After profitable the 2024 election, President Donald Trump stated on Nov. 30 that his new FBI director could be Kash Patel, a controversial lawyer and former Trump aide identified for backing right-wing conspiracies.
Patel formally changed FBI Director Christopher Wray, a 2017 Trump appointee, on Feb. 20, 2025.
By regulation, FBI administrators serve a 10-year time period to keep away from White Home political interference. Wray was in his eighth yr. Patel stands outdoors the norm of FBI administrators over the previous century. They’ve typically been apolitical and impartial investigators, upholding the rule of regulation. Patel’s personal phrases, nonetheless, seem to contradict this.
Patel has supported Trump’s 2024 marketing campaign vow to make use of federal energy to “root out” political opponents.
“We’re going to come after you whether it’s criminally or civilly,” Patel stated in December 2023. Patel’s 2023 e-book, “Government Gangsters,” features a record of top-ranking authorities officers, which Democrats say is an enemies record.
As an FBI historian, I’ve researched political affect on the FBI. Whereas it’s nonetheless early days, Patel’s affirmation has one clear, if century-old, comparability in FBI historical past.
William J. Burns served as FBI director from 1921 via 1924.
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The FBI of the previous
Some observers have in contrast Patel to J. Edgar Hoover, the domineering FBI director between 1924 and 1972 who was famend for FBI abuses. In 1956, Hoover created COINTELPRO, an unlawful counterintelligence program that focused communists, battle protesters and even civil rights activists.
Whereas Hoover additionally typically catered to White Home political pursuits – comparable to monitoring international coverage critics and offering data on political opponents – he did so solely when it suited his explicit pursuits. Hoover, who served underneath eight presidents, was an autonomous bureaucrat. He prioritized focusing on communists and containing American tradition from nontraditional forces, whereas vigorously selling the FBI’s independence.
The extra apt comparability to Patel in FBI historical past lies with Hoover’s speedy predecessor, William J. Burns, who served as director from 1921 via 1924.
Burns was a widely known creator and proprietor of the Burns Worldwide Detective Company, a non-public investigative company. The general public knew him because the American Sherlock Holmes.
But Burns by no means hesitated to make use of his energy to guard the political pursuits of his superior, the politically related legal professional common, Harry Daugherty. The FBI is an company throughout the Division of Justice.
Daugherty and Burns have been on the coronary heart of the so-called Ohio Gang, a corrupt cabal within the administrations of Republican Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge through the Teapot Dome scandal within the early Nineteen Twenties. This scandal emerged after two oil tycoons bribed then-Inside Secretary Albert Fall, a buddy of theirs, to safe contracts to drill on federal land at Teapot Dome, Wyoming.
Daugherty, though conscious of this improper exercise, refused to have the Division of Justice examine. He additionally confronted his personal scandals involving graft, corruption and political intrigue.
Legislators of each events ultimately pushed again on Daugherty’s refusal. Nonetheless, it might take one other two and a half years earlier than the Division of Justice noticed reforms.
The unfolding Teapot Dome scandal
Numerous different senators and representatives of each events following Woodruff’s lead cried foul and known as for an investigation into the Justice Division.
Seeing no outcomes, Congressman Oscar Keller tried to question Daugherty by the autumn of 1922. Republican Get together stalwarts, nonetheless, blocked the hassle.
As retribution, Daugherty ordered Burns to research all of the legislators attempting to face of their means.
FBI brokers shadowed these legislators, learn their mail and listened to their cellphone calls all to seek out one thing in opposition to them. Others had their workplaces searched.
An artist’s idea of the well-known Teapot Dome scandal was circulated in 1925.
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‘No quitter’
Just a few months later, Democratic Sen. Burton Wheeler, through a choose committee, additionally started investigating Daugherty’s makes an attempt to halt any investigation into Teapot Dome. Different senators, together with Republicans, met with President Calvin Coolidge – typically remembered as “Silent Cal” – and urged him to strain Daugherty to resign.
The president sat quietly and stared. Daugherty didn’t.
Quietly, Burns tasked his FBI brokers, some undercover, with creating a bogus influence-peddling case in opposition to Sen. Wheeler. Allies additionally sought details about Sen. Walsh “to smear him.”
The FBI’s spurious probes resulted in a federal indictment in Montana in opposition to Wheeler on April 8, 1924, for affect peddling. Wheeler was simply exonerated in a delayed 1925 trial.
Earlier than the case was tried, Coolidge in March 1924 lastly relented and compelled an uncooperative Daugherty to resign. The president appointed a brand new reformist legal professional common, Harlan Fiske Stone, to wash up a corrupted Justice Division, together with the FBI. Stone pressured Burns out from the FBI two months later. He was changed by Hoover.
In his first strikes as the brand new legal professional common, Stone ordered Hoover to rid the FBI of “incompetent or unreliable agents” and to rent solely these “of known good character” with authorized coaching. Stone banned political investigations, unethical techniques – together with wiretapping and entrapment – and focusing on political enemies. Stone informed reporters after appointing Hoover: “There is to be no more rifling of the desks of senators and representatives.”
The FBI in the present day
For the following almost 50 years, Hoover led a politically impartial FBI. The Watergate scandal of the early Nineteen Seventies revived problems with a politicized Justice Division. Ever since, for half a century, the Justice Division and FBI have purposefully and pointedly created a tradition of investigative independence outdoors of politics.
Attorneys common from the Carter via Obama administrations restricted contact between the FBI and White Home to keep away from political affect. FBI Director Louis Freeh independently investigated each purported scandal of the Invoice Clinton administration through the Nineteen Nineties. Director James Comey protected FBI investigative independence and refused to declare loyalty to Trump throughout his first time period.
Trump’s and Patel’s personal phrases, nonetheless, portend the FBI returning to the open political focusing on of the Teapot Dome period.
Historical past whispers a warning.