s scandals that were lambasted as politically motivated and spoiling the integrity of the agency.
FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page’s anti-Trump texts
In 2017, the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller came under fire when it was revealed that two FBI employees tasked with investigating and handling alleged Russian interference into the 2016 election had texted each other anti-Trump rhetoric.
‘[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!’ FBI attorney Lisa Page texted FBI agent Peter Strzok in August 2016, Fox Digital previously reported.
‘No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,’ Strzok responded.
Strzok wrote in another August 2016 text, seemingly referring to Trump’s chance of winning the 2016 election: ‘I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office – that there’s no way he gets elected – but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.’
Strzok and Page were both working on Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election – which ultimately found no evidence that Trump or his campaign coordinated with Russia – before Mueller dismissed Strzok from the investigation amid the text scandal. Page left the team before the text messages were discovered and revealed to the public.
The pair had also worked together on the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server for official government duties.
The FBI ultimately fired Strzok in 2018 over the texts, as conservative lawmakers and critics lambasted the ‘bias’ within the FBI.
‘In Louisiana, we call that bias, we don’t call that objective,’ Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said on Fox News at the time.
While then-House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy said: ‘Peter Strzok’s manifest bias trending toward animus casts a pall on this investigation… His bias impacted his decision-making and he assigned to himself the role of stopping the Trump campaign or ending a Trump Presidency.’
‘This is not the FBI I know,’ the South Carolina Republican added.
Trump slammed the scandal as an instance of ‘treason.’
‘A man is tweeting to his lover that if [former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton] loses, we’ll essentially do the insurance policy,’ Trump said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2018. ‘We’ll go to phase two and we’ll get this guy out of office.’
‘This is the FBI we’re talking about – that is treason,’ he continued. ‘That is a treasonous act. What he tweeted to his lover is a treasonous act.’
Acting FBI Director McCabe fired after leaking to the media
Trump dismissed FBI Director James Comey on May 9, 2017, with Deputy Director Andrew McCabe stepping up to take the helm of the agency for roughly three months before he was fired for allegedly leaking information to the press and initially lying about the leaks, Justice Department’s internal watchdog found in a 2018 investigation.
McCabe automatically assumed the responsibilities of FBI director upon Comey’s firing, as the Trump administration searched for another FBI chief. McCabe had reportedly been in the running for the nomination, but was ultimately replaced by Wray in August of that year. Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe just days before he would have been eligible for a lifetime pension after it was determined that he had leaked a self-serving story to the press regarding the bureau’s probe of Clinton’s email server, and then misled investigators on the matter.
Sessions said McCabe ‘made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor − including under oath − on multiple occasions.’
The DOJ IG report found McCabe leaked information of an August 2016 call to the Wall Street Journal for an Oct. 30, 2016, story titled ‘FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe.’ The story focused on the FBI announcing the reopening of the Clinton investigation after finding thousands of her emails on a laptop belonging to former Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, who was married to Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
The Journal reported a senior Justice Department official expressed displeasure to McCabe that FBI agents were still looking into the Clinton Foundation, and that McCabe had defended the FBI’s authority to pursue the issue.
McCabe filed a lawsuit over the firing, and saw his pension restored as part of a settlement deal that also vacated Sessions’ decision, and removed any mention of being fired from McCabe’s FBI record.
Conviction of FBI Crossfire Hurricane lawyer Kevin Clinesmith
Under Director Comey’s tenure as FBI chief, the agency came under fire when media outlets began reporting in 2019 that the DOJ’s watchdog made a criminal referral to U.S. prosecutor John Durham regarding FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, elevating the investigation from an inquiry to a criminal probe. Durham was the U.S. attorney for Connecticut and later tapped by then-Attorney General Bill Barr to lead a criminal investigation into the origins of the FBI investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Clinesmith had worked on the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, which investigated alleged claims Russia interfered in the 2016 election, when Trump won the Oval Office in his campaign against Clinton.
The DOJ inspector general accused Clinesmith, though not by name, of altering an email about former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page to say that he was ‘not a source’ for another government agency, downplaying Page’s relationship with the CIA. Page had worked as an ‘operational contact’ for the CIA for about five years until 2013.
The Justice Department relied on Clinesmith’s altered email assertion as it submitted a third and final renewal application in 2017 to eavesdrop on Page under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
The Justice Department’s charging document stated that Clinesmith ‘did willfully and knowingly make and use a false writing and document, knowing the same to contain a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement and entry in a matter before the jurisdiction of the executive branch and judicial branch of the Government of the United States.’
Clinesmith ultimately pleaded guilty to ‘one count of making a false statement within both the jurisdiction of the executive branch and judicial branch of the U.S. government, an offense that carries a maximum term of imprisonment of five years and a fine of up to $250,000.’
He was sentenced in 2021 to 12 months probation and 400 hours of community service.
Page said the 2020 Clinesmith indictment was the ‘first step on the road to justice’ for the FBI and DOJ, slamming Clinesmith’s actions as ‘false conspiracies and made-up lies paid for by Democrats.’
‘Friday was just a first step on the road to justice, because it was the first time that I started to see some semblance of justice from the DOJ and FBI with the fact they were acting in accordance with Crime Victims’ Rights Act, a law that was totally avoided and not respected throughout last four years,’ Page told ‘Mornings with Maria’ at the time.
Prosecution of former national security adviser Michael Flynn
Trump’s first national security adviser Michael Flynn, who also served as Obama administration Defense Intelligence Agency chief, was embroiled in FBI legal woes at the start of Trump’s first administration amid the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, which ultimately sparked the Mueller investigation and was followed by the Durham report.
In December 2017, when Comey helmed the FBI, Flynn struck a plea deal with Mueller, pleading guilty to giving false statements to the FBI, which included comment regarding his communications with a Russian ambassador. Flynn also admitted to filing paperwork under the Foreign Agents Registration Act that contained misrepresentations regarding business with Turkey.
The plea deal included Flynn’s cooperation with Mueller’s special counsel investigation into Trump’s alleged connections to Russia during the 2016 election.
In 2019, however, Flynn claimed innocence and accused the FBI of misconduct. Internal FBI documents made public in 2020 showed top FBI leadership discussing the motivation behind interviewing Flynn when he served as national security adviser and whether their ‘goal’ was ‘to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired.’
The documents were handwritten notes between the FBI’s former head of counterintelligence Bill Priestap following a meeting with Comey and McCabe, Fox News Digital previously reported. The notes suggested that agents also planned to get Flynn ‘to admit to breaking the Logan Act’ when he spoke to then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition period.
Strzok was notably one of the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn.
Trump ultimately pardoned Flynn in 2020 and his case was dismissed. Flynn has since said he faced a ‘political persecution of the highest order.’
‘So, you know, we went and made the decision that this was the direction that we wanted to go and good enough for President Donald Trump for coming through, and we’re certainly grateful to him,’ Flynn said in 2020 on Fox News. ‘But at the same time, we also know that this was a political persecution of the highest order and not something that any American should ever have to go through.’
Trump announced over the weekend that he is nominating Patel as FBI director, touting him as someone who will ‘end the growing crime epidemic in America, dismantle the migrant criminal gangs, and stop the evil scourge of human and drug trafficking across the Border.’
Patel has been a staunch Trump ally, including joining the 45th president during his trial in Manhattan in the spring, and echoing that the United States’ security and law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, need to be overhauled. Patel published a book last year called ‘Government Gangsters,’ where he railed against the ‘deep state,’ the weaponization of the federal government and the Russia investigation into Trump.
‘Things are bad. There’s no denying it,’ Patel wrote in his book. ‘The FBI has gravely abused its power, threatening not only the rule of law, but the very foundations of self-government at the root of our democracy. But this isn’t the end of the story. Change is possible at the FBI and desperately needed,’ he wrote.
‘The fact is we need a federal agency that investigates federal crimes, and that agency will always be at risk of having its powers abused,’ he continued, advocating the firing of ‘corrupt actors,’ ‘aggressive’ congressional oversight over the agency, complete overhauls to special counsels, and moving the FBI out of Washington, D.C.
Democrats and liberal members of the media have slammed Trump’s choice of Patel, calling him as a ‘danger’ to the U.S. and ‘unqualified’ for the role.
‘It’s a terrible development for the men and women of the FBI and also for the nation that depends on a highly functioning, professional, independent Federal Bureau of Investigation. The fact that Kash Patel is profoundly unqualified for this job is not even, like, a matter for debate,’ McCabe said on CNN following the announcement. ‘The installation, or the nomination, I guess we should say at this point, of Kash Patel as FBI director can only possibly be a plan to disrupt, to dismantle, to distract the FBI, and to possibly use it as a tool for the president’s political agenda.’
Before Patel could assume the role as FBI chief, Wray would need to step down or be fired, as he is in the midst of a 10-year appointment that does not end until 2027. The Senate would also have to confirm Patel.
‘It is the honor of a lifetime to be nominated by President Trump to serve as Director of the FBI,’ Patel said in a statement following the announcement. ‘Together, we will restore integrity, accountability, and equal justice to our justice system and return the FBI to its rightful mission: protecting the American people.’
Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman, Ronn Blitzer and Joseph Wulfsohn contributed to this report.