Can Kash Patel win Senate confirmation to lead the FBI?

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Good morning and welcome back. I’m in for Steff over the next two weeks. Let’s jump into:

Kash Patel’s uphill battle
The biggest winners from the “Trump trade”
A potential overhaul for the accounting sector

Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, has already made headlines over his unorthodox proposals for the agency he’s been tapped to run.

The Trump loyalist has vowed to shut down FBI headquarters and reopen it as “a museum of the ‘deep state’” on his first day in the post, and remove security clearances from officers who investigated potential links between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign.

But his ability to enact these plans will hinge on the Senate, where he faces a rocky path to confirmation. As Democrats sharpened their criticism and some Republicans withheld judgment, Patel’s nomination hangs in the balance.

Without support from Democratic senators, Patel can afford no more than three defections from his party given the 53-47 majority Republicans will hold next year. That means he’ll need to win over more moderate Republican lawmakers such as Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.

“I don’t know [Patel’s] background, and I’m going to have to do a lot of work before reaching a decision on him,” Collins said. Murkowski declined to comment.

A spokesperson for John Curtis, Utah’s senator-elect, said he believed every president should be given a “degree of deference” in making appointments but added that he took his “constitutional duty to provide advice and consent seriously”.

Centrist Republicans could pose roadblocks for other Trump nominees, notably Tulsi Gabbard, nominee for director of national intelligence; Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defence secretary; and Robert F Kennedy Jr, the president-elect’s choice for health and human services secretary.

Patel, a board member of Trump Media & Technology Group, is particularly controversial because of his defence of far-right QAnon conspiracy theories and pledges to seek retribution against opponents in media and government. But he has won support from Trump allies including Texas senator Ted Cruz and Tennessee’s Bill Hagerty, who on Sunday told NBC:

“There are serious problems at the FBI. The American public knows it. They expect to see sweeping change and Kash Patel is just the type of person to do it.”

Team 47: who’s made the cut

The president-elect said he would nominate billionaire investment banker and major donor Warren Stephens to be his ambassador to the UK.

Trump appointed Massad Boulos, father-in-law to his youngest daughter Tiffany, senior adviser on the Middle East.

He also selected his daughter Ivanka’s father-in-law Charles Kushner to be the ambassador to France.

Trump rounded out his economic team by tapping Jamieson Greer for US trade representative and Kevin Hassett as director of the National Economic Council.

Transitional times: the latest headlines

What we’re hearing

As the president-elect prepares to launch his deregulatory agenda, critics of the US audit watchdog are optimistic about their chances to weaken — or even shut — the body, which sets standards for accounting firms.

In his first term Trump tried, unsuccessfully, to dissolve the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board — which was set up two decades ago following the Enron audit scandal. But after the board issued record fines and new transparency rules during the Biden administration, US accounting firms are calling for urgent change.

“The past several years at the PCAOB have demonstrated a concerning lack of data-driven analysis,” said Julie Bell Lindsay, chief executive of the Center for Audit Quality, which represents large accounting firms.

With Republicans set to control both houses of Congress next year, Trump will probably have the congressional support he needs to defang the PCAOB. Republican Bill Huizenga, who introduced the 2021 law to fold the board into the Securities and Exchange Commission, is now a candidate to chair the House financial services committee.

It’s unclear how shrinking or eliminating the board could affect investors. Board member Dan Goelzer lamented the politicisation of the PCAOB and told the FT’s Stephen Foley that the inspection regime had made “a big difference to investors who should be grateful for the improvement in audit quality”.