Washington Reaching out to three conservative former special agents who have criticized the FBI and its extensive investigation into the Capitol incident on January 6, 2021, was one of Kash Patel’s first actions after President-elect Donald Trump declared that he wanted Patel to be the next head of the agency.
Patel used the term “The Suspendables” to describe the former agents. Republicans have asked two of them—along with an FBI analyst—to testify before Congress after they claimed whistleblower status. Several of them testified in 2023 that Patel, through his Kash Foundation, gave them financial help while they were suspended.
According to Kyle Seraphin, 43, a member of the group and a veteran of the military, Patel contacted the three Suspendables the night Trump declared his intention to place Patel at the top of the FBI. Seraphin was unable to participate in the conversation because he was too busy putting his children to sleep.
The former agents’ relationship with Patel, who had issues with FBI leadership during their tenures, sheds light on his possible goals as FBI director, which go beyond the grandiose remarks he made in public for years prior to Thursday’s Senate confirmation hearing, such as his proposal to turn FBI headquarters into a museum of the deep state.
They are ardent followers of Patel, whose book identified possible targets for inquiry and characterized the FBI as the primary agent of the Deep State, and they consider themselves as victims of what Trump has referred to as the weaponization of the legal system.
Some former officials are worried about the possible introduction of partisan politics at the top of the FBI, which has historically only had one political appointee: the director himself, in light of the appointment of new advisers to the director’s office, including one connected to Elon Musk’s SpaceX company.
According to Seraphin, Patel “keeps tabs on me and the guys that he’s helped out, and also we share information about FBI stuff,” with NBC News.
With reference to the FBI director Trump dismissed in 2017, he stated, “There’s a chance that Kash Patel is the most adored FBI director by the actual FBI personnel; he might be the real thing that Jim Comey pretended to be.”
Patel, a former federal prosecutor and federal public defender who is scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday for a confirmation hearing, is more recently known for his work in a number of capacities during the first Trump administration and for his language about the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies that was laced with conspiracy theories.
According to Seraphin, Patel also spoke with Suspendables Steven Friend, an FBI special agent in Florida. After refusing to assist in the arrest of a defendant who had been a member of a group of right-wing militia members on January 6, the FBI placed Friend on unpaid leave and withdrew his security clearance.
According to a transcript of an audio recording that Friend recorded and made public, Friend informed his supervisors that he would not want to be engaged in any way in any of the cases that occurred on January 6 and that he did not believe that rioters who attacked cops on that day should face charges.
Trump referred to Patel as a friend to him and the Suspendables at large in a podcast following his announcement, claiming that Patel’s background as a public defender will provide him with the viewpoint that the FBI needs.
Finally, Kash Patel is the guy who’s #OnlyKash, #KashOnly, or whatever you want. Friend stated on the show that Kash appears to be the man who would succeed our former girlfriend at the FBI. I was screaming into the air, which is why I lost my voice.
After appearing on the well-liked right-wing show The Dan Bongino Show, which is hosted by the former Secret Service agent, Seraphin told NBC News that Patel had contacted him in the fall of 2022.
When Seraphin made an appearance on Bongino’s show, he was still employed by the FBI but hadn’t been paid in months. In 2021, he took personal leave after protesting the Biden administration’s Covid-19 vaccination mandate on religious grounds.
An internal FBI inquiry was initiated in 2022 after an officer in Las Cruces, New Mexico, responded to a report of gunfire near a school and discovered Seraphin practicing target practice close to federal land. Seraphin was notified by the FBI in 2023 that his top-secret security clearance had been suspended due to his repeated use of derogatory, racist, sexist, and/or homophobic language, his unauthorized release of sensitive government information, and his violations of various FBI rules and regulations, including those pertaining to gun safety.
No one has used any derogatory, racist, sexist, or homophobic language, Seraphin said NBC News, adding that no one had made any such claims before my whistleblower action.
According to Seraphin, Patel contacted him to offer financial assistance through his foundation after his Bongino episode ran. He claimed that his first instinct was to refer Patel to other people because Seraphin’s family had sold their house and they were living with his parents, who were not impoverished.
Seraphin claimed that after receiving $10,000 from Patel’s foundation, they became friends. Seraphin claimed that he, Friend, and another Suspendable, Garret O. Boyle, met Patel at the Police State movie premiere at Trump’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, and that Patel offered them a VIP tour that included access to private rooms. Seraphin shared pictures of the three in Mar-a-Lago with Patel, all of whom claim to have gotten funding from the Kash Foundation.
Since they were still officially Justice Department employees, several of the Suspendables claim that the FBI mistreated them by using the security clearance procedure as leverage to place them on unpaid leave after suspending their security clearances and preventing them from obtaining outside jobs.
Last year, Inspector General Michael Horowitz of the Justice Department stated that there was a chance that security clearance revocations and the accompanying lengthy unpaid suspensions would be abused as part of an improper attempt to persuade an employee to quit.
Patel might now be joining an administration that is looking for its own methods to get workers to quit.
Prior to Trump pardoning him and all the other Jan. 6 offenders, Steve Baker, a writer for The Blaze, had entered a guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge on January 6 and was scheduled to be sentenced this March. There is a limit to Patel’s involvement in conspiracy theories, he told NBC News, citing a conversation he had with Patel in December 2023 during which Baker shared his opinion that the Jan. 6 violence was orchestrated by sections of the Defense Department.
“Kash completely shot me down when I had this conservation and put that conspiracy—we’ll call it a conspiracy theory—on his desk,” Baker added. He literally destroyed me, telling me that what I think happened that day couldn’t possibly have happened.
According to Baker and other supporters of Patel, if confirmed, Patel would significantly alter the FBI.
Julie Kelly, a conservative commentator with close ties to the Trump administration, stated that she believes Kash Patel, a friend, will do what needs to be done at the FBI. This includes not only dismantling the agency from top headquarters to the 56 FBI field offices, but also holding agents accountable for using their unaccountable power to weaponize the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency against the regime’s political enemies.
Baker stated: To the extent that everyone is freaking out over his plans to dismantle the FBI, well, guess what? That is what Trump’s supporters want him to do.