HATCHET MAN

How Kash Patel is transforming the F.B.I. on behalf of Donald Trump.

- BY MARC FISHER

On June 5th, Kash Patel, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was in Austin, Texas, to record a podcast interview with Joe Rogan. Patel had recently declared that the F.B.I. had moved on from its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes, but his agents were still looking into other “coverups,” including the COVID-19 lab leak and the role that the Bureau's own operatives supposedly played in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. In Rogan’s studio, Patel, wearing an olive-green hoodie and smoking a fat cigar, laid out a new conspiracy, in which the Chinese Communist Party was systematically killing Americans with fentanyl as part of a “long-term plan” to “wipe out tens of thousands of Americans a year” who “might grow up to serve in the United States military or become a cop or become a teacher.”

Rogan said, “Oh, that is such a dark, dark thing.” Patel fired up his stogie with a butane lighter and exhaled a billowy cloud of smoke. “It is,” he replied. “But we're on it.”

Rogan was clearly impressed. “What is it like to be the head of the F.B.I.?” he asked at one point. “How weird is that?”

“It’s completely effing wild,” Patel said. “I mean, I don't even know how to describe it.”