(ABC News) Last year, as Donald Trump’s reelection bid was underway, he declared that a new book by his fiercely loyal adviser Kash Patel would serve as a “blueprint” for his next administration.
“This is the roadmap to end the Deep State’s reign,” Trump said of the book on his Truth Social media platform.
Titled “Government Gangsters,” it calls for a “comprehensive housecleaning” of the Justice Department and an eradication of “government tyranny” within the FBI by firing “the top ranks” and prosecuting “to the fullest extent of the law” anyone who “in any way abused their authority for political ends.”
“[T]he FBI has become so thoroughly compromised that it will remain a threat to the people unless drastic measures are taken,” Patel claimed in his book. Democrats “should be very afraid,” Patel wrote, as Trump and his allies battle “the Deep State” — what conspiracy theorists claim is a cadre of career employees inside government who are working together to secretly manipulate policy and undermine elected leaders.
After Trump’s historic reelection last week, media speculation has suggested that Patel, a former Defense Department official, could be under consideration to become Trump’s attorney general or CIA director — or that he could even replace current FBI Director Christopher Wray, who Trump has reportedly vowed to fire.
“President Trump called [my book] the roadmap for 2024, and now let’s put it into work,” Patel said Thursday on a podcast, without indicating whether he himself might take on a senior-level role in the incoming administration.
A spokesperson for Trump’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
Patel’s proximity to Trump and Trump’s public embrace of Patel’s book underscore how a major shake-up could be coming to the Justice Department or FBI.
Here is what Patel has said about what new leadership could do.
Fire and potentially charge FBI and DOJ officials
Patel, who once served as a prosecutor in the Justice Department’s National Security division, has long accused leaders in the FBI and Justice Department of exploiting their authority to boost Democrats and undermine Republicans — especially Trump.
There’s been a “two-tier system of justice,” Patel has routinely said.
He often highlights his subsequent work as a congressional investigator, when he helped lead the House Republicans’ probe of “Russiagate” — which, as he describes it, exposed FBI wrongdoing in its 2016 investigation of alleged ties between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia.
That work led to Patel joining the Trump administration in 2019, and in the final year of Trump’s presidency, Patel was appointed acting deputy director of national intelligence — the second-in-command of the entire U.S. intelligence community — and then chief of staff to the acting U.S. defense secretary, a position critics claimed he was unqualified to hold.
In its own report on the matter, the office of the Justice Department’s inspector general said that while it found “fundamental errors” and significant “failures” in the FBI probe, it found no evidence that “political bias or improper motivation influenced” the investigation, including the decision to intercept those communications.
Still, in his book, Patel said “all those who manipulated evidence [or] hid exculpatory information” should face charges.
He also alleged “abuses of prosecutorial discretion” by the Justice Department in declining to charge Hillary Clinton for allegedly compromising classified information through her use of a private email server, and in declining to charge President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, for what Patel describes as influence-peddling — while indicting Trump ally Steve Bannon over his refusal to comply with a subpoena from the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and also charging so many of the Trump supporters who were at the Capitol that day.
“Those specific prosecutors, and division[s] within the department, that selectively apply the law should be removed and brought to heel,” Patel wrote in his book.
In a campaign video released last year, Trump promised that if reelected, he will “immediately reissue” a 2020 executive order giving him the power “to remove rogue bureaucrats.”
“And I will wield that power very aggressively,” he declared.
Trump also said he will “totally reform” the court system that in 2016 and 2017 approved the FBI’s applications to intercept his former adviser’s communications.
Strip ‘massive’ amounts of security clearances
On another podcast two months ago, Patel said anyone involved in “Russiagate” should be stripped of their security clearances.
