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      Kash Patel Would Bring Bravado and Baggage to F.B.I. Role

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice to run the F.B.I. has a record in and out of government that is likely to raise questions during his Senate confirmation hearings.Few people tapped for any top federal post, much less a job as vital as F.B.I. director, have come with quite so much bravado, bombast or baggage as Kash Patel.On Saturday, Mr. Patel, 44, a Long Island-born provocateur and right-wing operative, was named by President-elect Donald J. Trump to lead the F.B.I., an agency he has accused of leading a “deep state” witch hunt against Mr. Trump. The announcement amounted to a de facto dismissal of the current director, Christopher A. Wray, who was appointed to the job by Mr. Trump and still has almost three years left on his 10-year term.Mr. Patel’s maximum-volume threats to exact far-reaching revenge on Mr. Trump’s behalf have endeared him to his boss and Trump allies who say the bureau needs a disrupter to weed out bias and reshape its culture.But his record as a public official and his incendiary public comments are likely to provoke intense questioning when the Senate weighs his nomination — and determines whether he should run an agency charged with protecting Americans from terrorism, street crime, cartels and political corruption, along with the threat posed by China, which Mr. Wray has described as existential.Here are some of the things Mr. Patel has said and done that could complicate his confirmation.He was accused of nearly botching a high-stakes hostage rescue.In October 2020, Mr. Patel, then a senior national intelligence official in the Trump administration, inserted himself into a secret effort by members of SEAL Team Six to rescue Philip Walton, an American who was 27 at the time and had been kidnapped by gunmen in Niger and taken to Nigeria.Mr. Patel, whose involvement broke with protocol, assured the State and Defense Departments that the Nigerian government had been told of the operation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Names Charles Kushner as Pick for Ambassador to France

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      The announcement elevated Mr. Kushner, the father of President Donald J. Trump’s son-in-law and the recipient of a presidential pardon at the end of Mr. Trump’s first term.President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Saturday that he would name Charles Kushner, the wealthy real estate executive and father of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to serve as ambassador to France, handing one of his earliest and most high-profile ambassador appointments to a close family associate.The announcement was the latest step in a long-running exchange of political support between the two men. Mr. Kushner received a pardon from Mr. Trump in the final days of his first term for a variety of violations and then emerged as a major donor to Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign.“I am pleased to nominate Charles Kushner, of New Jersey, to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to France,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post announcing his choice. “He is a tremendous business leader, philanthropist, & dealmaker, who will be a strong advocate representing our Country & its interests.”Mr. Kushner, 70, pleaded guilty in 2004 to 16 counts of tax evasion, a single count of retaliating against a federal witness and one of lying to the Federal Election Commission in a case that became a lasting source of embarrassment for the family. As part of the plea, Mr. Kushner admitted to hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, a witness in a federal campaign finance investigation, and sending a videotape of the encounter to his sister.Mr. Trump granted Mr. Kushner clemency as part of a wave of 26 pardons he issued with roughly a month left in his first term, along with other close associates including Paul Manafort, his 2016 campaign chairman, and Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime ally and informal adviser.In addition to securing a pardon for himself, Mr. Kushner was instrumental in helping others seeking clemency elevate their cases, relying on his son as a bridge to help get applications in front of Mr. Trump.The case against Mr. Kushner was prosecuted by Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who was then a U.S. attorney. Mr. Christie has since become a vocal critic of Mr. Trump’s and continued to describe Mr. Kushner’s transgressions as severe.Mr. Kushner served two years in prison before his release in 2006.While widely seen as one of the most prized ambassador positions, the role Mr. Kushner will be nominated for could be complicated by the at times standoffish position Mr. Trump took toward President Emmanuel Macron of France during his first term.As president, Mr. Trump also expressed support for Mr. Macron’s far-right challenger in the 2017 French presidential election, Marine Le Pen, whose hard-line stance against immigration Mr. Trump praised.Mr. Macron, who has been a staunch supporter of both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Ukraine, will serve until mid-2027. Mr. Trump has repeatedly questioned the value of Western support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion, and has also publicly sparred with Mr. Macron over other contentious policy disagreements, including trade issues and the U.S. withdrawal from a nuclear deal with Iran. More

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      Pete Hegseth’s Mother Accused Her Son of Mistreating Women for Years

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      Penelope Hegseth made the accusation in an email to her son in 2018, amid his contentious divorce. She said on Friday that she regretted the email and had apologized to him.The mother of Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, wrote him an email in 2018 saying he had routinely mistreated women for years and displayed a lack of character.“On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say … get some help and take an honest look at yourself,” Penelope Hegseth wrote, stating that she still loved him.She also wrote: “I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.”Mrs. Hegseth, in a phone interview with The New York Times on Friday, said that she had sent her son an immediate follow-up email at the time apologizing for what she had written. She said she had fired off the original email “in anger, with emotion” at a time when he and his wife were going through a very difficult divorce.In the interview, she defended her son and disavowed the sentiments she had expressed in the initial email about his character and treatment of women. “It is not true. It has never been true,” she said. She added: “I know my son. He is a good father, husband.” She said that publishing the contents of the first email was “disgusting.”Questions about Mr. Hegseth’s treatment of women have emerged in the weeks since Mr. Trump chose him, a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, to lead the Pentagon. The issue is expected to be a subject of scrutiny during Senate confirmation hearings.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      UK Transport Secretary Louise Haigh Resigns After Fraud Conviction Revealed

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      In the latest setback for Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Louise Haigh resigned from the cabinet Friday after admitting she pleaded guilty to a type of fraud in 2014.Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain suffered the first resignation from his cabinet on Friday when the transport secretary, Louise Haigh, quit hours after it emerged that she had been convicted of a fraud offense involving a phone a decade ago.The departure is a blow to Mr. Starmer, who has been buffeted by a series of setbacks since Labour won the election in July, but the speed with which Ms. Haigh resigned suggests Downing Street is hoping to minimize the political fallout.As transport secretary, Ms. Haigh had overseen one of Labour’s flagship policies of bringing Britain’s troubled private rail network back into public ownership, through legislation which recently completed its passage through Parliament.Her resignation was triggered by reports from Sky News and The Times of London on Thursday night that revealed she had pleaded guilty to an offense in 2013. At the time she was 24 and working for Aviva, an insurance firm, when she was mugged in London.In her letter of resignation Ms. Haigh said “the experience was terrifying,” and said, “in the immediate aftermath, I reported the incident to the police. I gave the police a list of my possessions that I believed had been stolen, including my work phone.”She added: “Some time later, I discovered that the handset in question was still in my house. I should have immediately informed my employer and not doing so straight away was a mistake.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Linda McMahon Was Questioned About WWE in Previous Connecticut Education Role

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      Linda McMahon, whose résumé mainly rests on running World Wrestling Entertainment, has faced questions for years over whether she is suitable for important education posts.Appointees to the State Board of Education usually sail through the confirmation process in Connecticut’s House of Representatives, but a 2009 choice, Linda E. McMahon, drew intense pushback.Andrew Fleischmann, who then chaired the House Education Committee, remembers being offended by her selection and leading the opposition.“She had no involvement whatsoever in education,” Mr. Fleischmann, a Democrat, said in a recent interview. “She’s made tens or hundreds of millions of dollars pushing violence and sexualization of young women. She was a real force for doing ill to kids in our country.”Ms. McMahon’s company, World Wrestling Entertainment, was criticized for promoting violence, steroid use and sexualized content. In the early 2000s, Ms. McMahon would go so far as to engage in the W.W.E.’s theatrics herself. She kicked her husband, Vince McMahon, the company’s co-founder, in the groin in one routine. In another, she appeared to slap her daughter, Stephanie, and knock her to the floor.After a contentious floor debate, the House voted to approve Ms. McMahon by a vote of 96-45, an unusual split for a minor appointment in Connecticut.Ms. McMahon may soon face another confirmation, this time as President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Will Trump’s Covid Contrarians Handle the Next Pandemic?

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump had already succeeded in rattling the nation’s public health and biomedical establishment by the time he announced on Tuesday that he had picked Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to run the National Institutes of Health. But amid growing fears of a deadly bird flu pandemic, perhaps no one was more rattled than experts in infectious disease.Dr. Bhattacharya, a Stanford University medical economist and outspoken opponent of lockdowns, masking, school closures and other Covid-19 mitigation measures, and Mr. Trump’s other health picks have one thing in common. They are all considered Covid contrarians whose views raise questions about how they would handle an infectious disease crisis.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mr. Trump’s choice for health secretary, has said he wants the N.I.H. to focus on chronic disease and “give infectious disease a break for about eight years.” Dr. Martin Makary, the president-elect’s choice to run the Food and Drug Administration, incorrectly predicted in 2021 that the nation was “racing toward an extremely low level of infection.”Dr. David Weldon, a Republican former congressman who is Mr. Trump’s choice to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has espoused the debunked theory that thimerosal, a mercury compound in certain vaccines, causes autism. As a congressman, he introduced legislation that would strip the C.D.C. of its role in ensuring vaccine safety, saying the agency had a “conflict of interest” because it also promotes vaccination.And Dr. Mehmet Oz, the talk show host who has been picked by Mr. Trump to run Medicare and Medicaid, prodded officials in the first Trump administration to give emergency authorization for the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19. The F.D.A. later revoked the authorization when studies showed the drug carried risks, including serious heart issues, to coronavirus patients.Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said he wants to focus on chronic diseases rather than infectious diseases as head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Picks Stanford Physician Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to Head N.I.H.

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Tuesday evening that he had selected Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford physician and economist whose authorship of an anti-lockdown treatise during the coronavirus pandemic made him a central figure in a bitter public health debate, to be the director of the National Institutes of Health.“Together, Jay and RFK Jr. will restore the NIH to a Gold Standard of Medical Research as they examine the underlying causes of, and solutions to, America’s biggest health challenges, including our Crisis of Chronic Illness and Disease,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, referring to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his choice to lead the N.I.H.’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services.If confirmed by the Senate, Dr. Bhattacharya would lead the world’s premier medical research agency, with a $48 billion budget and 27 separate institutes and centers, each with its own research agenda, focusing on different diseases like cancer and heart disease.Dr. Bhattacharya is the latest in a series of Trump health picks who came to prominence during the coronavirus pandemic and who hold views on medicine and public health that are at times outside the mainstream. The president-elect’s health choices, experts agree, suggest a shake-up is coming to the nation’s public health and biomedical establishment.Dr. Bhattacharya is one of three lead authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, a manifesto issued in 2020 that contended that the virus should be allowed to spread among young healthy people who were “at minimal risk of death” and could thus develop natural immunity, while prevention efforts were targeted to older people and the vulnerable.Through a connection with a Stanford colleague, Dr. Scott Atlas, who was advising Mr. Trump during his first term, Dr. Bhattacharya presented his views to Alex M. Azar II, Mr. Trump’s health secretary. The condemnation from the public health establishment was swift. Dr. Bhattacharya and his fellow authors were promptly dismissed as cranks whose “fringe” policy prescriptions would lead to millions of unnecessary deaths.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Metamorphosis of Pete Hegseth

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      Diana NguyenCarlos PrietoMary Wilson and Lisa Chow and Marion Lozano and Listen and follow ‘The Daily’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube | iHeartRadioNow that Matt Gaetz has withdrawn from consideration as attorney general, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s most controversial cabinet pick is his selection of Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense.Dave Philipps, who reports on war and the military for The Times, discusses three major deployments that shaped how Mr. Hegseth views the military — and why, if confirmed, he’s so dead-set on disrupting its leadership.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.On today’s episodeDave Philipps, who reports about war, the military and veterans for The New York Times.As a host on Fox News, Pete Hegseth portrayed some troops charged with war crimes as “heroes.”Tierney L. Cross for The New York TimesBackground readingHis military experiences transformed Mr. Hegseth from a critic of war crimes into a defender of the accused.What to know about Mr. Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defense secretary.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Face-checking by More