Kash Patel, Trump pick for FBI director, could face Senate blowback

Donald Trump's plan to nominate as FBI director the "deep state" conspiracy theorist Kash Patel, a virulent critic of the bureau who has threatened to fire its top echelons and shut down its headquarters, is facing blowback in Congress as US senators begin to flex their muscles ahead of a contentious confirmation process.

- Ed Pilkington

Politicians from both main parties took to the Sunday chatshows to express starkly divergent views on Patel, the man Trump announced on Saturday as his pick to lead the most powerful law enforcement agency in the US. The move is dependent on the FBI chief, Christopher Wray, who Trump himself placed in the job in 2017, either being fired or resigning.

It is already clear that confirming Patel through the US Senate is likely to be less than plain sailing. Mike Rounds, a Republican senator from South Dakota, indicated that Patel could face a tough confirmation battle.

Rounds pointedly sang the praises of the incumbent FBI director in an interview with ABC's This Week. He said that Wray, who has three more years of his 10-year term to serve, was a "very good man", adding that he had "no objections about the way that he is doing his job right now".

Other Republican senators rallied to Patel's side. Ted Cruz, from Texas, told CBS's Face the Nation that he believed Patel would be confirmed.

"Patel is a very strong nominee to take on the partisan corruption in the FBI," he said.