Trump is demonstrating his intention to purge the FBI by naming his close associate Kash Patel as FBI Director. Patel has said repeatedly that the FBI is loaded with “Deep State” enemies, and he plans to fire them.

The FBI is supposed to be an independent agency, not a vengeance weapon belonging to the President. Patel has made clear that he will find and punish Trump’s enemies. He will run the FBI, if confirmed, as Trump’s man, serving Trump, not justice and not the American people. He will be Trump’s avenger, as he destroys the reputation of the FBI.

Politico described him:

President Donald Trump announced Saturday night that he has picked staunch Trump loyalist Kash Patel as the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Patel, a Trump transition insider, has been one of Trump’s most visible and vocal allies, showing up at his criminal trial in Manhattan, perpetuating conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. He worked as chief of staff to the secretary of Defense during the first Trump administration, and has been outspoken about calling for a purge of Trump’s enemies from the Justice Department, FBI and other intelligence agencies.

The New York Times wrote:

President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Saturday that he wants to replace Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, with Kash Patel, a hard-line critic of the bureau who has called for shutting down the agency’s Washington headquarters, firing its leadership and bringing the nation’s law enforcement agencies “to heel.”

Mr. Trump’s planned nomination of Mr. Patel has echoes of his failed attempt to place another partisan firebrand, Matt Gaetz, atop the Justice Department as attorney general. It could run into hurdles in the Senate, which will be called on to confirm him, and is sure to send shock waves through the F.B.I., which Mr. Trump and his allies have come to view as part of a “deep state” conspiracy against him.

Mr. Patel has been closely aligned with Mr. Trump’s belief that much of the nation’s law enforcement and national security establishment needs to be purged of bias and held accountable for what they see as unjustified investigations and prosecutions of Mr. Trump and his allies.

Mr. Patel “played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability and the Constitution,” Mr. Trump said in announcing his choice in a social media post….

Mr. Patel, a favorite of Mr. Trump’s political base, has worked as a federal prosecutor and a public defender, but has little of the law enforcement and management experience typical of F.B.I. directors.

He served in a series of administration positions at the tail end of Mr. Trump’s first term, including posts on the National Security Council and in the Pentagon. Before leaving office in early 2021, Mr. Trump floated the idea of making Mr. Patel deputy director of either the C.I.A. or the F.B.I. William P. Barr, the attorney general at the time, wrote in his memoir that Mr. Patel would have become deputy F.B.I. director only “over my dead body.”

FBI directors are appointed for a 10-year term, so their tenure is allegedly nonpolitical. Although Trump appointed Christopher Wray as FBI Director, Trump soured on him after the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago to recover hundreds of top/secret documents. Trump made clear to Director Wray that he should resign or be fired.

Current and former law enforcement officials have worried that a second Trump term would feature an assault on the independence and authority of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, and for many of them, Mr. Patel’s ascension to the director’s role would confirm the worst of those fears.

Mr. Patel laid out his vision for wreaking vengeance on the F.B.I. and Justice Department in a book, “Government Gangsters,” calling for clearing out the top ranks of the bureau, which he called “a threat to the people.” He also wrote a children’s book, “The Plot Against the King,” telling through fantasy the story of the investigations into Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign’s possible ties to Russians.

He has vowed to investigate and possibly prosecute journalists once he is back in government, adding that he would “follow the facts and the law.”

“Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you,” he said last year. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”

An article in the New York Times in October described how deeply hated Patel was by other high-level members of the Trump administration. He was considered a boastful self-promoter.

After Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election and staff members began an exodus from the White House, Mr. Patel’s upward trajectory continued. Mr. Trump named him to one of the most important jobs at the Pentagon: chief of staff to Christopher Miller, the acting defense secretary.

Gen. Mark A. Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was shocked when Mr. Patel presented him a document signed in Sharpie by the outgoing Mr. Trump ordering a full withdrawal of all American troops from Afghanistan by Jan. 15. General Milley, the top military adviser to the president, had never even seen the order, and neither had several other senior advisers. It turned out it was drafted by Douglas Macgregor, a retired colonel named as an adviser to the Pentagon after he impressed Mr. Trump with his appearances on Fox News, according to an account in “The Divider,” a book by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser.

Mr. Trump backed away from the Afghanistan plan, but soon sought to again elevate Mr. Patel by making him deputy director of either the C.I.A. or the F.B.I. Only after Gina Haspel, the C.I.A. director, and William P. Barr, the attorney general, both threatened to quit — Mr. Barr vowed that Mr. Patel would become F.B.I. deputy only “over my dead body”— did Mr. Trump abandon the idea.

Mr. Patel stayed at the Pentagon for three months, crediting himself in his book with leading “the biggest transition’’ of the Defense Department “in U.S. history.”