Trump Appointees Kash Patel and Massad Boulos Are Not Neocons

Trump's picks for FBI director and Middle East adviser buck his trend of appointing superhawks.

President-elect Donald Trump's first few national security staffing picks were neocon restorations. He filled his administration with figures who wanted a return to the heady old days after 9/11, when every problem in the world had a U.S. military solution. But over the Thanksgiving vacation, Trump choose two new senior officials who might push back on the foreign and domestic war on terror.

Kash Patel, the former prosecutor and Pentagon official whom Trump chose to lead the FBI, wants to roll back a large part of the surveillance state. And Massad Boulos, the father-in-law of Trump's daughter who has been tapped to be senior adviser on Middle Eastern and Arab affairs, signals a willingness to engage in serious negotiations over the region.

As a congressional staffer, Patel had helped write the "Nunes memo," a report by Rep. Devin Nunes (R–Calif.) claiming that the FBI had improperly spied on a Trump campaign staffer during an investigation into Russian influence. Nunes and Patel were particularly focused on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, which provides secret warrants for wiretapping suspected spies.

Although the FISA court was set up in the 1970s to restrain government power, it has become a "kangaroo court with a rubber stamp," in the words of NSA whistleblower Russ Tice; FISA judges have approved around 99 percent of all government requests. In 2011, the court secretly and massively expanded the NSA's ability to spy on Americans.

"Unfortunately, when you have the police officers, the cops in this country, break the law, we can't rely on themselves to police themselves. That is a communist form of police representation," Patel told Fox News in December 2023. "What we have to have done is for Congress to put forth a bill that put in cops from Congress in the FISA process at the FISA court limiting their abuse of this power."

In his book, Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy, Patel calls for the FISA court to include "standing public defenders who act as advocates for the accused," to collect written transcripts of all its proceedings, and to have "nonpartisan national security lawyers who report directly to the White House or the attorney general" randomly check search warrants.

Patel also wants to impose much greater congressional oversight on the FBI in general, and to close down the FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, sending agents to work in field offices instead.

Perhaps the best clue to Patel's approach is how disturbed the FBI brass is about his ascendancy. "People are tired of the politics on both sides inside the FBI is what I've heard, and they are worried this is going to be more infighting and more of a distraction," former FBI hostage rescue agent Rob D'Amico told MSNBC after Patel's nomination. "It's a frustration inside the FBI with how hyper-partisan our politics have become, and this nomination is the latest example of that," D'Amico added.

Boulos, meanwhile, serves as a bridge to Middle Eastern factions that Washington normally doesn't talk to. The father-in-law of Tiffany Trump, he was born in Lebanon and has extensive political and business connections there. However, his political career "does not exactly indicate a firm commitment to either side in Lebanese or regional politics," writes Aron Lund of the nonprofit The Century Foundation.

Lebanese politics is complicated. The Boulos family have been key fundraisers for the Free Patriotic Movement, a Christian party that was historically allied with the Iranian-backed party Hezbollah but might break that alliance soon. Boulos himself reportedly turned away from the Free Patriotic Movement due to a factional dispute, then flirted with the Lebanese Forces, a rival Christian party that opposes Hezbollah and was historically aligned with Israel. Later, Boulos settled on the Marada Movement, another Christian ally of Hezbollah.

The twists and turns of Boulos' political history might actually turn out to be a diplomatic asset. Anonymous sources told Reuters that Boulos "has been in touch with interlocutors across Lebanon's multipolar political world," including the Lebanese Forces and Marada leader Suleiman Frangieh. These kinds of contacts are especially important as the Trump administration tries to maintain a fragile Lebanese-Israeli ceasefire.

And leaders in other Arab countries also see Boulos as a bridge to Washington. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reached out to the Trump campaign through Boulos in September 2024. Boulos "conveyed Mr. Trump's desire to end wars around the world, including in the Gaza Strip," according to The New York Times. Back then, Boulos told The Times that it was a "purely personal" meeting and he was not speaking for the campaign. With his official adviser role, Boulos now can speak for Trump.

Personnel is policy, as they say, and Trump's staffing picks send a lot of mixed messages. For example, while his chosen National Security Adviser Michael Waltz wants to overthrow the Syrian government, his chosen Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has met with the Syrian leadership and said that they are "not an enemy of the United States." But at the very least, picking Patel and Boulos shows that Trump is not completely married to the national security politics that have dominated Washington since 9/11.