CNN reported on Friday that Kash Patel is under consideration by President-elect Donald Trump to lead the FBI. Patel, a former Trump Pentagon appointee, has long been a close ally of Trump and in the past has threatened to seek revenge against Trump critics.
CNN ‘s Manu Raju reported the news on air and turned to Sara Murray who broke the story with Kristen Holmes.
“Sara, I want to start with you. So explain why this is alarming to so many people?” Raju began.
“Well, I think it’s alarming to people because they look at Kash Patel is really a Trump loyalist, someone who if Donald Trump does select him to run, the FBI would be the kind of person who can carry out retribution against Trump’s political enemies, can purge career civil servants can try to declassify sensitive information,” Murray began, adding:
And who really has personally lobbied for the FBI position, the CIA director position, which he did not get essentially like any of these premier positions within the Trump administration, and that his sort of main selling point is he really does believe in the deep state in the way that Donald Trump does, the so-called deep state, and really believes that Donald Trump has been unfairly targeted for vengeance. So I just want to take a listen to some of Patel’s own comments. And speaking with another right-wing Trump ally, Steve Bannon.
CNN then played a clip of Patel on Bannon’s War Room podcast, saying, “Where are the guys looking to clean up their messes and their abuse of the law? And they turn around and throw this rhetoric in our face and say, we’re going to be the ones who conduct a revenge campaign. They have been dominating an unlawful vengeance campaign against Trump in America for supporters for a near decade.”
Bannon and Patel made headlines in December of 2023 when they threatened MSNBC hosts with revenge in the form of “prosecutions and accountability.”
“ Do you feel highly confident that when you go back and, as a senior member of this administration, President Trump’s administration starting in the afternoon of the 20th of January of 2025, do you feel confident that you will be able to deliver the goods that we can have serious prosecutions and accountability?” Bannon said to Patel, adding:
And I want the Morning Joe producers that watch us and all the producers to watch us – this is just not rhetoric. We’re absolutely dead serious.
Patel also told podcaster Shawn Ryan, “I’d shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one… and reopen it as a Deep State museum.” Patel said he’d send the 7,000 employees in the building “across America” to go be cops instead of having them in DC. Elon Musk replied to the clip shared online, saying, “100%.”
Watch the clip above via CNN.
