Kash Patel

Kash Patel
Official portrait, 2025
9th Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Incumbent
Assumed office February 21, 2025
President	Donald Trump
Deputy	Dan Bongino
Preceded by	Christopher A. Wray
Acting Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
In office February 24, 2025 – April 2025
President	Donald Trump
Preceded by	Marvin G. Richardson
Succeeded by	Daniel P. Driscoll
Chief of Staff to the United States Secretary of Defense
In office November 29, 2020 – January 20, 2021
President	Donald Trump
Secretary of Defense	Christopher C. Miller
Preceded by	Jennifer M. Stewart
Succeeded by	Kelly Magsamen
Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence
In office February 20, 2020 – May 13, 2020
President	Donald Trump
Preceded by	Andrew P. Hallman
Succeeded by	Neil Wiley
Personal details
Born	Kashyap Pramod Patel (1980-02-25) February 25, 1980 (age 45) Garden City, New York, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Education	University of Richmond (BA) University College London (CertHE) Pace University (JD)

Kashyap Pramod "Kash" Patel (born February 25, 1980) is an American lawyer and former federal prosecutor serving as the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation since 2025. He also served as acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from February to April 2025.

Patel studied criminal justice and history at the University of Richmond and graduated from the Pace University School of Law. In 2005, he began working as a public defender in Miami-Dade County, Florida, and later as a federal public defender for the Southern District of Florida. Patel began working as a junior staff member at the Department of Justice in 2012, becoming a prosecutor in the National Security Division in 2013 and working in the Counterterrorism Division in 2014. In 2017, he became a senior aide to Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where he was the primary author of the Nunes memo, alleging that Federal Bureau of Investigation officials abused their authority in the FBI investigation into links between associates of Donald Trump and Russian officials.

In February 2019, Patel joined the National Security Council's International Organizations and Alliances directorate. In 2020, he was named as an aide to Richard Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence, becoming the principal deputy director of national intelligence until May, when he returned to the National Security Council. In November, after President Donald Trump dismissed Mark Esper as secretary of defense, Patel was named as the chief of staff to acting secretary of defense Christopher C. Miller. That year, Trump was involved in a plan to oust FBI director Christopher A. Wray and a separate effort to oust Central Intelligence Agency director Gina Haspel and name Patel deputy director of both agencies.

After Trump left office in January 2021, Patel leveraged his association with Trump to promote several business ventures and made recurring appearances on several podcasts. In April 2022, he was named to the board of Trump Media & Technology Group. Also that year, he published a children's book about the Steele dossier and, with John Solomon, was appointed to represent Trump before the National Archives and Records Administration; the FBI questioned Patel about his involvement in Trump's records. He founded The Kash Foundation, a charity to help participants in the January 6 United States Capitol attack pay legal costs. Patel has promoted several conspiracy theories about the deep state, false claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election, QAnon, COVID-19 vaccines, and the January 6 Capitol attack.

In November 2024, Trump announced that he would dismiss Wray as FBI director and nominate Patel as his replacement. He appeared before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary in January 2025. Senator Dick Durbin, the committee's ranking member, accused Patel of perjury by testifying that he had not been aware of plans to remove FBI agents, and conflict of interest questions were raised during his committee hearing. He was confirmed by the Senate in February. Shortly thereafter, he was named as the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, but by March he was replaced. Patel is the first person of Indian descent to serve as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.