(Ken Silva, Headline USA) FBI Director Kashyap Patel, who has positioned himself as one of President Donald Trump’s most trusted officials, was a social justice warrior in school who embraced the MAGA movement to get rich and advance his own career, according to a recent profile in the New Yorker.
“He had no real politics of his own,” former National Security Council Deputy Secretary Charlie Kupperman reportedly said of Patel. “He’s always cultivated people that can help him get into the limelight, and Trump has supported him at every turn because he’s one-hundred-per-cent sycophant.”
Kupperman may have an axe to grind with Patel, who included him in his “government gangsters” list in his 2023 memoir. However, others, including his friend, Kushagra Katariya, made similar remarks. Katariya, a cardiothoracic surgeon who befriended Patel in Miami, reportedly said his passions were “hockey and exploring ways to get rich.”
Insofar that Patel had politics when he was younger, they seem to be left-leaning. His high school yearbook quote is from Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, who said that “racism is man’s gravest threat to man—maximum of hatred for a minimum reason,” according to the New Yorker.
FBI Director Kashyap Patel was a social justice warrior in school. His yearbook quote is from a Jewish theologian: "Racism is man's gravest threat…"
A friend said his primary concerns were "hockey and exploring ways to get rich."Revelations from a recent New Yorker profile🧵 pic.twitter.com/9Wmanut6eG
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) November 28, 2025
“He also signed on to an amicus brief supporting the consideration of race in law-school admissions and participated in the Judicial Intern Opportunity Program, a diversity effort aimed at ‘members of groups that are traditionally underrepresented in the profession, including students from minority racial and ethnic groups,’” the New Yorker added.
Additionally, Patel’s bio on the FBI’s website is highly misleading, according to the New Yorker. His bio says he “returned to New York to earn his juris doctor and earned a certificate in international law from University College London Faculty of Laws in the United Kingdom.” But while he earned a certificate from that London school, his law degree is from Pace University.
Patel’s former Pace law professor called the bio “fraudulent,” while a bureau spokesman said he stands by what the bio says.
Patel’s turn from ordinary lawyer to flamboyant activist seems to have come after a U.S. district judge blasted him for wearing an “ill-fitting jacket, wrinkled khakis, and boat shoes” to court. The judge kicked him out of the proceedings, and the incident was leaked to the Washington Post soon thereafter.
“In the years that followed, Patel would lash out at the D.O.J. for refusing to ‘stand up for me after being attacked by the unstable judge in Houston,’” the New Yorker reported. “He also began to malign news organizations that ‘will do anything to stop you.’”
Since then, his career has skyrocketed—although many in the MAGA movement have soured on him for flip-flopping on numerous issues.
Before his appointment, Patel reversed his position on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Patel previously expressed support for implementing warrant requirements for FISA 702, but he abandoned that position during his confirmation hearings—meaning he supports warrantless surveillance of Americans.
Patel also said that he’d shut down its headquarters and turn it into a “museum for the deep state.” Additionally, he’s yet to live up to promises such as that he’d release all the FBI’s files on notorious sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.
More recently, he’s been taking heat for galivanting around the country in the FBI jet, and for assigning agents to guard his girlfriend, who doesn’t live with him.
The New Yorker ended its profile by noting that he hasn’t lived up to his promise to arrest MAGA’s enemies, either.
“Nearly a year into the President’s second term, users on X, Facebook, and Truth Social have been diligently cataloguing the anti-maga forces that have yet to be brought to justice,” the New Yorker reported.
“One meme tallied the ‘Number of Arrests’ stemming from crimes Patel had promised to solve, including the ‘Russian Collusion Hoax’; the 2020 election; January 6th; the covid-19 lab leak; the ‘Mar-a-Lago Raid’; and ‘Epstein Pedophile Arrests.’ The final count on each, at least so far, is zero.”
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
