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- Kashyap ‘Kash’ Patel is of Gujarati ancestry and has said that his parents grew up in East Africa. According to The Atlantic, his father fled Uganda, ruled by Idi Amin, in the 1970s and moved to the US.
- Mr Patel was born and raised in Garden City, New York in 1980. Raised Hindu, his senior-yearbook quote was by Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel: “Racism is man’s gravest threat – the maximum of hatred for a minimum reason.”
- According to his Department of Defense profile, Mr Patel completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Richmond before returning to New York to earn his law degree, along with a Certificate in International Law from University College London Faculty of Laws in the UK.
- The 44-year-old served as the former Chief of Staff to Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller. Before that, as the Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council, he executed several of then-President Donald Trump’s top priorities, including eliminating ISIS and al-Qaeda leadership like al-Baghdadi and Qasem al-Rimi, and the repatriation of many American hostages.
- He had also served as the National Security Advisor and Senior Counsel for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where he spearheaded the investigation into the Russian active measures campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election.
- Having begun his career as a public defender, he tried many complex cases, including those related to murder, narco-trafficking and financial crimes in state and federal courts.
- The Atlantic report describes Mr Patel as the man “who will do anything for Trump”, who is now the president-elect after pulling off a remarkable victory in the just-concluded elections.
- The report says Mr Patel joined the then-Trump administration in 2019 as a 40-year-old lawyer and rose up the ranks rapidly.
- Trump also, the report said, planned to name Patel the deputy director of the CIA in the final weeks of his administration, but faced pushback.
- At a gala of young Republicans last year, Trump had a message for Mr Patel: “Get ready, Kash. Get ready”.
