The hours-long hearing featured the name-calling and bitingly personal exchanges that have come to define Patel’s appearances on Capitol Hill, with Democrats characterizing the Trump appointee as unqualified, criticizing him for politically charged investigations into Trump’s enemies and highlighting travel that has included a trip to the Winter Olympics in Italy in which he partied with U.S. hockey players and a snorkeling excursion at the Pearl Harbor memorial in Hawaii.
“He’s an incompetent lackey. He’s like an 18-year old-kid who wants to join a fraternity that he could never be a member of, doing keg stands and chugging with friends. He’s an embarrassment to the agency and wouldn’t qualify even to be an FBI agent,” said an exasperated Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, his voice rising in anger.
Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI Director Kash Patel says the bureau is fulfilling its key mission — keeping Americans safe.
“What a mockery you are,” he added.
Patel shot back, “You are the biggest mockery in the United States Senate, and you’re sitting next to Schiff.” That was a reference to Sen. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and outspoken Patel critic.
Patel repeatedly touted what he asserted was his record-breaking success at the FBI, proclaiming the “most prolific reduction in crime in U.S. history” even though violent crime rates in American cities had begun dropping well before Trump took office last year for reasons that are difficult to pinpoint.
Even as the Republican-led panel tried through its questioning to keep the focus on Patel’s crime-fighting efforts from his perch at the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency, Democrats seized on the tumult inside the FBI over the last year — including sweeping firings of agents who participated in investigations of Trump, the bureau’s aggressive efforts to investigate media leaks by serving subpoenas at reporters’ homes and Patel’s travel schedule that has blended private leisure with professional responsibilities.
Democrat Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut pressed Patel on the firing of national security agents with expertise in Iran shortly before the U.S. launched attacks on the country last February. He noted that the agents had participated in an FBI investigation into Trump over his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
“Do you think firing the president’s political opponents is more important than retaining the decades of experience and expertise monitoring intelligence threats from Iran?” Blumenthal asked.
“I think what’s most important is to not have a weaponized FBI, and I will endeavor every single day to make sure we have no one there that is doing that,” Patel responded. He did not say why their participation in the Mar-a-Lago investigation represented “weaponized” law enforcement.
Patel later suggested that the scope of firings had been overblown, saying many agents had retired on their own. And he defended his personal travels by pointing to numbers that he said showed that two recent predecessors, Chris Wray and James Comey, had traveled more.
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