Ben Kirchner
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.”
Many of Patel’s past associates are similarly astonished. Bennett Gershman, a professor at Pace University’s law school, where Patel got his degree, described Patel as an “at best average” student who was interested in issues of social justice and identity politics. “He seemed to be on the side of the left,” Gershman said. Former colleagues in Miami, where Patel spent eight years as a public defender, called him an “adequate” attorney. “We had two hundred lawyers, and he was neither one of the best nor one of the worst,” Bennett Brummer, the elected Miami-Dade public defender at the time, said. Kushagra Katariya, a cardiothoracic surgeon who became friends with Patel in Miami, said Patel’s passions were hockey and exploring ways to get rich. “I never imagined him getting to this point in his life,” Katariya said. “It’s a good surprise.”
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