By C. Ryan Barber, Josh Dawsey and Sadie Gurman
WASHINGTON—Among Kash Patel’s first questions as FBI director was one that underscored who was now in charge.
What was the best way to call the Oval Office on a secure line from both his office at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and from home, Patel asked officials, according to people familiar with his inquiry.
While every FBI director since J. Edgar Hoover has taken pains to keep the White House at arms length, the new Trump administration has taken the opposite tack, working to bring the traditionally independent ethos of the FBI and Justice Department firmly within the president’s grasp.
Patel’s determination to keep in close contact with President Trump himself is an arrangement outside the traditional chain of command in which the FBI director reports to the deputy attorney general, and the president usually talks only to the attorney general.
It is but one example of how on matters big and small administration officials including Patel and senior officials at the Justice Department have deferred to Trump and his deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller since taking office, the people said. Miller has regularly talked to top officials at the Justice Department, including about the FBI, the people said.
Patel had told others he planned to keep a longtime FBI agent and supervisor, Robert Kissane, as his deputy, for example, according to people familiar with the discussions, but let that go for Trump’s choice of conservative firebrand Dan Bongino. Miller repeatedly called then-acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove at night to push for the FBI to do more to execute Trump’s immigration crackdown, people familiar with the calls said. And Bove is the official who ordered prosecutors to drop the bribery case against New York Mayor Eric Adams, saying the case interfered with the mayor’s ability to assist on Trump’s priorities of fighting illegal immigration and violent crime.
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