Democratic senators grill Donald Trump's FBI pick Kash Patel on vision for the agency
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump’s pick for FBI director, Kash Patel, is facing a contentious confirmation hearing Thursday, with Democrats focused on his plans to overhaul the bureau and whether he'll seek legal retribution against Trump's political opponents.
Patel, a loyal Trump supporter, has drawn criticism for pushing conspiracy theories about federal government employees, the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection. Senate Democrats said he is not prepared to lead the FBI and worry about his intentions to root out what he calls "the deep state."
The highest ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, opened Thursday's hearing warning that Patel doesn't live up to the FBI motto of 'fidelity, bravery, integrity.'
"After meeting with Mr. Patel and reviewing his record, I do not believe you meet this standard," Durbin said. "Mr. Patel has neither the experience, the temperament or the judgment to lead an agency of 38,000 agencies and 400 field offices."
Republicans have praised Patel and his promised major reorganization of the nation's top law enforcement agency. Many in the GOP share Patel's belief that the bureau was deployed unfairly against conservatives.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, defended Patel's nomination, arguing he is what the agency needs while “public trust in the FBI is low.”
Grassley called Patel’s career a study in fighting unpopular by righteous causes.
“Mr. Patel, I know you know this, but it's your job to restore the public trust and return the FBI to its core mission of fighting crime,” Grassley said.
Despite strong opposition from Senate Democrats, Patel faces no outright complaints from Republican senators, who hold a 53–47 majority. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, has predicted Patel will be confirmed.
During Jan. 15 confirmation hearings for Pam Bondi, Trump's nominee for attorney general who oversees the FBI as part of the Justice Department, Democratic senators pressed Bondi on whether Patel was a good choice to run the agency. They pointed to Patel's previous comments calling for downsizing the intelligence community.
In a statement to Paste BN at the time, Trump transition team spokesperson Alex Pfeiffer said, "Kash Patel thinks the FBI's intelligence component serves an important purpose and wants to ensure that it is doing its job properly."
A political ally of Trump
In 2017, Patel became the House Intelligence Committee’s lead investigator in the Republican effort to undercut the inquiry by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III into whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign collaborated with the Russian government. Patel rose to prominence when he helped write what became known as the “Nunes memo,” Republican Rep. Devin Nunes' rebuttal to Democrat's findings.
Patel joined the Trump administration the next year as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism. He served as principal deputy to the acting director of national intelligence for six months and as chief of staff to the secretary of Defense for the final two and a half months of Trump's first term.
On Wednesday, Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats requested special counsel Jack Smith's unreleased report on Trump's post-presidential classified document retention, saying it has information about Patel relevant to his confirmation.
Since Trump lost in 2020, Patel has become a conservative media personality, posting on social media, giving dozens of interviews and making public appearances to support Trump and his agenda, especially about destroying what both have called the “deep state,” or longtime members of the national security bureaucracy.
He was a board member and consultant for the parent company of Truth Social, Trump's social media platform.
Patel wrote a trio of children's books,"The Plot Against the King" and two sequels, in which Patel as a wizard defends Trump against a stolen election. Trump praised Patel's 2023 book "Government Gangsters" as a "roadmap to end the Deep State's Reign."
Pursuing Trump's enemies
Democrats used his writing in "Government Gangsters" and comments Patel made in several media appearances to press Patel on whether he would use the FBI to pursue Trump's enemies.
Patel told former Trump advisor Steve Bannon in a 2023 interview that Trump was prepared to put supporters in place in intelligence and law enforcement to get rolling on criminal prosecutions.
“We’ve got to put in all American patriots top to bottom,” Patel said. He said he and Trump administration leaders “will go out and find the conspirators not just in government but in the media” deemed disloyal to Trump.
“Does this sound like the kind of nonpartisan law enforcement professional that should lead the FBI?” Durbin asked on Thursday.
Patel's book included a list of 60 “deep state” officials, including longtime Trump foil Sen. Adam Schiff of California who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee and will be among those questioning Patel.
The term "deep state" is used by some Trump supporters to describe government officials who allegedly secretly manipulate government power to their advantage. Trump and Patel have used the phrase to describe people they say have investigated or prosecuted Trump in an attempt to harm him politically or to punish him beyond what other Americans would face for similar behavior.
Trump has repeatedly said he thinks members of the special counsel's team and the committee of House members whose investigation found Trump to blame for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol should be jailed, which Democrats have called a dangerous weaponization of law enforcement. He has said he would not direct the Justice Department to investigate them.
Patel has stipulated in multiple interviews that any investigations need to follow evidence. On Thursday, he said he will follow the law and the advice of line agents when it comes to whether to bring cases.
But he would not commit to resigning if Trump ordered him to investigate a particular person or situation.
"I will always obey the law," Patel said.
In his opening statement at his confirmation hearing, Patel said, if confirmed, he would remain focused on what he described as the "FBI's core mission": investigations driven by "a constitutional, factual basis." He said he wouldn't make decisions about whether to prosecute someone.
"That is solely the providence of the Department of Justice and the attorney general," Patel said.
Patel also told lawmakers that being the “victim of government overreach and a weaponized system of justice and law enforcement” makes him uniquely qualified to lead the FBI.
“I know what it feels like to have the full weight of the United State government barreling down,” Patel said.
As a House staffer, Patel was among dozens of congressional staffers who had his communications surveilled without his knowledge. The probe sought to find alleged leaks of classified information to the media. Patel was not singled out. He sued Trump-era officials, including Christopher Wray, the man he would replace, for unfairly obtaining his data. That case was dismissed in September.
Limited law enforcement experience
Patel's experience quickly became a major focus of Thursday's hearing. While he worked for the Justice Department for two and a half years, he hasn't worked for the FBI and has an extensive record of criticizing the agency and its leadership.
Trump's former Attorney General Bill Barr wrote in his memoir "One Damn Thing After Another" that he said Patel's proposed appointment to deputy FBI director during Trump's first term would happen only "over my dead body."
"Patel had virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world's preeminent law enforcement agency," Barr wrote in the book.
Patel appeared to get frustrated as senators repeatedly pressed him about comments he's made on conservative media and interviews he's given since Trump lost reelection in 2020 that he said were partial quotes or lacked context.
He called them "false accusations and grotesque mischaracterizations."
"Any accusations leveled against me that I would somehow put political bias before the Constitution are grotesquely unfair," Patel said.
Patel holds a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and history from the University of Richmond and graduated from Pace University law school in 2005. He worked as a public defender in Miami-Dade County, then as a federal public defender in the Southern District of Florida.
From 2014 to 2017, Patel worked as a terrorism prosecutor in the Justice Department’s National Security Division in Washington.
FBI's future
Senators also probed how Patel wants to change the FBI. Patel laid out drastic plans to reform and shrink the agency in a September interview on the conservative "Shawn Ryan Show" podcast.
"I'd shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum to the deep state," he said.
Patel also said that the approximately 7,000 agents working there should be sent out across the country to "go be cops." The FBI already has 55 regional offices in major cities across the United States.
Jan. 6 conspiracies
Through some of the dozens of conservative media interviews Patel gave in the years before Trump returned to office he helped set the stage for conservative's recasting of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection and who was to blame.
His explanations have spanned from blaming the FBI and accusing it of putting confidential informants in place to encourage violence- even claiming the FBI planned the attack for months- to blaming Democrats for making the riot look worse than it was.
Asked by Durbin Thursday if Trump was wrong to issue "blanket clemency" to 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants, Patel said it is within Trump's power to pardon. When Durbin pressed him further pointing out that about 600 of those pardoned were charged or convicted of assaulting law enforcement, Patel said he has always rejected violence against law enforcement, including during the infamous Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
"I do not agree with the commutation of any sentence of any individual who committed violence against law enforcement," Patel said.
Patel also gave money to alleged rioters through his foundation and even helped produce the patriotic song featuring jailed Jan. 6 defendants that played at Trump campaign rallies. Patel said Thursday that his role in producing the song was raising money for its production and he does not know which of the rioters sang on the recording.
Paste BN reporter Savannah Kuchar contributed
(This story has been updated with more information and photos.)