By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday he wants former national security official and loyalist Kash Patel to lead the FBI, signaling his intention to oust the bureau’s current director, Christopher Wray.

Patel, who advised both the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense during Trump’s first term, has previously called for the FBI to be stripped of its intelligence-gathering role and to purge from its ranks any employee who refuses to support Trump’s agenda .

“The biggest problem the FBI ever had came from its intelligence offices. I would break out this component. I would close the FBI Hoover Building on the first day and reopen it as an FBI museum the next day.” “Deep State,” Patel said in a September interview on the conservative Shawn Ryan Show.

“And I would take the 7,000 employees who work in this building and send them across America to hunt down criminals. Become a police officer. They are police officers. Be police officers.”

By nominating Patel, Trump is signaling that he is preparing to make good on his threat to oust Wray, a Trump-first Republican appointee whose 10-year term at the FBI doesn’t end until 2027.

Asked about Patel’s nomination, which requires Senate confirmation, an FBI spokesman said Saturday: “Every day, the men and women of the FBI continue to work to protect Americans from a growing number of threats. Director Wray’s focus remains on the men and women of the FBI, the people we work with, and the people we do the work for.

FBI directors are appointed by law to 10-year terms to insulate the bureau from politics.

Wray, whom Trump hired after firing James Comey in 2017 for investigating his 2016 campaign, was a frequent target of Trump supporters’ ire.

During Wray’s time in office, the FBI conducted a court-authorized search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate looking for classified documents, and he was also criticized for his oversight role in a directive from Attorney General Merrick Garland aimed at prosecuting to protect local school authorities from violent threats and harassment.

Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the two federal cases against Trump over his role in undermining the 2020 election and preserving classified documents, on Nov. 25 asked the judges overseeing those cases to dismiss them before Trump takes office on Jan. 20, under Citing a Justice Department policy not to prosecute a sitting president.

According to a person familiar with the matter, Wray had not previously signaled any intention to step down early and was busy planning events well into his 2025 calendar.

FORMER FEDERAL DEFENSE DEFENSE, PROSECUTOR

Patel, 44, previously worked as a federal public defender and federal prosecutor.

While working as an adviser to former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, he was instrumental in leading House Republicans’ investigation into the FBI’s investigation into contacts between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.

Later, during Trump’s first impeachment trial, former National Security Council staffer Fiona Hill told House investigators she was concerned that Patel was secretly acting as a back channel between Trump and Ukraine without authorization.

Patel denied these allegations.

After Trump left office in January 2021, Patel was one of several people Trump named as a representative for access to his presidential files. He was one of the few former Trump administration officials to claim without evidence that Trump had declassified all of the records in question.

He was later subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury in connection with the investigation.

As a private citizen, Patel wrote a book called “Government Gangsters,” which Trump said in 2023 would serve as a “roadmap to ending deep state rule.”

Patel’s nomination is likely to face opposition from Senate Democrats and perhaps even some Republicans, although Patel has received public support from some senior Republicans such as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Additional reporting by Timothy Reid; Editing by Scott Malone, Lisa Shumaker and Rod Nickel)