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.

Conservative firebrand Dan Bongino was Trump’s choice for deputy FBI director. Photo: Calla Kessler/Washington Post/Getty Images

Taken together, the early moves highlight how Trump isn’t just content to name loyalists to top jobs and trust their judgment. In his first term, Trump installed officials he thought were aligned with him in key positions at the department, only to have them resist his most extreme demands. Now, after years of clashing with the Justice Department amid federal investigations into his conduct, Trump has made remaking the institution the centerpiece of his agenda.

“Director Patel is aggressively working to deliver on removing criminals from our streets, restoring law and order, and ensuring agents have the resources they need to perform their duties effectively,” FBI spokesman Ben Williamson said. “We have absolutely zero interest in engaging with false leaks or distractions that undermine that mission.”

Justice Department spokesman Chad Gilmartin said: “It’s no surprise that this Department of Justice is laser-focused on a top national security concern of the American people: ending the invasion of criminal illegal aliens and enforcing our nation’s immigration laws.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “President Trump has made it clear that Attorney General (Pam) Bondi and the Department of Justice will operate independently from the White House.” She added that Miller had served as a “sounding board” to Justice Department officials.

Trump and his allies have argued for years that the Justice Department has unfairly targeted Republicans, although it has prosecuted politicians from both parties. Trump has asserted that his two now-defunct federal criminal cases were brought in the Biden administration to undermine him as he ran for re-election, which former officials deny.

Soon after Trump’s inauguration, the White House installed a 2022 law school graduate, Paul Ingrassia, as its liaison for the Justice Department. Ingrassia vetted candidates for Justice Department roles and stressed loyalty to Trump in the process, people familiar with his work said.

Attorney General Pam Bondi Photo: Will Oliver/Shutterstock

In one discussion, Ingrassia told a top FBI official that the White House wanted to know whether he voted for Trump in the 2024 election, one of the people said. Brian Driscoll, who served as acting FBI director in the early weeks of the Trump administration, declined to answer and said he would never ask such questions of anyone who worked for him, according to people familiar with the exchange.

Legal experts said inquiries to career civil servants about their political activities, including voting and donations, have traditionally been considered off-limits in the federal workplace.

Ingrassia was reassigned last month to work as the White House liaison for the Department of Homeland Security.

Bondi, Bove and Todd Blanche, who was confirmed this week as the deputy attorney general, all worked on Trump’s legal defense team. Blanche has said he would ensure nothing like the special counsel investigations into Trump ever happens again. Last year, Trump told Blanche that he wants an investigation into the special counsel’s investigation into him, according to people familiar with the discussion.

At his Tuesday congressional address, Trump introduced Bondi and Patel, who received a standing ovation from Republican lawmakers. “My administration has acted swiftly and decisively to restore fair, equal and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law,” he said.

The attendance of an FBI director at such an event is itself a rarity.

Trump and his team are making other moves to wrest power at the department. On Friday, Blanche’s first full day as deputy attorney general, he dismissed the Justice Department’s pardon attorney, Elizabeth Oyer, who was appointed to the role in 2022. She was escorted out of the building by security.

FBI Director Kash Patel received a standing ovation from Republican lawmakers during Trump’s congressional address on Tuesday. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

No basketball

The FBI’s first director, Hoover, who served for almost 50 years and cultivated close relationships with eight presidents, had a phone line in his home that was meant specifically for conversations with the president, said Beverly Gage, a history professor at Yale who wrote a biography of Hoover. But directors since then have wanted to keep the FBI and the White House separate, both in public perception and reality.

They wanted to showcase “the FBI as the nonpartisan nonpolitical institution and the president as something else,” she said.

Louis Freeh, who was director under former President Bill Clinton, irked the president by surrendering his White House access badge during his first week on the job, after learning that Clinton was under investigation for a controversial land deal, which became known as the Whitewater scandal. James Comey refused to play basketball with former President Barack Obama because he didn’t want to appear too chummy with the man who appointed him.

Patel, who worked in various national security roles during Trump’s first term and was a campaign surrogate, has long been by Trump’s side. Among other things, they share a distrust of the agency Patel now leads. Senior FBI officials can’t bring cellphones into their offices given the security risks. A secure land line already sits on the desks of many top FBI officials that can connect them to the White House switchboard, the CIA, and other national security agencies, but Patel asked how to connect directly with Trump’s Oval Office, people familiar with the request said.

Patel has inquired about hiring his own private security detail, a suggestion that he doesn’t fully trust FBI agents to protect him. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

In addition to the phone line, Patel has inquired about hiring his own private security detail. The director already gets a retinue of FBI agents tasked with ensuring his safety, but Patel asked about having a separate detail, in an apparent suggestion that he didn’t fully trust the FBI agents, according to people familiar with the request.

In briefings, senior Justice Department officials have focused on immigration and gang violence, top Trump priorities, and have fewer questions about the threats from China and Russia that used to dominate the meetings, people familiar with the matter said.

In one, Bove said Miller had called him several times the previous night to say he was disappointed with law enforcement’s slow start on immigration arrests and wanted to see more publicity of the FBI’s help with immigration operations, an area in which it traditionally has played a minor role. The FBI has been widely promoting its cooperation with Department of Homeland Security officials on social media, sharing photos and videos of agents with obscured faces handcuffing suspects.

Bondi also appeared at the White House last week to promote her release of documents related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. The 200 pages Bondi later made public offered little new information, drawing criticism from some vocal Trump supporters.