Kash Patel’s Five-Step Guide to Running a Kickass FBI
How can you run the FBI while shirking all the responsibilities of the FBI director? Let Distinguished Discoverer Kash show you the way.Kash Patel’s Five-Step Guide to Running a Kickass FBI
How can you run the FBI while shirking all the responsibilities of the FBI director? Let Distinguished Discoverer Kash show you the way.
I don’t want to talk about Kash Patel’s ass cheeks. He’s the director of the FBI; his ass cheeks are no one’s business but God’s and the NSA’s. But I have to do it. I have to talk about them, because look at this man:
Clenched, right? Clenched so hard his spine is about to squirt out of his body like a submerged pool noodle? Look at his huge, terrified eyes. Look at his distressed lips. Look at his hair, which is quietly going to pieces, like a Hemingway hero on leave from the war. As the head of America’s most storied law enforcement agency, Patel seems to live most of his life at a historically unprecedented pitch of Fuck Around; in photos, he often seems to be Finding Out to a spiritually annihilating degree.
This is a Shakespeare character who understood his tragic flaw the instant he got stabbed in the stomach. This is the dude in your first-year medieval history class who said “totally” when asked if he did the reading and was then invited to summarize Chapter 1. This is a man who just heard the words “state your name and date of birth” after spending the past week googling “how to beat a lie detector test.”
Look at his ears. Even Patel’s ears—in tiny, separate ways—appear to be on the verge of a breakdown.
This is, incredibly, one of Patel’s official government portraits. It was taken in 2020, the year he served as both deputy director of national intelligence and chief of staff to the secretary of defense. Those are two jobs in which you want your face to say, “Hi! I am constipated with panic.”
And it’s not just when he’s posing that he looks like this. Patel gives off this vibe in candid photos, too.
Exhibit A
Clench level: 8.7
“I feel well and am personally at ease with my choice of lunch burrito.”
Exhibit B
Clench level: 7.9
“Of course I know the answer to your question. I know information every day.”
Exhibit C
Clench level: 9.4
“No one can tell what I’m feeling. My poker face is perfect. I’m an enigma, a stone wall.”
FBI directors generally try to convey an air of calm authority, discretion, sobriety, and restraint. That Patel so often conveys the opposite of each of these things is only one of the ways in which he’s a trailblazer in his role. Call him controversial if you wish, but this is a man who’s redefining his job description every day of the week, whether by (reportedly) not showing up to work, by (reportedly) engaging in “bouts of excessive drinking,” or by (definitely) giving his 27-year-old girlfriend an FBI SWAT team as her personal security detail. To celebrate the glorious—at least for his glutes—career of a true American original, let’s look at five ways that Patel has transformed the role of the federal government’s top cop.
But first, who is this guy?
Kashyap Pramod “Kash” Patel. Forty-six years old. Lawyer. Born and raised on Long Island, into an Indian Ugandan family who had sought asylum in North America after being expelled from Uganda in 1972, during Idi Amin’s rule. Perhaps this background explains why Patel chose to work for noted friend to asylum seekers Donald Trump. As a teen, spent summers caddying at the local country club, where he was inspired to attend law school by the lawyers who golfed there. (What 18-year-old does not want to emulate lawyers playing golf?) University of Richmond ’02; Pace University Law ’05. As a law student, participated in the American Bar Association’s Judicial Intern Opportunity Program, a diversity initiative. Perhaps this background explains why Patel chose to work for noted friend of diversity initiatives Donald Trump.
Worked as a public defender, then as a prosecutor, then as a congressional aide for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Career took off after he wrote most of the infamous Nunes memo, named for Republican committee chair Devin Nunes, which argued that the FBI had relied on politically motivated sources when investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Law enforcement should not be politicized, the memo suggested; that’s one of Patel’s, and also Trump’s, most sincerely held beliefs.
Once in Trump’s orbit, Patel rose quickly through the MAGA ranks: aide, senior aide, senior director, podcast guest. (On that front, I see new fields of glory, or at least fields of smallpox, in his future.) He spread all the right conspiracy theories, parroted all of Trump’s positions (even the ones that are constantly changing), and acquired a reputation for a swaggering ferocity that comes across more clearly in sound bites than in photographs. Wrote three children’s books (????). (More on these in a minute.) Confirmed as FBI director in a 51-49 Senate vote. All the Republicans voted for him, and all the Democrats voted against him, which is exactly the split you expect for a nominee who passionately opposes the politicization of law enforcement.
OK, there’s your background. Now let’s talk about how Patel is revolutionizing the FBI directorship.
1. FBI directors traditionally investigate government corruption. Patel, by contrast, travels with personalized bottles of bourbon that he hands out as gifts.
Let’s go back to the late 1970s, to the directorship of William H. Webster, the only person in U.S. history to run both the FBI and the CIA. During Webster’s tenure, the FBI launched an operation called Abscam, a sprawling anti-corruption sting that involved a professional con artist, agents posing as Arab sheikhs, Atlantic City casinos, art forgeries, and a whole fleet of New Jersey politicians. This list, it goes without saying, raised absolutely no red flags whatsoever.
Under Abscam, FBI agents posing as Middle Eastern oligarchs with Atlantic City business interests offered bribes to politicians in return for help obtaining building permits, casino licenses, and immigration clearance for the sheikhs’ fictional associates. The sting led to the arrests and convictions of a U.S. senator (shout-out Harrison A. Williams, Democrat of—you’ll be surprised to hear—New Jersey), six U.S. representatives, the mayor of Camden, and a bunch of other politicians. It also inspired the 2013 David O. Russell movie American Hustle, which I remember being pretty good.
Patel, however, will always zig where his predecessors have zagged. Instead of investigating corruption within the government, his FBI disbanded the team that investigates corruption within the government. This has given him much more time to concentrate on a larger priority, namely commissioning personalized bottles of bourbon with his name and the FBI shield on them that he can take on his travels and hand out as gifts.
Patel’s fondness for a drink has been extensively chronicled. He has been arrested twice for alcohol-related incidents, including a minor bout of public urination. (Can anyone truly safeguard America without first getting busted for peeing on it?) While those arrests happened years before his current job, last month, The Atlantic’s Sarah Fitzpatrick published a deeply reported account of Patel’s excessive drinking during his tenure as FBI director. Fitzpatrick’s article revealed what an uptight person might call “a highly concerning pattern of irresponsible and erratic behavior,” and what Kid Rock and I will instead choose to call “YOLO, my dog; fuckin’ A, holmes.”
According to that Atlantic report, Patel has:
- Been seen drinking heavily at the Poodle Room in Las Vegas, where he frequently travels on weekends
- Been unreachable by his team for long periods of time, a fascinating move in what’s usually considered a 24/7 job
- Caused recurring headaches for members of his security detail, who have had “difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated”
- Been so unresponsive behind locked doors that his detail had to request equipment “normally used by SWAT and hostage-rescue teams to quickly gain entry into buildings,” which sounds to me like a battering ram, though it would be funnier if they were calling for a really slick set of lockpicks
Great leaders aren’t afraid to disrupt the status quo. Only the greatest, however, are capable of disrupting the status quo in their sleep.
2. FBI directors traditionally pursue kidnappers. Patel, by contrast, chugs beers with hockey players on government-funded work trips.
J. Edgar Hoover was the longest-tenured director in FBI history. He led the bureau from 1924, before it was even called the FBI, to 1972, for a total of 48 years in charge. Hoover was not what you’d call a good, uncomplicated, or benevolent human being—he kept a private stash of nude photos of celebrities, partly for blackmail and partly for the other reason; he denied the existence of the Mafia because he was scared of it; he ruthlessly spied on the leading figures of the Civil Rights Movement, and also Elvis, who idolized him—but he oversaw any number of major cases, including some of the most high-profile kidnappings in American history.
In 1932, for instance, the 20-month-old son of the legendary aviator Charles Lindbergh was kidnapped and then murdered in what was then widely regarded as the most shocking crime of the century. The FBI spent two years painstakingly tracking down leads, many of them wild and implausible, before eventually arresting a man, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, in 1934. And yes, some people think that agents arrested the wrong man, but at least they weren’t too busy trying to get their boss to stop hitting snooze at 11 a.m. to give it their best shot. (Hauptmann was found guilty and sent to the electric chair in 1936.)
The FBI still investigates kidnappings, of course. But Patel hasn’t chosen to make “painstakingly tracking down leads” a major component of his personal branding. He prefers to present himself as a distinguished man of leisure. In that vein, he’s been criticized for partying with his much younger girlfriend, the MAGA-forward country singer Alexis Wilkins, during the nationwide manhunt for the kidnapped mother of Today coanchor Savannah Guthrie. He’s been criticized for reveling in the company of famous athletes, partnering with Dana White and the UFC to have MMA fighters train future FBI agents in combat, and gazing adoringly at Wayne Gretzky.
What I think the people who level these criticisms don’t understand, however, is that Patel just really, really loves partying and hanging out with famous people. He loves it. We’re talking about a guy whose preferred spelling of his first name is “Ka$h,” and no, I am not making that up. You know those “FBI—Female Body Inspector” shirts they sell at the worst store in the mall? Patel is what happens when a guy who owns one of those becomes the head of the actual FBI. He was put on this earth to chill at the Poodle Room, gaslight Joe Rogan, and sell his own line of merch at basedapparel.com—I’m not making that up either—and if any of those vocations happen to overshadow a federal racketeering investigation, well, a 46-year-old man who puts a dollar sign in his own name doesn’t need a lecture on priorities.
Would you expect a fish not to swim? Would you expect a bird not to fly? Then you cannot expect the director of Trump’s investigative bureau not to fly to Europe on what his girlfriend says is a work trip and then wind up on film chugging beers in the locker room with America’s gold medal–winning men’s hockey team.
3. FBI directors traditionally work against foreign spies in the United States. Patel, by contrast, writes children’s books about a benevolent monarch named “King Donald.”
J. Edgar Hoover was a hardcore anti-communist; during the Cold War, his version of the FBI worked to expose Soviet spies operating in the U.S. In 1950, the bureau launched an investigation into Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a married American couple whom it suspected of passing American nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. Both were arrested; both were found guilty. They were executed in 1953. And sure, many people at the time believed they were innocent, and many continue to believe that Ethel was innocent (Julius was pretty clearly not). Maybe the bureau was a little overzealous in the way it conducted the case, and maybe the history of the FBI isn’t quite as pristine as it looks in the movies. The point is, the people demanded results, and Hoover got them, and sometimes they were even right.
But here’s another place where Patel has chosen to blaze his own trail. Rather than following in the footsteps of his predecessors and trying to root out spies or, say, Russian hackers, Patel has instead concentrated on expanding his line of children’s books. That’s right. Patel writes children’s books. They are … I’m not sure what adjective to use here. What’s a word that implies the largest earthquake ever measured by a seismograph, only it’s happening entirely in your brain? They’re that. They’re a cheerfully illustrated psychotic break. They’re trying to send you to the hospital. They’re going to succeed. The longer you look at them, the more your organs start to fail. Don’t blame your kidneys; they’re trying to look out for you. I am not lying when I say that the world-building of these books is derived from the Steele dossier. Help.
Here is the publisher’s description of Volume 1 in the series:
Kash Patel partners with Beacon of Freedom Publishing House, an imprint of BRAVE Books, to bring a fantastical retelling of Hillary’s horrible plot against Trump to the whole family.
Full of fake heralds and keeper Komey’s spying slugs, this is a story of daring and danger. But never fear! Kash the Distinguished Discoverer will win the day.
“Keeper Komey” is based on former FBI director James Comey. His spying slugs are FBI agents. I’m getting ahead of myself. Patel has written three children’s books so far. They are:
- The Plot Against the King
- The Plot Against the King 2000 Mules
- The Plot Against the King 3: The Return of the King
The series uses what I think is fair to call “not the world’s most complex fantasy allegory”—benevolent King Donald, evildoers named Hillary and Sleepy Joe, “Kash the Distinguished Discoverer”—to indoctrinate young children in MAGA conspiracy theories. (Of course MAGA is working to destroy American education; why would children need to know anything that’s not in Patel’s books?) The first book is an allegorical account of the Russiagate investigation. The second is an allegorical retelling of the Stop the Steal conspiracy. I can’t write much more about this because my spleen is shutting down. We are living in a reality in which there is not merely a Kash Patel–authored children’s book called The Plot Against the King. There is an entire Plot Against the King expanded universe.
2000 Mules includes “a special message from Dinesh D’Souza.” Remember me fondly, all ye who read these words. When the wind rustles in the treetops, whisper my name.
4. FBI directors traditionally work to uphold the integrity of American elections. Patel, by contrast, sues his critics for tens of millions of dollars.
Let’s talk about keeper Komey and his spying slugs. James Comey was the FBI director from 2013 to 2017, a period that included Trump’s first presidential run. Under Comey, the FBI investigated multiple leads involving both Trump (who was alleged to be benefiting from Russian interference in the election, probably because he was) and his opponent, Hillary Clinton (who was found using private email for government communications, which was a very serious matter at the time, though not anymore for some reason). Comey’s predecessor at the FBI, Robert Mueller, also famously led a separate investigation into Trump and Russia.
It’s true that both Comey and Mueller bungled the job. Comey managed to make Clinton’s email server seem more urgent than Putin actively undermining American democracy; the Mueller report was a punch line even before its release. But both men seemed motivated by some feeling of civic responsibility and were at least curious about the real facts. (This is probably why Trump is so determined to fabricate a criminal case against Comey now: because investigators with even a small amount of integrity are a danger to his whole project, which depends on destroying any collective notion of the truth.)
Patel isn’t worried about any of that, though. When someone—say, a reporter—investigates him, he just sues the reporter and their publication for massive amounts of money. He is suing The Atlantic and Sarah Fitzpatrick for $250 million over the article about his drinking. He sued The New York Times for $44 million and Politico for $25 million in 2019, both for reporting intelligence officials’ concerns that he was feeding Trump anti-Ukraine information while serving on the National Security Council. In 2020, Patel sued CNN for $50 million for saying he spread conspiracy theories about Joe Biden, even though he literally wrote children’s books designed to spread them among 5-year-olds. Last year, he sued an ex–assistant director of the FBI for going on Morning Joe and saying he spent more time in nightclubs than at FBI offices. I don’t know how much that lawsuit was for—probably enough to cover a lap dance and a bottle-service flight of Stoli.
Patel never comes close to winning these cases, which are always legally nonsensical; The New Yorker wrote of his Atlantic lawsuit that it seems “to misunderstand how the law (or logic) works.” But winning isn’t always the point, you know? Firing off a big, angry, bombastic lawsuit feels pretty good, and why would you spend one second not feeling as good as you can?
Besides, Trump loves it when his subordinates say stuff like “I’ll see you in court—bring your checkbook” to the media, even if the media might as well lock its checkbook in a lead box and drop it over the Mariana Trench, for all the use Patel will get out of it. (Honestly, this wouldn’t be a huge loss; the media currently has $13.72 in its checking account.)
5. FBI directors traditionally track down bank robbers. Patel, by contrast, enjoys taking expensive government jets on leisure trips, and you would too if you were staying up all night laboring over the draft of The Plot Against the King 4: The Runaway Price of Brent Crude on the Derivatives Market Is Not a Result of King Donald’s War in Iran.
Remember Bonnie and Clyde? From 1932 to 1934, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow’s gang committed a string of armed robberies and murders across the middle of the country. Hoover’s FBI coordinated with law enforcement agencies across multiple states, tracked down the couple, set up an ambush, and just straight up gunned them down in the road, no due process, no Miranda rights, no trial, just blam blam blam. And sure! That’s not really how law enforcement is supposed to treat criminal suspects in a country where “innocent until proven guilty” is a core legal principle. The pre-Patel FBI also had problems! Nevertheless, the point stands. Hoover got results. And sometimes the people executed were guilty!
Our boy Kash, though? Sorry, that’s disrespectful. Let me fix it. Our boy Ka$h, though? He’s not really looking to safeguard the financial system. Bonnie and Clyde were shot down at 9:15 in the morning. Loud noises at that hour? No effing thanks. And suspects can be more trouble than they’re worth—for instance, mere hours after the Charlie Kirk assassination, Patel tweeted that a suspect had been captured. Tyler James Robinson was still at large when Patel posted his tweet, and Robinson turned himself in the next day.
Truly, law enforcement is such a hassle. It’s way nicer to ride in a comfortable, taxpayer-funded jet to calming destinations such as your girlfriend’s place in Nashville, a wrestling show in Pennsylvania where your girlfriend is singing the national anthem, Vegas, and a luxury hunting resort in Texas called the Boondoggle Ranch, owned by the family of the Republican donor C.R. “Bubba” Saulsbury Jr. These are all places where Patel has taken the FBI’s plane, often multiple times. “I’m entitled to a personal life,” Patel said angrily when criticized last year for his travel habits. That’s right, brother. We’re all entitled to spend time with the most important people in our lives, even—no, especially—if some of them are potato-shaped Texas oil scions named Bubba.
Patel, as FBI director, is not legally permitted to take commercial flights; he can’t visit the Poodle Room, or a single luxury hunting resort, unless he takes the FBI jet. However, he’s supposed to reimburse the government for personal trips. His willingness to do so—well, let’s put this in Plot Against the King terms, shall we? Distinguished Discoverer Kash is supposed to put gold pieces in the castle treasure chest when he rides the king’s dragon to visit his ladylove. But Distinguished Discoverer Kash does not like spending his gold on dragon flights when he has so many personalized bottles of mead to commission from the palace brewer. So far, Distinguished Discoverer Kash seems to be keeping his gold to himself. Maybe he’ll be more willing to reimburse the castle treasury when his valiant lawsuit against the wicked town criers from Ye Atlantic ends in triumph!
These are just some of the ways in which Patel has reimagined the role of FBI director for a new American century. If there’s a single lesson to be learned from the course he’s blazing across the firmament of government, it’s this: Being FBI director rocks, but doing things that are no fun sucks, and that’s why the FBI director should only do things that are fun, and if you’re in Congress, it’s also why you should pass a law mandating the death penalty for any jerk who tries to wake the FBI director before 1 p.m. Why? Because of national security, asshole. And also, please pass a law that the FBI director should have way more expensive wine on his plane, because that would be dope as hell, also due to national security. Also, the surviving Beastie Boys should be legally required to play at the FBI director’s birthday bash. As the leader of America’s greatest law enforcement agency, it is his duty and his privilege to fight for your right to party.
Frankly, if the entire job of FBI director cannot be done from a Jet Ski, why did we fight the American Revolution in the first place? Many people are asking this!
In conclusion, I can see absolutely no reason why someone who lives his life in the manner described above would ever look taut-butted to this spectacular an extent.
Also, in conclusion: Bubba!!!!
