Kash Patel
Former NSC Staff, Acting ODNI Chief of Staff
Kash Patel is a former public defender turned congressional staffer turned full-time Trump grievance operator. He spent the back half of Trump's first term collecting enemies, writing memos, and positioning himself as the man who would "clean house" at the intelligence community if given the chance.
He wrote a book — Government Gangsters — that identified by name the career officials and former law enforcement figures he considered part of the "deep state." The book reads less like policy analysis and more like a list. He appeared on podcast after podcast promising retribution. Trump loved it.
He is now the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The agency he spent years publicly threatening is under his command. He has used it exactly as promised: purging senior agents involved in the Jan. 6 and Mar-a-Lago investigations, sidelining career officials, and installing loyalists. FBI agents and analysts — career nonpartisan law enforcement professionals — have described morale at historic lows. By April 2026, reports describe a director who is frequently drunk on the job, paranoid about being fired, and so erratic that a login glitch sent him into a full panic that Trump had terminated him. He brought a list. He got the building. What's left of the FBI is what he made of it.
Patel publishes Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy. The book names dozens of current and former federal officials as corrupt actors. It becomes a staple of MAGA media and launches Patel as a figure promising institutional payback.
Trump nominates Patel as FBI Director. Current and former FBI officials — including agents who served under both Republican and Democratic administrations — express alarm. Patel has publicly stated that he intends to use the FBI to investigate Trump's political opponents and "come after" members of the media.
The Senate confirms Patel as FBI Director. He takes office and immediately begins a restructuring process, sidelining career officials and placing loyalists in key positions. FBI rank-and-file morale hits what multiple current agents describe to reporters as an all-time low.
Patel launches a renewed purge of senior FBI officials and agents involved in the January 6 investigations and the classified documents case at Mar-a-Lago. At least a dozen are fired or removed in a single week, including a former Washington field office leader who oversaw the Jan. 6 probe, the acting head of the New York field office, and Miami agents who worked the documents case. A former assistant director in charge describes the FBI's capabilities as "depleted."
The Atlantic reports that Patel is frequently drunk on the job, regularly absent from work, and deeply paranoid about being fired by Trump. In one incident on April 10, he struggled to log into an internal FBI computer system and quickly became convinced Trump had terminated him — triggering a freak-out visible to colleagues before the issue was identified as a technical glitch. Multiple FBI officials describe a director who has hollowed out the agency and can barely hold himself together inside it.