Meet Kashyap – Kash – Patel, Trump’s pick to lead FBI

Donald Trump picks ‘Guju Bhai Kash Patel’ to head FBI

President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday nominated close confidante Kash Patel for the powerful position of Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), making him the highest-ranking Indian American in his incoming administration.

New York-born Patel has his roots in Gujarat. However, his parents are from East Africa – his mother is from Tanzania, and his father is from Uganda. They came to the US from Canada in 1970. Kashyap Pramod Vinod Patel, popularly called Kash Patel was born in 1980. His father worked for an aviation firm as a financial officer.

The family moved to Queens in New York – often called Little India — in the late 70s. It is here that Patel was born and grew. Patel’s parents are retired now and spend their time in both the US and Gujarat. After his schooling at New York College in Richmond, Virginia, and law school in New York, Patel went to Florida where he was a state public defender for four years and then a federal public defender for another four years.

From Florida, he moved to Washington DC as a terrorism prosecutor at the Department of Justice. Here he was an international terrorism prosecutor for about three and a half years. During this period, he worked on cases all over the world, in America in East Africa as well as in Uganda and Kenya.

While still employed by the Department of Justice, he went as a civilian to join Special Operations Command at the Department of Defense. At the Pentagon, he sat as the Department of Justice’s lawyer with Special Forces people and worked interagency collaborative targeting operations around the world.

“I am proud to announce that Kashyap ‘Kash’ Patel will serve as the next Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Kash is a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and ‘America First‘ fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People,” Trump announced on Truth Social, a social media platform he owns.

Trump said Patel played a pivotal role in uncovering “the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax,” standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution. Patel, 44, served as chief of staff to the Acting United States Secretary of Defense in the last few weeks of the Trump Administration in 2017.

Kash Patel is an Ice hockey fan and has been playing the sport since he was six. “I still play and I spend a lot of time volunteering coaching youth hockey in the area.” Kash Patel has called for radical changes at the FBI and was a fierce and vocal critic of the bureau’s work as it investigated ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Patel has for years been a loyal ally to Trump, finding common cause over their shared skepticism of government surveillance and the “deep state” — a pejorative catchall used by Trump to refer to Government bureaucracy. He was part of a small group of supporters during Trump’s recent criminal trial in New York who accompanied him to the courthouse, where he told reporters that Trump was the victim of an “unconstitutional circus.”

Patel first came to prominence in Trump’s orbit as an outspoken critic of the FBI’s investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Patel has played a role in several legal investigations into Trump. He appeared in 2022 before the Washington grand jury investigating Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after receiving immunity for his testimony.

He also testified at a Colorado court hearing related to Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the run-up to the violent Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol. Shortly after Trump left office, Patel launched Fight with Kash, an organization that funds defamation lawsuits and peddles a wide variety of merchandise, including branded socks and other clothing with the “K$H” logo.

Patel has also turned to publishing. He wrote a book called “Government Gangsters,” which is part memoir and part screed against the so-called deep state. Patel teamed with Bannon to release a film version. Patel has also authored children’s books that lionize Trump — “The Plot Against the King” features a thinly veiled Hillary Clinton as the villain going after “King Donald” while Kash plays a wizard who thwarts her plans.

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