Kash Patel fielded questions from senators on a wide range of topics—including Jan. 6, the Second Amendment, and warrantless searches—as they considered his nomination by President Donald Trump to head the FBI.
The Senate Judiciary Committee hosted Patel’s confirmation hearing after voting on a party line earlier in the week to advance former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s nomination to lead the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Republicans on the committee seemed enthusiastic about Patel, praising his qualifications. By contrast, Democrats were very critical with ranking member Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) starting the hearing in part by saying that he didn’t think Patel was qualified.
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Both Bondi and Patel encountered questions about their ability to maintain some level of independence from Trump, as well as previous statements they made about the DOJ and the 2020 presidential election.
An alleged “enemies list” from Patel came up in both hearings with Democrats seeming concerned that Trump’s DOJ would punish political foes. Patel emphatically denied that he had created an enemies list when he included a list of purported deep state members in his book “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy.”
Sen. Chris Coons asked Patel at one point whether he would prosecute former FBI Director Christopher Wray, to which Patel replied: “I have no interest, no desire, and will not, if confirmed, go backwards.” He added that there would be “no politicization” or “retributive actions” with him in charge.
Multiple senators also asked Patel about a comment he made on The Shawn Ryan Show about intending to shut down the FBI headquarters in Washington. Patel said that he was trying to highlight a “significantly greater point” about the number of FBI employees who work in Washington and that he wanted more to work in the interior of the country.
Coons was apparently not satisfied with that answer. “It’s the rest of it,” he said of Patel’s statement, “saying you’re going to turn it into a museum of the deep state that causes repeated questions and concerns from people like myself.”
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Like Bondi, Patel also encountered pressure to say that former President Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) asked Patel whether he could explicitly say that Biden won the election and when Patel reiterated that Biden had been president, Welch said that was different than what he was asking.
Another focus of the hearing was Patel’s testimony to a grand jury in special counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents case against Trump. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) pushed for Patel to offer details about his testimony but Patel said he couldn’t.
—Sam Dorman and Ryan Morgan
GABBARD'S CONFIRMATION HEARING
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Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard appeared before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence today in a bid to earn her confirmation as the next director of national intelligence.
Gabbard has often been at odds with the intelligence establishment in Washington over her long-held belief that Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) should be repealed, and that tension was on display Thursday.
That statute allows U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct surveillance of foreign targets on a massive scale in a process that sometimes collects the sensitive private data of U.S. citizens.
The program was notoriously abused by the FBI to solicit data on millions of Americans without warrants and, just this month, a federal judge ruled that the warrantless search of information gleaned from the program was unconstitutional.
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Gabbard softened her stance on the issue in the leadup to the hearing, however, and ultimately testified that such surveillance was an essential part of the U.S. national security apparatus.
“702 provides a unique tool and capability that is essential for our national security,” Gabbard said during the hearing, adding that “significant FISA reforms have been enacted since my time in Congress.”
Some Senators took Gabbard’s new-found embrace of 702 with a grain of salt, with Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) questioning Gabbard’s “confirmation conversion” on the issue.
“702 is critical,” Warner said. “I appreciate this late conversion but I’m not sure I buy it because you had such a consistent position.”
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Gabbard also took aim at actions by current and former intelligence officers which she said had weaponized the intelligence community for political purposes.
Such actions included FBI attempts to undermine President Donald Trump’s first term in office, including by using FISA authorities to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, and the role of 51 former intelligence officials who used their credentials to falsely suggest that a story about a laptop belonging to Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden was Russian disinformation.
Gabbard said that she would work to revoke the credentials of any intelligence officer who behaved in such a partisan manner.
“Ensuring the safety, security and freedom of the American people is a mandate of leadership that rises above partisan politics,” Gabbard said.
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But the most contentious point of questioning arose from Gabbard’s previous support for Edward Snowden.
Snowden was a technical assistant for the CIA and NSA who stole more than one million files from government servers and leaked much of the information to the press in 2013.
Gabbard previously praised Snowden’s efforts and went so far as to call on Trump to pardon him in 2020.
Before the committee on Thursday, however, her admiration was more muted.
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“Edward Snowden broke the law and he released this information in a way that he should not have. He also acknowledged and exposed information that was unconstitutional which drove a lot of the reforms that this body has made over the years,” Gabbard said.
Overall, Gabbard made the case that she would prioritize objective intelligence gathering over “regime change” and other acts of international interventionism.
For too long, she said, the intelligence community had engaged in “bureaucratic mission-creep and empire-building.”
—Andrew Thornebrooke
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BOOKMARKS
President Donald Trump said on Jan. 30 that the threatened 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico will be imposed on Feb. 1. Trump had previously said he would impose the penalties due to a trade imbalance with those two nations, and because of drugs like fentanyl entering the United States through their borders.
Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino appears inflexible against pressure to return control of the Panama Canal to the United States, insisting “It’s impossible, I can’t negotiate.” He also indicated he is unwilling to back down on concessions he has already promised China in relation to canal access, saying “that is not the climate we want to project as a country to foreign investors.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that the government “has stopped all grant funding that’s being abused by NGOs” to facilitate illegal immigration. Noem alleged that some of those organizations have set up operations outside the United States to help non-citizens enter the country illegally.
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Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has announced that he plans to repeal a series of increasingly-strict carbon emission standards imposed by former President Joe Biden’s administration. The standards were intended to result in a “net-zero” carbon footprint by the year 2050.
Donald Trump’s attorneys have filed an appeal in New York, seeking to overturn his previous conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records. Justice Juan M. Merchan on Jan. 10 pronounced a sentence of “unconditional discharge” in that case, which meant that Trump was declared guilty, but would suffer no jail time or penalties.
—Stacy Robinson
