WASHINGTON, D.C. — Newly confirmed FBI Director Kash Patel arrived at the Hoover Building Thursday morning with a travel mug, a leather binder, and a hardcover copy of his 2023 memoir Government Gangsters, which sources confirm he consulted approximately forty-seven times before lunch, occasionally mouthing names under his breath and underlining them with a ballpoint pen.
The Senate voted 51–49 on Wednesday to confirm Patel over the objections of virtually every FBI agent who has ever met him, a coalition of former federal prosecutors, two Republican senators, and a printed copy of the United States Constitution that was reportedly visible on Susan Collins’ desk, opened to a page she described as “the relevant one.” Patel, for his part, told reporters he intended to “restore trust” at the Bureau, which he plans to accomplish by firing everyone currently employed there.
“The Director has a vision, and the vision is in Appendix B,” said transition spokesperson Kirby Halverson, gesturing to the book’s now-infamous list of sixty names Patel identified as members of the “Executive Branch Deep State.” “He’s not coming in with an enemies list. He’s coming in with a published enemies list, which is different. That’s called transparency. That’s called showing your work.”
Within the first three hours of his tenure, Patel reportedly requested personnel files on every FBI employee who has ever been assigned to a January 6 case, every agent who has ever worked the Mar-a-Lago documents matter, and one analyst whose only offense appears to have been following Patel on X in 2021 and then unfollowing him in 2022. The analyst, reached for comment, said he had forgotten he had done that and asked if it was still possible to refollow.
Patel spent much of the afternoon touring the building, pausing at the wall of former directors and asking an aide whether any of their portraits “come down easily” or whether “we’re talking a screw situation.” He was reportedly disappointed to learn that J. Edgar Hoover’s name remains on the exterior of the headquarters, telling staff he had assumed that would be “handled before I got here” and asking whether the letters were magnetic.
“It’s a learning curve for everyone,” said Dr. Meredith Vance, a former senior FBI official now at the Brennan Center. “Most new directors spend the first week reading briefing books. Director Patel spent the first week asking whether the briefing books could be reformatted as podcasts, and whether those podcasts could be monetized.” Vance added that Patel had also asked, unprompted, whether the Bureau owned the rights to the phrase “Government Gangsters” in merchandise form.
In a Rose Garden appearance Thursday afternoon, President Trump praised his new FBI Director as “the toughest, smartest, most loyal,” before trailing off and adding, “and he has a book, which, I haven’t read it, but the cover is fantastic, it’s a great cover, the best cover, people tell me.” The President then confirmed he had not, in fact, read the list of sixty names, but assured reporters he “knows most of them personally and agrees with the grouping.”
At the Department of Justice, career attorneys reportedly spent Thursday afternoon updating their LinkedIn profiles with the grim efficiency of people who have done this before. One senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity because she had not yet been fired but assumed she was on a spreadsheet somewhere, said the mood was “somewhere between funeral and evacuation drill, but with worse snacks.”
Patel’s confirmation hearing last month featured several memorable moments, including his refusal to commit to not investigating journalists, his refusal to commit to not investigating members of Congress who voted against him, and a roughly four-minute exchange in which he appeared to confuse the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act with a podcast he had once appeared on. Senator Dick Durbin at one point asked whether Patel understood that the FBI Director does not, in fact, personally choose who gets indicted, to which Patel replied, “Not with that attitude.”
The new Director’s first official memo, obtained by this outlet, runs eleven pages and contains the phrase “weaponization” thirty-one times, “accountability” twenty-nine times, and “my book, which is available wherever books are sold” exactly once, in a footnote. It also announces the creation of a new internal task force whose mandate, per the memo, is to “review prior reviews of prior reviews,” a structure one former agent described as “an Escher drawing with a badge.”
Asked whether he had any message for the rank-and-file agents now reporting to him, Patel paused, smiled, and said, “I look forward to getting to know each of them personally, one at a time, in a small room.” He then clarified that he meant “in a team-building context” and that the small room comment was “a joke, mostly, we’ll see.”
By 5 p.m., a line had formed outside the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility that staff described as “unprecedented in both length and visible panic.” An intern was reportedly dispatched to order pizza. She returned empty-handed, explaining that the pizza place had also received a subpoena, and was closed pending review.