The Senate narrowly confirmed Kash Patel as the FBI's next director on Thursday, setting up a bold critic of the bureau, whose unwavering loyalty to President Trump raised questions about the independence of the country's most powerful law enforcement agency .
The 51-49 votes with two Republican asylums mean that Patel oversees the FBI's vast surveillance and investigative capabilities. As director, Patel is called to protect his country from terrorism, dangerous criminals and political corruption, along with the threat posed by global rivals like China and Russia.
Senate Democrats wanted to slow his nomination, but shook their colleagues in the aisle wary of eliciting political rage from his powerful allies like Trump and Elon Musk. was hardly successful.
This month, Sen. Richard J. Durbin, a top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, accused Patel of inappropriately instructing forced departures at the bureau without being confirmed as a leader.
Patel's financial disclosure also raised eyebrows, but none of these concerns significantly changed his support, allowing him to essentially slide the confirmation process.
Sen. John Tune, a Republican and Majority leader in South Dakota, praised him on the floor, saying, “to work with Patel to restore the integrity of the FBI and focus on its important mission.” I was looking forward to it.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a central Republican from Alaska, and Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican of Maine, both voted against the nomination. Collins cited the recent tumultuous tumultuous departments, including the FBI.
“There's a compelling need for FBI directors, who are clearly apolitical,” she said in a statement released before the vote. “While Mr. Patel has 16 years of dedicated public service, his time over the past four years has been marked by attention-grabbing and active political activity.”
Durbin said on Thursday he was likely perjury at his confirmation hearing when Patel allegedly claimed he was unaware of political retaliation at the FBI that he had been uncovering as he testified. He added.
Particular concerns with critics include his vow to enact a campaign for revenge on behalf of Trump, his pledge to rebuild his agency, and his refusal to say that President Trump lost the 2020 election. did.
At Patel's confirmation hearing last month, a Democrat senator pushed him over inflammatory comments directed at the FBI, including the so-called enemy list, “Government Gunstar,” which was released at the end of his book. . Patel disputes the explanation, calling it “complete misinterpretation.”
Anyway, Republicans enthusiastically accepted Patel for lowering his more exaggerated statement.
“I have no interest or desire. If it is confirmed, I will not retreat,” he said in his testimony. “If the FBI confirms as FBI director, there is no retaliation action taken by the FBI, and there is no politicization in the FBI.”
He later promised, “The FBI should have no politics.”
In previous times, Patel would have struggled to survive the confirmation process, but Trump and his loyalty eliminate the anti-conservative prejudice he assumed and shakes the bureau's culture. It considers it to be. Their hostility towards the institution stems heavily from the investigation that opened up to Trump, including his 2016 presidential election and its potential relationship with Russia. Processing of classification documents after he resigned. His efforts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election.
Patel has repeatedly poses a fight over the investigation in Russia. To portray the investigation as politically motivated, he misrepresented the facts and circumstances that the FBI decided to open it.
Patel's confirmation is that deep anxiety has spread across the FBI, and the Trump administration is moving swiftly to impose its will on the agency. Since Trump took office, his appointees have ousted multiple FBI executives and requested a list of employees who worked on the January 6, 2021 investigation.
Emil Bove III, interim No. 2 in the division, has already clashed with the department's representative director and agent, and many fears could be fired to simply investigate violations of federal law. He condemns disobedience for refusing to hand over the names of FBI officials.
Even if Patel vows at the hearing that his tenure will not be guided by politics, the Justice Department will dismiss the wave of prosecutors who worked on the case, including the January 6 attack, and what is called The group has established weaponization. Bove's request that the Justice Department moves to charge New York Mayor Eric Adams, prompting at least seven career prosecutors to step down last week as the case hampered Adams' cooperation with immigration. did.
The agent said early signals of how closely Patel would stick to his promises would be that he would permanently set up Associate Director of Acting Robert Kissan, and that acting director Brian Driscoll would return to Newark. Allow and there he is whether he will allow the field to run. If Patel expelled both men, it could encourage further doubt that he would act as an extension of the White House.
As the FBI's ninth director, Patel oversaw the agency for around 38,000 employees whose 2025 fiscal budget exceeded $11 billion. When he leads an agency, he oversees a vast global business.
Patel, a former trial lawyer for the Department of Justice's National Security Agency, has been a rapid succession in the previous Trump administration, working as an investigator for Congress and later serving as Senior Director of Anti-terrorism on the National Security Council. He was hit by national security work.
Given his relative lack of experience, Patel wanted to rely on a group of former agents who were brought to the FBI to form an advisory team of directors. But the group has already been reduced. Two of them, a former senior executive, were bailed out by Patel due to the upheaval.
The former official said the advisory team was gathering information on accountability, information technology, organizational structure and leadership choices. The two members, Gregory Menzer and Tom Ferguson, were former supervising agents, but they never had senior positions or run any important parts of the organization.
Another former agent, Michael Clark, was believed to be joining the team at some point, a former official said. Clark was the FBI agent who killed four Americans in a 2012 attack on diplomatic compounds and the CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya. Patel worked on the investigation into Benghazi when he served as a prosecutor for the Department of Justice.
Recently, a young, special agent from Seattle has joined the advisory team, former and current officials said. The agent worked at the White House on the National Security Council staff during Trump's first term. In a Facebook post, he showed him in an oval office, laughing at Trump and adjoining him.
Patel has also embraced politics amid an extraordinary departure from the post-water era when candidates were about to be considered politically neutral. In a lengthy survey completed before the confirmation hearing, Patel admitted that he served as an agent for Trump's reelection campaign for about two years.
Andrew G. McCabe, formerly F.BI. He is angered among former and current FBI agents and Republicans after being photographed wearing a T-shirt supporting his wife's campaign when he failed his Virginia Legislature seat in 2015.
Certainly, Trump's first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, wielded photos in an interview with McCabe to take over James B. Comey as FBI director after being fired. Session argued that the image was potentially disqualified.
Patel's predecessor, Christopher A. Ray, is trying to avoid politics and even perceived bias. Ray never met either Trump or President Biden alone.
