Who has Trump picked for his Cabinet? Kash Patel named to potentially lead FBI
President-elect Donald Trump continues to add controversial figures to his incoming administration.
The latest pick is that of former Republican House staffer and staunch Trump supporter Kashyap “Kash” Patel to potentially assume the role of Federal Bureau of Investigation director.
Trump would have to fire current FBI director Christopher Wray in order for Patel to be formally nominated to the role. Wray, a first-term Trump appointment, is more than halfway through the 10-year term he was confirmed to in 2017.
Patel has signaled that his agenda would prioritize the destruction of the so-called “deep state,” or longtime members of the national security bureaucracy.
Patel is the latest in a string of Cabinet picks who are likely to face bruising confirmation hearings despite Republican control of the Senate. In response, Trump has floated the demand that GOP leadership allow for recess appointments as an end-around of the confirmation process.
Trump has also named Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister to lead the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, key in the incoming administration's focus on fentanyl trafficking that has already inflamed tensions with Mexico.
Here are the latest picks in for the Trump administration.
Potential FBI head hardline MAGA pick
Patel is a former prosecutor and was rumored to be on tap for a prominent national security role after serving in the previous administration. Patel was the chief of staff at the Department of Defense, deputy director of National Intelligence and senior director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council.
He has been a vocal MAGA spokesperson between the administrations, often echoing Trump's calls for vengeance.
Patel pushed the false claim of a rigged election in 2020 and promised retribution against those in the media in a 2023 episode of a podcast hosted by far-right political strategist Steve Bannon.
"We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig Presidential elections," Patel said. "Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out."
DEA pick tied to Attorney General nominee
Trump tapped Chronister to lead the DEA, describing him as a “proud graduate of the FBI National Academy” and co-chairman of the Regional Domestic Security Task Force for the Tampa region in Florida.
Chronister appears to be close to Pam Bondi, the former two-term Florida attorney general who Trump has tapped to be Attorney General, the highest law enforcement official in the nation and head of the Justice Department, which oversees the DEA. Chronister served as a member of the Florida Attorney General’s Statewide Council on Human Trafficking.
Trump signed an executive order during his first term in the White House granting a full pardon to Chronister's father-in-law, Edward DeBartolo Jr., for his involvement in a gambling fraud case in Louisiana in the late 1990s.
If confirmed by the Senate, Chronister would replace President Joe Biden’s DEA administrator, Anne Milgram, a former New Jersey attorney general who is credited with aggressively combatting the trafficking and sale of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is more than 50 times more powerful than heroin.
Trump's Cabinet picks
Chief of Staff: Trump named his senior campaign adviser Susie Wiles as his White House chief of staff, the first woman in history to hold the title. The Florida political consultant largely stays out of the spotlight but has been credited with helping Trump's political comeback.
Secretary of State: U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida is nominated as the next Secretary of State. He will bring foreign policy experience through his roles in the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. A Cuban-American, he is set to be the first Latino person to be Secretary of State.
Secretary of the Treasury: Trump nominated Scott Bessent as his Treasury secretary. The 62-year-old Yale alum, who founded Key Square Capital Management in 2015, has supported Trump’s economic policy of deregulation, increasing domestic energy production and tax cuts.
Secretary of Defense: Trump nominated former Fox News host Pete Hegseth to Defense secretary. A Fox News commentator, Hegseth served in the U.S. Army National Guard and had led veteran's advocacy groups. Hegseth has become embroiled in sexual assault and far-right extremism scandals since Trump announced his nomination.
Attorney General: Former Attorney General of Florida Pam Bondi was nominated by Trump for the position. She was not the president-elect's first choice, as he initially nominated former Rep. Matt Gaetz, who withdrew his nomination amid allegations of sexual misconduct. Bondi was the first female attorney general in the history of Florida.
Secretary of Interior: Trump has nominated Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to be his secretary of Interior coordinating federal policy to several territories. Burgum previously ran to be Republican presidential nominee before dropping out in December and has long been vocal about fossil fuels and energy issues.
Secretary of Agriculture: Trump has named longtime ally Brooke Rollins to be agriculture secretary, the president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute.
Secretary of Commerce: Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick has been selected to serve as the commerce secretary. The Wall Street billionaire is expected to offer insight relating to job creation and economic growth.
Secretary of Labor: Trump named Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, R-OR, to be Secretary of Labor. She lost her reelection bid for the state's 5th congressional district to Democratic challenger state Rep. Janelle Bynum. During her campaign, Chavez-DeRemer received endorsements from the largest federal employees union and several public safety unions including United Food and Commercial Workers.
Secretary of Health and Human Services: Trump has named Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. The 2024 independent candidate has previously criticized vaccines and questioned the origin of the COVID-19 virus. He is arguably best known for spreading unfounded claims about a link between childhood vaccines and autism.
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: Trump nominated Scott Turner to lead HUD. The Texas motivational speaker with the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank, previously played as an NFL football cornerback. From 2013 to 2017, he served in the Texas House of Representatives.
Secretary of the Department of Energy: Trump is nominating oil industry executive Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Energy and 2024 campaign donor to lead the Department of Energy. Wright, who has expressed skepticism about climate change science, would join a Trump administration that campaigned to roll back climate change policies and clean energy spending ushered in during President Biden's term.
Secretary of Transportation: Trump has named former reality TV star Sean Duffy as his pick for Secretary of Transportation. Once a cast member on MTV's "The Real World," he later served as a congressman from Wisconsin's 7th congressional district from 2011 to 2019 and went on to co-host "The Bottom Line" on Fox Business.
Secretary of the Department of Energy: Trump is nominating oil industry executive Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Energy and 2024 campaign donor to lead the Department of Energy. Wright, who has expressed skepticism about climate change science, would join a Trump administration that campaigned to roll back climate change policies and clean energy spending ushered in during President Biden's term.
Secretary of Education: World Wrestling Entertainment co-founder Linda McMahon has been nominated to oversee the Education Department. She served as former head of the Small Business Administration from 2017 to 2019.
Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs: Trump has nominated former Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Collins to be his secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. He served as a congressman representing Georgia's 9th district from 2013 to 2021. A trusted Trump loyalist, he is a chaplain of the United States Air Force Reserve Command and served in the Iraq War in 2008.
Secretary of Homeland Security: Trump announced his choice of South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to be the Secretary of Homeland Security. The pick puts the hardline conservative governor, who sent the state's National Guard to the southern border, in a key role on immigration.
Office of Management and Budget director: Trump has nominated Russell Vought to oversee the OMB for a second time. Before his stint in the first Trump administration, he served as the vice president of Heritage Action for America, the conservative think tank behind the right-wing Project 2025 policy plan. He also wrote a chapter of the blueprint regarding the "Executive Office of the President."
Director of National Intelligence: Former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is nominated as the director of national intelligence. The former Democratic presidential candidate-turned Republican represented Hawaii's 2nd Congressional District from 2013-2021.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator: Trump has appointed Lee Zeldin as the administrator of The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Zeldin was a Congressman for parts of Long Island, New York and ran but lost against Kathy Hochul in the 2022 gubernatorial race.
Ambassador to the United Nations: Trump nominated Elise Stefanik, a five-term Republican representing a northern New York district, as his pick for UN ambassador. She is the House Republican Conference Chair and a former contender for Trump's running mate.
Notable Trump administration picks
Deputy chief of staff for policy: Long-standing Trump adviser Stephen Miller has been tapped for deputy chief of staff for policy in Trump's next administration. The 39-year-old served as senior adviser to Trump and director of speechwriting during the Republican's first term in the White House and is credited with shaping Trump’s immigration policies.
"Border czar": Trump has appointed Tom Homan to oversee deportation policy and aviation security. Homan was a Border Patrol agent for 34 years and served in Trump's first administration as acting ICE director. He drew controversy for strict immigration enforcement, including the "zero-tolerance" policy which separated families of undocumented immigrants.
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency: Trump designated his former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe as CIA director. Ratcliffe previously was a House member from Texas before serving as director of national intelligence at the end of Trump's first presidency.
National security adviser: Trump has named Florida Rep. Mike Waltz as his national security adviser. Waltz has held civilian positions at the Pentagon, was on the House Armed Services Committee and has supported Trump's isolationist view of foreign relations.
U.S. ambassador to Israel: Trump announced he is nominating former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as his U.S. ambassador to Israel. Huckabee is a Baptist minister and former Fox News host, who has run for the Republican presidential nomination twice, unsuccessfully. His daughter is Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who served as White House press secretary during Trump's first presidency.
White House Counsel: Trump tapped William McGinley to serve as his White House counsel. McGinley, a partner at the Washington-based law firm Holtzman Vogel, worked as White House Cabinet secretary during Trump's first presidency.
U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York: Trump has nominated Jay Clayton as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Clayton has previously served as chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump's first term.
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director: Trump has pushed to place Kashyap “Kash” Patel as director of the FBI, setting the stage to fire current Director Christopher Wray. Patel is a Trump loyalist who served in various high-ranking staff positions in U.S. defense and intelligence agencies during Trump's first term.
Deputy attorney general: Trump has decided lawyer Todd Blanche will serve as deputy attorney general. Blanche is known for aggressively representing the president-elect in his New York hush money trial and in two federal criminal cases.
Drug Enforcement Administration Director: Trump picked Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister to lead the DEA. Trump signed an executive order during his first term in the White House granting a full pardon to Chronister's father-in-law, Edward DeBartolo Jr., for his involvement in a gambling fraud case in Louisiana in the late 1990s.
White House Communications Director: Trump named Steven Cheung to be his communications director in his second term. Cheung worked as the rapid response director for Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and was perhaps the most adversarial of the candidate's spokespersons, describing opponents and "snowflakes" and "cucks" who suffered from "Trump Derangement Syndrome."
White House Press Secretary: Trump named Karoline Leavitt as his second-term White House press secretary. She's expected to be the youngest to ever hold the position.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman: Trump tapped Brendan Carr to lead the Federal Communications Commission. The senior Republican commissioner at the FCC authored a chapter of Project 2025, the 900-page "presidential transition project" released by the Heritage Foundation.
Surgeon General: Trump announced that Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a former Fox News medical contributor, to serve as the U.S. Surgeon General was his pick for Surgeon General. Nesheiwat currently serves as a Medical Director at CityMD, a network of urgent care centers in New York and New Jersey. Previously, she served as a physician at Washington Regional Medical Center and at Northwest Medical Hospital.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator: Physician and television personality Dr. Mehmet Oz is Trump's pick to oversee the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which operates under the Department of Health and Human Services.
Centers for Disease Control director: Trump picked former Florida Republican Congressman Dr. Dave Weldon to serve as the director for the Centers for Disease Control. While in Congress, Weldon introduced a bill that would give responsibility for the nation's vaccine safety to an independent agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, removing most vaccine safety research from the Centers for Disease Control.
Food and Drug Administration commissioner: Trump named Dr. Marty Makary to a commissionership at the FDA. Makary is the current chief of Islet Transplant Surgery at Johns Hopkins and previously fulfilled leadership roles at the World Health Organization Patient Safety Program. He has served as a member of the National Academy of Medicine, a public adviser to think tank Paragon Health Institute and is a common expert guest at Fox News.
Contributing: Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, Sarah D. Wire, Fernando Cervantes Jr., Anthony Robledo, Aysha Bagchi, Zac Anderson, Darren Samuelsohn, Dan Morrison, Karen Weintraub, Alyssa Goldberg, Tom Vanden Brook, David Jackson, Savannah Kuchar, Victor Hagan, Bart Jansen, Riley Beggin, Michael Collins, Joey Garrison; Kaycee Sloan, the Cincinnati Enquirer; Jim Little; Pensacola News Journal.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Who has Trump picked for his Cabinet? Patel eyed as FBI head