Kash Patel had a roster of foreign clients. Their interests could clash with FBI he hopes to lead
Kash Patel, President Donald Trump's pick to lead the FBI, holds more than $1 million of stock in a fashion company founded in China. He established a nonprofit that spent big on promotion but little on its mission. And he advised a roster of foreign clients, including a Czech arms maker that top Republicans have criticized for being too tight with U.S. adversaries.
Patel entered Trump's orbit as a congressional staffer of modest means. But the years since have been unquestionably lucrative as Patel parlayed proximity to Trump and a zeal for self-promotion into consulting contracts, corporate board seats and a role as a sought-after MAGA commentator. It all helped swell his net worth to as much as $15 million, according to an Associated Press analysis of his government financial disclosure forms.
As Patel awaits Senate confirmation to become the next FBI director, his private-sector work is drawing renewed scrutiny from ethics experts and Democrats who say the interests of his former clients could conflict with those of the law enforcement agency he's likely to soon lead.
The scope of Patel's business dealings with foreign entities is hard to fully discern because he in some instances disclosed only minimal information about the nature of his work. But they're coming into focus at a time the Trump administration's Justice Department intends to scale back enforcement of laws governing foreign lobbying. And they're all the more notable because at least one client, the clothing company Shein, was established in China, a country U.S. authorities have described as a national security threat.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for Patel, Erica Knight, offered no additional details about the specifics of the work he did. But she said he had 'countless meetings with senators' where his finances were discussed. 'Mr. Patel has gone above and beyond in this advice and consent process,' she said.
Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the Washington-based government watchdog Public Citizen, said Patel's business dealings presented problems that need to be explored before he becomes FBI director. 'The conflicts of interest seem very obvious to me,' Holman said.
From obscurity to prominence
Patel, 44, was not in Trump's orbit when the Repubican was first elected to the White House. He had toiled as a public defender and Justice Department counterterrorism prosecutor before catching on with the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee during the FBI's investigation into potential ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.
Deeply skeptical of the origins of that investigation, Patel helped author a document that identified problems with the investigation and faulted the FBI over its surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser. The memo caught Trump's attention, paving the way for Patel's promotion to a series of increasingly high-profile roles in the administration.
After Trump's defeat in 2020, Patel leveraged his connections to the former president to attain considerable wealth.
He wrote a book and became a ubiquitous presence in conservative media as one of Trump's most outspoken loyalists, railing against so-called 'government gangsters' while voicing an eagerness to go after Trump's political enemies in a future administration.
He also launched a nonprofit, the Kash Foundation, that aimed to foster 'a healthier relationship between the US federal government and American citizens.' The organization raised nearly $1.3 million in 2023 but spent only $212,821 providing 'financial and legal assistance for whistle-blowers, needy families and education' that forms the core of its stated mission, according to its most recent tax returns. The group also sold 'Fight With Kash' merchandise that included beanies, scarves, hoodies and playing cards.
The group held nearly $850,000 in reserve in 2023 while spending $332,000 on 'advertising and promotion,' including $275,475 paid to One and Oh LLC, a company that was founded by the Kash Foundation's vice president and that Patel also consulted for.
Patel's roster of clients
Meanwhile, as Patel became an increasingly influential adviser to Trump, earning $544,000 from the presidential candidate's political operation, he was building a roster of foreign and domestic consulting clients, none of which was revealed until his most recent government financial disclosure was made public last week.
The document shows Patel drew income from an unusual range of sources — the Embassy of Qatar, Shein and a California company that rents out metal storage tanks. Some of that work came at particularly sensitive times for clients.
Patel's consulting for The Czechoslovak Group, a foreign arms conglomerate also known as CSG, coincided with the firm's push to purchase Vista Outdoor, the maker of such famous American ammo brands as Federal and Remington. Senate Republicans, including future Vice President JD Vance, blasted the purchase last year as a threat to national security and urged the Biden administration to review the pending sale.
In a letter to the Treasury Department, Vance accused CSG of having 'ties to the inner circle of Russian President Vladimir Putin.' The company has vehemently denied Vance's claims, calling them 'nonsense.' The sale went through in November.
Patel's financial disclosure is not clear about when he was hired by CSG, how much he was paid or what work he did. But it indicates he consulted for a branch of the company called CSGM during the past two years and made more than $5,000 for his work, which was done through his consulting firm, Trishul LLC.
Vance spokeswoman Taylor Van Kirk did not directly address Patel's work for the arms maker or whether the vice president still has concerns about the company's purchase of an American ammunition manufacturer. She said that Vance has faith in Patel and believes he is 'extremely qualified' to be FBI director.
Another foreign company that hired Patel was Elite Depot Ltd., the Cayman Islands-based parent company of Shein.
He began consulting in April for Elite Depot in an arrangement that ended last month. His disclosure states he was given between $1 million and $5 million worth of unvested stock in the company that will mature over the coming year. He said he wasn't divesting from Elite Depot — unlike many of his other stock holdings — because there was only a 'remote' chance his new job would involve the company.
The forms don't reveal what Patel did for the company or what he may have earned beyond the transfer of stock. On the campaign trail, Trump railed against China and pledged to impose steep tariffs on the country's exports to the U.S.
Though now headquartered in Singapore, Shein produces most of its goods in China, and Trump's proposed levies represented a threat to Shein's direct-to-consumer business model, which ships low-cost goods from Chinese factories to U.S. consumers. Most of those goods are imported duty free under a nearly century-old trade loophole. Trump slapped 10% tariffs on Chinese imports that also mandated an end to the loophole.
Shein did not respond to a request for comment. It has also been dogged by criticisms over accusations that its supply chain may rely on forced labor. Last month, a lawyer for the company evaded questions from British lawmakers about whether its products include cotton from China's Xinjiang province, where Beijing is accused of holding members of mostly Muslim ethnic groups in detention camps.
Patel will maintain his investment in Shein's parent company even as he leads an FBI that has aggressively sounded the alarm about the danger China poses to the U.S.
The FBI says China has long engaged in a vast, multi-pronged espionage and influence operation that relies on traditional spies and hackers, as well as Chinese-based companies.
___
Suderman reported from Richmond, Virginia. Associated Press writer Haleluya Hadero contributed reporting from Charlotte, North Carolina.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New Statesman
6 minutes ago
- New Statesman
How Donald Trump plunged America into a blind war
Photo by Daniel Torok/The White House via Getty Images One minute after midnight on 21 June, a small group of US B-2 Spirit bombers took off from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri heading west across the Pacific. They were picked up shortly afterwards by flight tracking accounts on social media, prompting breaking news alerts that multiple American bombers capable of carrying the type of heavy ordinance that would be needed to destroy Iran's nuclear sites were airborne as journalists frantically traced their trajectory. In fact, this was a decoy. The real strike group was flying east across the Atlantic, with seven B-2 bombers joined by US fighter jets as they reached the Middle East, which escorted them into Iranian airspace. In the early hours of 22 June local time, they dropped a total of 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs), 30,000-pound guided bombs known as 'bunker busters', on Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordo and Natanz. A US Navy submarine fired more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles at a third site in Isfahan as part of what the Pentagon called 'Operation Midnight Hammer'. By now, most people will have seen Donald Trump's address to the nation in the hours that followed, flanked by his distinctly uncomfortable-looking vice-president JD Vance along with secretary-of-state-turned-national-security-adviser Marco Rubio and defence secretary Pete Hegseth. Trump, predictably, pronounced the whole operation a 'spectacular military success', declaring that Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities had been 'completely and totally obliterated', which he could not possibly have known at the time and has yet to be confirmed. 'Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace,' Trump intoned. 'If they do not, future attacks would be far greater and a lot easier.' Appearing to veer from his script towards the end, he added, 'I want to just say, we love you, God.' In the best-case scenario for those who support these strikes, Trump has acted decisively, ordering the use of military force where successive previous presidents had equivocated, and setting back the Iranian nuclear programme for years, perhaps even for good. He has finally neutered a regime that has long been defined by its rallying cry, 'Death to America', and delivered Israel from the existential threat that would have been posed by a nuclear-armed Iran, which one former Iranian president is said to have described as a 'one-bomb country'. According to this rendering, Trump has taken advantage of a moment of profound weakness for Tehran, whose most notorious proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, have been eviscerated by the Israeli military campaign over the last 18 months, and whose most senior military commanders and nuclear scientists have been assassinated. He has forced a reckoning for the Iranian regime – that will be quietly welcomed by many in the region and beyond – abandon your nuclear ambitions, or cease to exist. In the process, he has also proved the TACO theory (Trump Always Chickens Out) wrong. Perhaps some even see him delivering on his election campaign mantra that he would deliver 'peace through strength'. This is all, theoretically, possible. We should be clear, less than 24 hours at the time of writing from the US strikes, that nobody – not Trump, not the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and not Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei – knows for certain where this will lead, or how this war will end. (Trump has already called it a 'war' on social media.) But the history of recent US military campaigns in the region does not bode well. The exception often noted is the first Gulf War in 1991, where the coalition military effort known as Operation Desert Storm lasted than two months and succeeded in forcing Saddam Hussein to withdraw his troops from Kuwait, although the Iraqi dictator was permitted to remain in power. The problem with the optimistic case this time is, to quote the former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the subsequent invasion of Iraq, the 'known unknowns', and the 'unknown unknowns'. In the short term, the known unknowns include what capabilities Iran retains to retaliate, both in terms of its proxies abroad (including the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq), the remaining stockpiles of missiles and drones in Iran, which Israel has repeatedly targeted in recent days, and its ability to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, where almost a third of the world's seaborne oil transits. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Ayatollah Khamenei, who is 86 and said to be in faltering health, is reportedly sheltering in a bunker, according to the New York Times, avoiding electronic devices for fear of revealing his location and communicating only through a trusted aide, where he has listed several clerics who could replace him if he is killed, along with substitutes for the military chain of command. We do not yet know how Khamenei will respond to these attacks and whether he will assess – as many commentators have insisted – that he must now retaliate in some meaningful form if he hopes to restore Iran's deterrence and remain in power. We do not know whether Tehran can be induced to resume negotiations on a nuclear deal with Washington, as many European leaders have now urged. We do know, however, that Iran had previously negotiated a nuclear deal – known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – with the United States, the UK, France, China, Russia, and the EU in 2015, which Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018. It is not clear that any Iranian government would entrust its future to a new deal that could be similarly torn up by the next US administration. (Trump has also launched trade wars against Canada, Mexico and China since returning to power despite signing much-hyped trade deals with them during his previous term.) Meanwhile, the example of the Kim dynasty in North Korea, which has pursued nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them despite the significant costs, and is not currently being bombed by the US, might well suggest to the Iranian regime that the surer course for survival would have been to race for a bomb while it still could, and, if it has the opportunity, to try again. We also know that despite the repeated messaging via US backchannels in the hours after the strike that this was a 'one-and-done' operation – a limited campaign to target the nuclear facilities and nothing more, certainly not the prelude to regime change – Trump and Netanyahu have delivered starkly contradictory signals. Netanyahu openly urged the Iranian people to 'stand up' against the regime after launching the Israeli military campaign on 13 June. Trump has demanded 'UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER' from Iran on social media and threatened to kill Khamenei. 'It's not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change,' but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change???' Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on the evening of 22 June. 'MIGA!!!' Given these statements, it is not hard to see why the Iranian government might conclude that the US and Israel have, in fact, launched a war that aims to overthrow them, and, therefore, that this is not merely a negotiating ploy that could yet end in a new nuclear deal, but an existential fight that justifies any means. Then there are the unknown unknowns. We do not know, for instance, whether there could be other Iranian nuclear facilities that had not yet been identified, and what steps the regime might have taken to ensure the survival of key personnel, equipment and material. We do not know how secure the regime's grip on power is and whether Khamenei could yet be sidelined, or simply replaced, by hardliners from within the Iranian Revolutionary Guard or former high-ranking officials. 'Tehran is now full of such plots,' one anonymous source, who claimed to be part of a plan to replace the ageing supreme leader, told The Atlantic after the strikes. 'Everybody knows Khamenei's days are numbered.' If the regime does fall, it is far from clear what type of government would take its place, and what that would mean for the region, and well beyond. Recent examples – such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria – suggest liberal democracy is an unlikely outcome. 'The US is now entangled in a new conflict, with prospects of a ground operation looming on the horizon,' taunted Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and current deputy chair of the country's security council, who is now probably best known for his bellicose social media threats. He then claimed that a 'number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads.' (It is worth bearing in mind that his main role these days seems to be garnering attention and provocative headlines.) With the Russian military tied down in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is unlikely to offer much in the way of meaningful help in the short term, but he will certainly capitalise on what appears to be a flagrant breach of international law and what he will present as yet more evidence of American hypocrisy. (Putin, too, claims to have attacked Ukraine in part to stop the country developing nuclear weapons and threatening Russia's national security.) Moscow also stands to benefit from a rise in the price of oil if Iran threatens the Strait of Hormuz or targets other oil-producing facilities in the region. Beijing has strongly condemned the US attack, which the foreign ministry said, 'seriously violate the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and international law'. China is Iran's largest trading partner, which supplied around 15 percent of the oil the country imported last year, and will not welcome the prospect of a massive spike in oil prices if the conflict escalates at a time when the Chinese economy is already slowing. But the prospect of the US getting drawn into another interminable war in the Middle East and deferring, yet again, the mythical 'pivot to Asia', with its focus on deterring a Chinese assault on Taiwan, offers other potential benefits to Beijing. The reverberations of Trump's gamble will be felt far beyond the borders of Iran. Flanked by Vance, Rubio, and Hegseth as he delivered his speech in the hours after the attack, the impression was less a show of unity than a president who is keenly aware of the domestic political risk this involves – and the vehement opposition already emanating from parts of his Maga base – and determined to show that his top lieutenants were all on board. Perhaps that was why Vance in particular, who has built his political brand on his opposition to US military intervention overseas, looked so perturbed. Trump has plunged the US into a war with Iran, with no apparent strategy, and objectives that appear to be evolving, in real time, on social media. Maybe the best-case scenario will yet transpire, and the Middle East will emerge from this conflict more stable and prosperous, but recent history cautions against too much optimism. [See also: The British left will not follow Trump into war] Related
The Independent
10 minutes ago
- The Independent
Texas governor vetoes bill that would ban all THC products
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott vetoed a bill Sunday to ban all THC consumables, allowing the booming market flush with THC-infused vapes, gummies and other products to continue to be sold across the state. Abbott, a Republican, waited until the final moment to veto the bill in what would have been one of the most restrictive THC bans in the country and a significant blow to the state's billion-dollar industry. The law would have made it a misdemeanor to own, manufacture or sell consumable THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, products and was the latest push by states to regulate THC after a 2018 federal law allowed states to regulate hemp, a similar plant to marijuana that can be synthetically processed to produce THC, the compound giving marijuana its psychoactive properties. Loopholes in existing law have allowed many THC-infused goods to enter the market across the country, including states with strict marijuana laws. Texas has some of the strictest marijuana laws in the country, prohibiting all recreational use and providing a limited medical marijuana program. The consumables market has allowed residents to legally access goods giving a similar high to marijuana. Republican lawmakers have criticized the products as dangerous due to a lack of federal oversight in how the goods are manufactured. Texas' ban is one of the more far-reaching among states that have taken similar steps. Several states, including California, have imposed age limits and restrictions on the potency of THC products. Critics of the Texas bill say it allows people who cannot access marijuana through the state's medical marijuana program to acquire goods that can provide a similar relief. Many retailers across the state also pointed to the thousands of jobs and millions in revenue the industry brings each year. Last year, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed a bill that would have put age restrictions on THC consumables, claiming it would hurt small businesses. ___
The Herald Scotland
25 minutes ago
- The Herald Scotland
Trump says Iran's nuclear sites were 'obliterated.' Were they?
"Final battle damage will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction," Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine told reporters a day after the strikes on June 22. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the main agency that assesses the scale and evolution of Iran's nuclear program, said hostilities would need to cease for it to resume inspections. The organization, housed within the United Nations, said it would hold an emergency meeting June 23. Trump said Iran's nuclear sites were obliterated It was not entirely clear what evidence or intelligence Trump was relying on when he told the world that Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity had been destroyed. He also disputed twice disputed intelligence community findings before the strike that Iran was not close to producing a nuclear weapon. "Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success," Trump said in a late-night June 21 address. "Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated." Hegseth used similar rhetoric at a morning news conference, saying that thanks to Trump's leadership, "Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obliterated." But a battle damage assessment is ongoing, Hegseth acknowledged during in the briefing. He noted it was the Pentagon's "initial assessment" its precision munitions had the desired effect. "Especially in Fordow, which was the primary target here. We believe we achieved destruction of capabilities there," Hegseth told reporters. Caine was more cautious. "It would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there," he said when asked about Iran's remaining nuclear capabilities during the same news conference. Live updates: US warns of 'heightened threat environment' after strikes on Iran nukes How much of a hit did Iran take? It was a "responsible" comment from Caine, said Simone Ledeen, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East in Trump's first administration. Whether the Iranian nuclear program was set back a decade or decades and whether there is no more nuclear program period "really needs to be determined by a systematic battle damage assessment," she said. Yet, given what the president and secretary of defense know of the bombs that were dropped and where, Ledeen added, "I don't think it's far-fetched for them to say that these sites were destroyed." Democratic lawmakers on committees that oversee the military, intelligence community and foreign policy apparatus are pushing for classified briefings to help them reach their own conclusions. "There is a lot we still don't know and we need an accurate, factual damage assessment," Senate Armed Services ranking member Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, said in a statement. Senate Foreign Relations ranking member Jeanne Shaheen also said in a statement, "We are still waiting to understand the extent to which that action has deterred Iran's nuclear threat." "President Trump must now de-escalate tensions with Iran and immediately brief Congress," the New Hampshire Democrat said. Vice President JD Vance did not specify the extent of the damage to Iran's sites as he made a round of television interviews the morning after the strike. "But we know that we've set the Iranian nuclear program back substantially last night," Vance said on ABC News' "This Week" program. "Whether it's years or beyond that, we know it's going to be a very long time before Iran can even build a nuclear weapon if they want to." Iran claims its uranium stockpiles were evacuated Iran's IRIB state broadcaster claimed its stockpiles of enriched uranium were "evacuated" from all threes sites prior to the U.S. strikes, another assertion not independently verified. Russian Security Council deputy chairman of Dmitry Medvedev also said Iran's critical nuclear infrastructure appeared to be unaffected or to have sustained only minor damage. "The enrichment of nuclear material - and, now we can say it outright, the future production of nuclear weapons - will continue," Medvedev said in a social media thread. "A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads." Russia is an ally of Tehran's, and Medvedev is a previous Russian president. Israeli forces could try to enter Iran's nuclear sites in a sensitive operation and make a determination for itself and the United States, said Ledeen, the first-term Trump defense official. But an official assessment will have to be conducted by the IAEA, which says it can not go in until the conflict ends, for the international community to accept it. "I hope it is the end, so IAEA can get their inspectors in there sooner rather than later," Ledeen said. "You also don't want loose material getting into the wrong hands." Contributing: Kim Hjelmgaard
