Patel „must prove to Congress he will reform & restore public trust in FBI,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa.
Donald Trump’s drive to upend the FBI was welcomed by Republican senators although it was not clear on Sunday how strongly members of the incoming majority party would embrace his move to install ally Kash Patel as the next director of the Justice Department’s top investigative arm.
Patel, a onetime national security prosecutor who is aligned with the president-elect’s rhetoric about a “deep state,” “must prove to Congress he will reform & restore public trust in FBI,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, in line to be the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman when Republicans take control in January, in a post on X.
Patel lacks the high-level legal and management experience that FBI directors, including Robert Mueller, James Comey and Christopher Wray, who now holds that job, had before their nominations. It’s a 10-year term, and Trump named Wray in 2017 after firing Comey. So Trump’s announcement late Saturday means Wray must either resign or be fired after Trump takes office on Jan. 20, 2025.
“Every president wants people that are loyal to themselves,” said Sen. Mike Round, R-S.D., on ABC’s “This Week.” But he called Wray “a very good man” picked by Trump himself, and “I don’t have any complaints about the way that he’s done his job right now.”
A president has “the right to make nominations,” Rounds said, before noting the job is normally for 10 years, a length meant to insulate the FBI from the political influence of changing administrations.
“We’ll see what his process is, and whether he actually makes that nomination.
