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With Kash Patel officially appointed as the new FBI director and Dan Bongino as his number two, experts are warning the fate of federal law enforcement investigations into the far right face a grim future.
Patel taking the reins of the FBI also coincides with a resurgence of the Base, an accelerationist neo-Nazi group with terrorism designations around the world, along with other emboldened extremists connected to the January 6 attacks on the Capitol.
But after peddling QAnon conspiracies and writing a children’s book portraying president Donald Trump as a king, Patel has already signalled he is not interested in pursuing insurrectionists or other extremists.
Instead, he has put Black Lives Matter, antifascist activists, the media and his own FBI agents daring to go against his agenda, on watch.
“There will be accountability within the FBI,” said Patel in his first public remarks as director last week, before taunting journalists in the same room who were covering his confirmation. “I know the media’s in here and if you have a target that target’s right here.”
For his part, Bongino, a superstar among conservative podcasters, regularly feeds election denialism, January 6 screeds and bigotries about “illegals” to his millions of listeners. A former NYPD cop and Secret Service agent on both the presidential details of Barack Obama and George W Bush, Bongino often calls Democrats “communists” and his enemy.
“I think it makes it very unlikely that the far right will continue to be seen as the threat it actually is in terms of hate crimes and domestic terrorism,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, about the new FBI leadership.
“Patel’s past QAnon links and Bongino’s bigotry likely make taking this threat seriously, regardless of the fact, impossible for these two men.”
Both of them, seen by some as Trump’s “henchmen”, have all but sworn public omerta to the president. Patel is even refusing to count out dispatching the bureau and its agents to target Trump’s political enemies. In one of his first acts as director, Patel relocated up to 1,500 agents from its central headquarters at the J Edgar Hoover building in Washington DC – the heart of what he calls the “deep state” and where several counterterrorism and national security investigators are working.
Beirich has been a watchdog of the American far right for decades and understands the importance of the FBI as an investigative tool against it. But she noted that even in 2016, when Trump first took power, the bureau respected how dangerous the far right had become during the Obama years.
“All of this marks a huge departure from the first Trump administration, when the FBI for the first time declared white supremacy the country’s greatest domestic terrorist threat,” she said. “Facts about violence and its perpetrators probably won’t matter this time around.”
And the winds in DC have certainly changed. In January, the Trump administration immediately demanded the FBI provide the names of up to 6,000 of its agents who pursued January 6 attackers, something the acting directors had refused to provide until finally relenting in early February. What Patel will do with those names remains to be seen.
Beirich continued: “The retaliation against those involved in the January 6 prosecutions has already put a damper on taking far-right extremism seriously, and the treatment of these investigators is a warning to everyone else about the new FBI’s priorities, and they likely won’t include counter terrorism against the far right.”
Matthew Kriner, the executive director at the Institute for Countering Digital Extremism, agreed and had similar concerns about the future state of the FBI.
“The highly politicized discourse around FBI investigations will likely suppress interest and willingness to investigate violent far-right activity, especially in the wake of the mass pardons for January 6th insurrectionists,” said Kriner, referring to Trump’s unconditional pardons to all January 6 attackers on the day of his inauguration.
“We’re also looking at a dynamic wherein fewer bureau resources are directed to those few agents still tasked with overseeing domestic extremism which intersects with the far right.”
Extremists across the rightwing spectrum have taken note of the opportunity Patel presents. In recent months, during the politically fraught presidential campaign that saw two assassination attempts against Trump, the Base has grown its stateside and worldwide ranks.
Over the course of the first Trump presidency, the FBI played an instrumental role in disrupting threats from accelerationist neo-Nazis like the Base and the adjacent Atomwaffen Division, which call for acts of terrorism and insurgency to bring down the US government. Some of their members plotted the assassination of an antifascist activist and were convicted of murder, among a laundry list of other terror-related crimes.
“A reduction in FBI scrutiny and attention on far-right networks will increase the likelihood that the Base and other neofascist accelerationist groups can meaningfully reconstitute,” said Kriner. “In some cases FBI scrutiny diminishing could allow for new groups to form unimpeded.”
At the moment, all signs are pointing to the Base regrouping. For example, its cells are increasingly active abroad.
Counterterrorism authorities in the Netherlands and Italy made arrests of its members in 2024, while British police confirmed to the Guardian that a 15-year-old male and a suspected member of the Base was arrested in Northumberland last week.
“An arrest has been made of a male in the North of England by Counter Terrorism Policing North East and enquiries are continuing,” said a spokesperson for the British counterterrorism unit.
In the US, the Base has put out fresh propaganda of its growing ranks, while there’s evidence suggesting a new stateside leader is providing paramilitary training to members. Other adjacent accelerationist groups have applauded the appointment of Patel as a moment for them to flourish without the same FBI scrutiny of years past.
“History has shown that far-right militant networks and paramilitaries thrive when federal authorities give them less scrutiny,” said Kriner.
“Less federal law enforcement deterrence through active investigations will likely lead to greater violence within American society perpetrated by individuals and groups that openly embrace neofascist terrorism.”
