Bolton, who recently had his Secret Service protection pulled by Trump, compared Patel to the notorious Soviet secret police chief Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, who advised Joseph Stalin and was known for telling the dictator, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”

The Senate on Thursday narrowly confirmed Kash Patel as the next director of the F.B.I., installing a hard-line critic of the bureau whose unwavering loyalty to President Trump has raised questions over the independence of the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency.