Since Kash Patel became FBI director a year ago, he’s been dogged by controversies over his leadership style, norm-busting reforms and questionable use of taxpayer dollars.
Patel, a 46-year-old former public defender and Trump aide with a penchant for self-promotion, has purged agency staffers seen as disloyal to the president. He’s been ridiculed for prematurely publicizing details of high-profile investigations on social media and for “cosplay” in tactical gear, drawing comparisons to Kristi Noem, the fired “ICE Barbie” Homeland Security chief.
Eyebrows have also been raised over Patel's use of government jets for personal trips — including to a Texas ranch and Scottish resort — plus his decision to provide his country music star girlfriend with a SWAT team security detail.
His behavior has faced heavy scrutiny from Democrats, some of whom have called for him to be fired. Last month, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, accused Patel of “beyond the pale” misconduct. A number of current and former FBI personnel have also said he is “in over his head” and has left the bureau “rudderless.”
An FBI spokesperson refuted allegations against Patel to The Independent. The director has defended himself on social media, calling the criticism “baseless” and vowing to stay “laser-focused” on “rebuilding this Bureau from the ground up.”
Yet, he is hardly the first FBI director to face intense scrutiny — and demands for his dismissal. Over the past century, many in the top law enforcement role have weathered charges of overt partisanship, blatant corruption, civil liberties abuses and other serious missteps. Here’s a look back at some of the FBI’s most controversial directors.
Alexander B. Bielaski: 1912 - 1919
In 1912, Alexander Bielaski took the helm of the Bureau of Investigation, which was established by President Theodore Roosevelt four years earlier in order to combat rampant corruption during America's rapid industrialization.
Bielaski, who began as a special examiner in Oklahoma and worked his way up the ladder to the top job, presided over a seven-year era of “mass civil liberty violations,” Douglas M. Charles, a Penn State history professor who has published several books on the FBI, told The Independent.
When World War I broke out, the agency carried out “Slacker Raids” aimed at rooting out draft dodgers. The bureau, then only staffed by a handful of people, relied on volunteers with fake badges to harass and detain Americans without draft cards. Bielaski wasn’t necessarily corrupt, Charles noted, but the agency lacked civilian oversight, and things easily got out of control.
“Congress started to push back, and Bielaski resigned at the end of the war possibly over pressure from this,” Charles said.
William J. Flynn: 1919 - 1921
William J. Flynn, a New Yorker and former Secret Service agent, took over from Bielaski.
At the time, the bureau’s director was appointed by the attorney general, not nominated by the president. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer praised his appointee as “an anarchist chaser.”
America in the early 1920s was experiencing its first wave of the “Red Scare” — a period of heightened anxiety about communism — and mass labor strikes fueled fears of a revolution among corporate barons. In response, Flynn’s FBI began rounding up for foreigners to deport them.
“Flynn was given free reign to execute this as he saw fit,” Charles said. “He and Palmer created a ‘Radical division’ in the FBI headed by J. Edgar Hoover. And they all wantonly violated people’s rights in their anti-anarchist work.”
In 1921, Flynn resigned, citing private business matters that needed attention.
“Certainly by that point Americans were seeing the Red Scare abuses,” Charles said.
William J. Burns: 1921 - 1924
In 1921, William Burns — a private detective dubbed "American Sherlock Holmes" by Arthur Conan Doyle — assumed office. Before taking over the agency, he was famous from publishing "true" crime tales in magazines and being a fixture of society gossip columns.
Though an inveterate self-promoter, Burns proved a capable leader who modernized the early FBI, introducing technology like fingerprinting, targeting the Ku Klux Klan, probing Native American murders, and hiring the bureau's first female and Black agents.
But he also liberally used wiretaps, advanced the interests of his boss, Attorney General Harry Daugherty, and prosecuted senators investigating the Teapot Dome Scandal — a headline-grabbing bribery case — to intimidate them.
“Burns was rightly fired, he was corrupt even if his legacy is mixed,” Charles said.
J. Edgar Hoover: 1924 - 1972
Perhaps the most notorious FBI director - whose name alone is practically synonymous with the accumulation and abuse of power - was J. Edgar Hoover.
“The obvious and #1 answer, of course, is Hoover,” Charles said, when asked which director was the most controversial.
When Hoover became director, the bureau still had a modest role in federal law enforcement. But upon President Franklin Roosevelt’s inauguration in 1933, everything changed. A number of new criminal laws were passed, expanding the scope of the FBI, including permitting agents to make arrests and carry guns.
In 1936, Roosevelt beseeched Hoover to covertly investigate communism and fascism — and he ran with this directive.
Over the following decades, he secretly gathered information on a broad swath of American society. Deploying agents to conduct wiretaps and break-ins, Hoover targeted civil rights and anti-war groups, leftists, and gay people, even compiling dossiers on politicians and celebrities for blackmail, including John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lennon.
Hoover led the agency for nearly half a century, serving eight presidents, several of whom contemplated removing him. But he ultimately left office on his own terms: his death in 1972.
L. Patrick Gray: 1972 - 1973
In 1972, President Richard Nixon designated L. Patrick Gray, a Missouri-born lawyer and Naval Academy graduate, as the bureau’s acting director, a position he held for less than a year.
“When Hoover died in 1972, [Nixon] saw an opportunity to install a political toady as director. That was Gray, Nixon’s friend and long-time loyalist,” Charles said.
Gray infamously tried to put a lid on the FBI’s Watergate investigation and even burned the contents of a Watergate conspirator’s safe. He also fired those who resisted his leadership, leading FBI officials to decry it as a purge.
“Gray tried to control the FBI and turn it to Nixon’s interests, but he butted up against 48 years of Hoover culture at the FBI,” Charles said. He ultimately resigned due to deep internal resistance and admitted to destroying documents. In 1978, he was indicted for allegedly signing off on warrantless break-ins, but charges were dismissed the following year.
James Comey: 2013 - 2017
More recent directors have also stirred controversy including James Comey, who helmed the agency from 2013 to 2017.
Comey, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, came under fire for announcing he was reopening a probe into Hillary Clinton’s emails, 11 days before the 2016 election against Donald Trump. During a press conference, he described Clinton’s handling of classified material on her private server as “extremely careless,” but said no reasonable prosecutor would bring a case. Critics said his remarks likely played a role in Trump winning the presidency.
“In the post-Hoover/Watergate norms, the FBI director pointedly sought to stay out of politics. Comey failed at that task by placing the FBI squarely in the 2016 presidential election in respect to Hillary Clinton,” Charles said.
Comey subsequently said he agonized over whether or not to make the investigation public. “It made me mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the election, but honestly, it wouldn’t change the decision,” he told lawmakers in 2017.
After Trump’s inauguration, Comey claimed the new president asked him to pledge his loyalty. After Comey failed to do so, he was fired. Trump then nominated Christopher Wray as FBI director, who held the role from 2017 to 2025.
Wray “fit the ‘norms’ model,” Charles said. “And we see what happened with that norm with the rise of Patel.”
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