Spouse: Patel divorced Ritikha Chaudary in 2023 after three years of marriage. She co-owns a New York restaurant with Pete Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer.

P2025 links: Former Senior Fellow for Center for Renewing America, a Project 2025 advisory board member. Is close to Gen. Mike Flynn, whose Courage Tour was funded by the Heritage Foundation.

Qualifications: Former prosecutor; served as Trump 1.0 Chief of Staff to Defense Secretary Christopher C. Miller at DOD; also, Deputy Director of National Intelligence; Senior Director for Counterterrorism at NSC. Was senior advisor to Congressman Devin Nunes. Patel also worked as a National Security Prosecutor for the DOJ under Obama.

Disqualifications: Was Pentagon Chief of Staff on January 6 and is accused of supporting the attempted coup from within DOD. Has toured with his good friend Gen. Mike Flynn and is closely linked to QAnon.

Views: Patel is viewed as a QAnon “deep state” conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer, based on his published writings, and as a pro-Russia operative who opposes Ukraine. He took the Fifth and refused to answer a grand jury investigation into Trump’s missing classified documents case. Patel has publicly called for retribution against and punishment for Trump’s political critics and officials prosecuting January 6th insurrectionists. He accused Secretary of Defense Mark Esper of being disloyal for failing to deploy the National Guard against Black Lives Matter protests of George Floyd’s murder. He has vowed to shut the FBI Hoover headquarters PA and reopen it as a “museum of the deep state.”