Kash Patel used to talk about law school as a straight line to money. “When I went to law school, I was like, ‘I’m gonna go be a rich corporate lawyer,’” he said in the inaugural episode of his podcast, “Kash’s Corner,” in 2021. “I want to be the guy in ‘Suits.’”

The market had other ideas. Instead of becoming Harvey Specter, Patel spent the next decade inside government, trading the fantasy of seven-figure deal work for the reality of public-sector pay—and the particular sting of watching law-school classmates turn the same degree into Wall Street money.

Then Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.

Suddenly, Patel had it made. A darling of the Stop the Steal movement, he discovered that grievance, properly packaged, parlayed into cash. Lucrative consulting contracts. Speeches. Real estate investing. That podcast. Children’s books casting his former boss as a noble monarch and Democrats as cartoon villains who had cheated him out of his rightful throne.

It stacked up fast. In 2024 alone, Patel declared over $2 million in income, according to federal disclosures. Forbes estimates that he’s worth about $6 million today.

But when Donald Trump won back his throne, Patel cast it all aside to lead the FBI. His official salary: $228,000. Thanks to a pay freeze that’s been in effect since 2014, he actually pulls in $183,100. To return to the Trumpian fold, Patel shuttered his consulting business, sold off much of his stock portfolio, declined about $800,000 in shares of Trump Media and Technology Group—he sat on the board—and took over an agency he had previously called “the prime functionary of the Deep State” and “a tool of surveillance and suppression of American citizens.”

Waves of resignations followed, and now, the increasingly embattled director is facing allegations of abuse of federal resources for personal travel and drinking on the job. Patel denies all wrongdoing. An FBI spokesperson declined to comment on the Forbes estimate.

Kashyap Patel was........

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