Who is Kashyap Patel, likely CIA chief if Trump becomes US president again

Former Pentagon Chief of Staff Kash Patel

Kashyap ‘Kash’ Patel who has been described as the individual who would ‘do anything for Trump’ is touted to be the next CIA chief according to various reports if Donald Trump becomes the next US president. The US presidential election is currently witnessing a tight battle between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris according to the surveys conducted by various media outlets.

According to news agency AP, Kash Patel has a pedigree that sets him apart from many other Trump advisers. He frequently cites that experience — as a defense attorney, federal prosecutor, top House staffer and national security official — when he pledges to jettison those disloyal to Trump and attacks the very intelligence community he could one day oversee.

In his final months in office, Donald Trump unsuccessfully pushed the idea of installing Patel as the deputy director at either the FBI or CIA in an effort to strengthen the president’s control of the intelligence community. “Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency,” Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr wrote in his memoir. But such a role could be in Patel’s future should Trump win a second term.

Trump dropped those plans after CIA Director Gina Haspel threatened to resign and Attorney General Bill Barr argued against such a move. “Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency,” Barr wrote in his memoir.

Patel has made clear that he is in lockstep with the former president on most national security issues, including the purging of intelligence officials deemed disloyal. He has spoken publicly about his desire to prosecute Trump’s political enemies within the government, as well as members of the media.

Kashyap Patel: A brief profile

Kashyap 'Kash' Patel completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Richmond before returning to New York to earn his law degree, along with a Certificate in International Law from University College London Faculty of Laws in the United Kingdom. After graduating from law school at Pace University, Patel failed to get a job at the prestigious law firms he’d hoped to join. Instead, he became a public defender and spent nearly nine years in local and federal courts in Miami before joining the Justice Department.

Kash Patel was hired as a staffer for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence led by Rep. Devin Nunes, a fierce Trump ally.

Nunes gave Patel a job running the committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.

Patel helped author what has become known as the “Nunes Memo,” a four-page report that detailed how it said the Justice Department had erred in obtaining a warrant to surveil a former Trump campaign volunteer. The memo’s release faced vehement opposition from the Justice Department. A subsequent inspector general report identified significant problems with FBI surveillance during the Russia investigation, but also found no evidence that the FBI had acted with partisan motives in conducting the probe.

The memo caught Trump’s attention, and soon Patel was working on the National Security Council and would later serve in increasingly important roles. He was briefly the top adviser to the then-acting director of national intelligence and was tapped in November 2020 to be chief of staff to acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller.

Kash Patel has also been busy writing books. He published a memoir last year — “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy” — and has authored two works of children’s fiction that lionize Trump. “The Plot Against the King” features a thinly veiled Hillary Clinton as the villain going after “King Donald” while Kash, a wizard called the Distinguished Discoverer, exposes a nefarious plot.

*With Agency Inputs