President Trump’s choice to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, has a storied history with the America First movement and the long-running conservative crusade against the so-called “Deep State.” His promises for retribution in the second Trump administration have many Democrats worried about the prospect of prominent officials being arrested in swift fashion. 

Trump nominated Mr. Patel on Saturday night in a surprising move, and many are already predicting that the nomination will die swiftly in the Senate. It would take only four GOP senators to sink the FBI director nomination.

On Sunday morning, Trump’s team released a series of quotes from either incoming or former national security officials who will serve under the president-elect, in an apparent effort to blunt negative stories about the new FBI director nominee. 

Congressman Michael Waltz, who will take the helm as national security advisor in January, said the FBI is desperately in need of “reform,” and that Mr. Patel “is the man to drive that agenda!”

Trump’s new deputy chief of staff for policy, who will handle immigration and the border, Stephen Miller, called the nominee “a warrior, a patriot, a man of unquestioned integrity, who will tirelessly defend our democracy, end the abuse and corruption of government power, and restore the faith and trust of Americans in the Bureau.”

Trump’s final national security advisor during the first administration, Robert O’Brien, said he could count on [Mr. Patel] to get any job done no matter how complex or difficult the task.”

Foes of Mr. Patel, however, were quick to come out against him Sunday morning, with many saying that he would not only be reckless for American law enforcement, but an active threat to the fairness and impartiality of the justice system. 

Trump’s former national security advisor, John Bolton, who had interactions with Mr. Patel when both men worked on the president-elect’s national security team during the first administration, warned on Sunday that installing Mr. Patel at the J. Edgar Hoover building would be akin to signing off on a new secret police force. 

“Trump has nominated Kash Patel to be his Lavrentiy Beria,” Mr. Bolton said during an appearance on “Meet The Press” on Sunday, referring to the head of Joseph Stalin’s interior ministry, which was responsible for thousands of arrests, disappearances, and murders.“ The Senate should reject this nomination 100-0.”

Others have raised concerns about his lack of experience or fitness to lead the agency and what his leadership would mean for public safety and domestic intelligence gathering operations. Mr. Patel told podcaster Shawn Ryan that he would “shut down” the FBI’s headquarters at Washington, D.C., reopen the building as a museum to the “Deep State,” move the Bureau’s intelligence operations outside of the agency, and send agents beyond the nation’s capital.

Some of President Trump’s most loyal aides in the first administration were adamant in keeping Mr. Patel as far away from power as possible following the 2020 election, when the then-president threatened to make Mr. Patel the deputy director of either the CIA or the FBI to help find examples of voter fraud. 

The then-director of the CIA, Gina Haspel, threatened to quit if Trump made a recess or interim appointment to make Mr. Patel her deputy, according to Axios. 

Attorney General Barr wrote in his autobiography that Mr. Patel was eminently unqualified to lead America’s top domestic law enforcement agency. “I told Mark Meadows it would happen ‘over my dead body,’” Mr. Barr wrote, referring to Trump’s White House chief of staff. “Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency.”

During the first Trump presidency, Mr. Patel rose from a congressional committee staffer to holding high offices in the Pentagon and the office of the director of national intelligence. He served as acting chief of staff at the Defense Department shortly before the Trump term ended, and before that was a top deputy to Trump’s then-acting Director of National Intelligence, Ric Grenell. 

In the last four years, Mr. Patel has spent most of his time selling his ideas to the Republican base in order to prime them for a kind of war with America’s vast national security bureaucracy. He has traveled the country to advocate for America First politicians and activists, and has long advocated for the release of those who rioted at the Capitol on January 6.