Kash Patel, President-elect Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI, has promised to deliver a massive reform of a bureau he sees as among the agencies that have “weaponized the government.”

Patel hasn’t offered specifics on his plans for the FBI, but he’s made clear that sweeping changes are on the table.

He regularly refers to the FBI as part of the “Deep State” and has described many of Trump’s adversaries as “government gangsters” who must be “held accountable and exposed.”

But among proposals to more swiftly declassify records and change government surveillance programs, the biggest concern from former FBI and Justice Department officials is that the agency could lose its independence, fearful that the bureau could be tasked with carrying out politically motivated investigations by a president who has said he will “go after” his perceived enemies.

“One thing that I think people lose sight of, and the senators need to really kind of refocus on, is the fact that our justice system works because the attorney general is not the president's lawyer. He or she is the people's lawyer. And the FBI is not the president's kind of private investigative firm, right? It's the public's investigative-slash-national security investigative arm,” said Greg Brower, a former U.S. attorney appointed by George W. Bush who also served as the bureau’s deputy general counsel.

“And I think nominees are going to have to convince the senators that they understand that and that that's the reality for very good reasons,” added Brower, who also served as head of the FBI’s legislative affairs office under Trump.

“The rhetoric doesn't even pay lip service to that concept.”

Patel held a number of national security roles under the first Trump administration, but it was his “pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax” as an aide to then-House Intelligence Chair Devin Nunes (R) that the president-elect mentioned first when announcing his decision.

“I'd shut down the FBI Hoover building on Day One and reopen it the........

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