This is a man who time and again has refused to say he will follow the law.
Every lawmaker who doesn't want to see funds that they work to secure for their state, funds they know their families are counting on, ripped away, must vote no.
A Senate committee green-lighted the nomination of Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi this morning.
Commerce Secretary nominee Howard Lutnick had his hearing today, and the Senate broke a filibuster on the nomination of Doug Burgum to serve as Secretary of the Interior.
The final stand for the deep state comes crashing down as Kash Patel storms the ramparts today.
Thursday, January 30th, 2025.
Ladies and gentlemen, the day that we have been...
Waiting for the day that we have been working toward Kash Patel, a deep and abiding ally of our show, nay I say a personal friend who has regularly appeared on this program to tell you the truth about what is actually going on inside of your federal bureaucracy and law enforcement, the corruption therein, nay I say not a single person in all of Trump's cabinet has risked more.
To be in the position that they are in as Kash Patel takes the stand in mere moments from now for the confirmation hearing to be FBI director.
Ladies and gentlemen, the absolute collision course that Kash is on with the Democrat Party that is trying to keep alive the deep state on life support It's going to happen live here on our screen, and our production team is locked in and ready to go.
Cash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard testifying at the same time.
I will tell you, programming note, we will be following Cash's confirmation hearing first.
When there are breaks, we will zip over to Tulsi.
We won't miss any moments.
We have producers watching both.
We will grab both, ladies and gentlemen, and we'll play you clips.
But you will be watching live as a production priority, Cash Patel, on this channel.
And we will be monitoring both feeds and we will kick over to Tulsi.
Nothing but love for Tulsi.
Tulsi also a regular on the program.
Nothing but love for Tulsi Gabbard.
But I believe that Cash's nomination to this organ, the FBI, which over the course of the last four years has obviously been exposed.
As the muscle behind the darkest and most sadistic apparatchiks inside of our federal government.
The DOJ, remember the landscape here, the DOJ is like a mafia boss.
The FBI is the goons and the muscle and the actual enforcement arm of the DOJ.
Without the FBI, there is no raid on Mar-a-Lago.
There are no...
Horrible allegations.
Everything that was brought against Donald Trump collapses in real time and quickly without the FBI.
The FBI and their leadership were complicit in some of the worst political weaponization actions against any American ever in its history.
And it has been a very dark force in American history.
And so I'm done ranting here.
It's just the stakes could not be higher.
And I'm explaining to you why we will prioritize the cash feed.
Tulsi Gabbard will be quickly following cash.
A half an hour later, her confirmation starts at 10. We will bring you clips from both.
And I just want to set the table here for how important this all is.
The muscle.
You know, the mob boss can say or order or do whatever they want.
It's the muscle that actually carries out the actions, that actually enforces the terrorism.
And this is why the control of the FBI is so important.
Kash Patel going to be doing God's work today, ladies and gentlemen.
And speaking of that, our prayers are with the, I believe, 60 or 70. I'm not sure the exact death count.
It's changed multiple times this morning.
Of those who crashed over Washington, D.C. in what seems to be a clearly preventable crash.
This was all of the entire news feed, of course, is focused on this.
When an American Airlines flight was rammed by a Black Hawk helicopter.
Who's at fault?
What's going on?
And in a fiery blaze.
This entire thing came crashing down over Washington, D.C. last night.
Again, there are 60 to 70 people, Americans, some apparently Russian figure skaters, some American Olympians that were on this flight.
We pray for them and their family.
We want answers to this.
Why has this happened?
We've seen strange and nefarious actions from people who've been connected to our military.
I hope, I guess hope that that's not what's happening here, but we'll give you all of the details of that off the top of the show before we get to Kash Patel.
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All right, ladies and gentlemen.
It was a long night.
We were...
There was a lot of things in motion, let's just say, and this crash in D.C. kept us up for many reasons.
We are so unbelievably saddened by this because I've flown this flight a million times.
I know exactly this plane, American Airlines, is the airline that I fly on, and it's a total tragedy.
I'm so sorry for these families.
It hits so close to home, ladies and gentlemen, because I lived in D.C. for 15 years, and I've probably done Thousands of these flights.
Here's the footage of the best that we have so far of what happened last night, and I'll tell you what we know right now.
At approximately 9 p.m., an Apache Blackhawk helicopter flown by the United States military in a training flight, which I don't know how you're—apparently it was a veteran pilot.
Collided with what you're seeing here on screen, a commercial American Airlines flight from Wichita, Kansas.
All reports are that there have been no survivors in this crash.
There were three service members on the Apache helicopter.
They were wearing night vision goggles.
They were communicative.
They had been ordered by air traffic control to move out of the way to avoid that aircraft.
But something happened.
Something horrible happened.
There was something that broke down terribly.
What you can see in this footage is that these two aircraft were very far distance apart from each other and continued on a collision course that seems utterly and totally preventable.
A clear night.
A crisp night.
Now, I'll tell you this.
There is an airport in Washington, D.C. called Reagan National.
Perhaps you've been there.
A lot of people have.
Primo Airport to fly into because it's right next to the city.
And there's a ton of air traffic in and out of that airport.
It's the shortest landing strip in all of America.
It's a convenient airport because it's so close.
It's kept open in spite of security concerns because members of Congress use it so much.
That's why this is going to hit and chill to the bone, many in Washington, D.C., because so many members of Congress fly this route.
Now, what the hell was happening here, though?
I mean, as you can see, this is from an Earth cam.
Far away.
What you can see here is that these two aircraft were flying towards each other for minutes on end.
This clip's been playing for 60 seconds.
And there you can see the horrible and tragic explosion.
These are what the two aircraft looked like.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is what the U.S. Army H-60 Black Hawk looks like.
And this was the model of American Airlines commercial flight.
This was, again, from Wichita, Kansas.
Olympians were on this flight.
And also some Russians were on this flight.
It's very strange.
It's very horrifying.
And these aircraft are designed in an incredibly sophisticated way.
And I want, you know, obviously we're not going to miss a second of Cash's confirmation hearing.
Feed just started.
There's no one there.
It's just a bunch of reporters.
It's just a bunch of photographers milling about.
And I want to get to cash.
Obviously, we won't miss a second of it.
But since this is huge news, I want to just say nothing makes sense here.
You can listen to the air traffic controller tell the helicopter to move.
It didn't move.
They cleared the plane for landing.
Pilots who I know, I know American Airlines pilots by name and person.
Here, here.
They were cleared for landing.
So, the pilots tell me, pilots tell me that the helicopter is clearly at fault here.
And then watch.
Oh, it's awful.
Ah, it's just horrifying.
The wreckage is being pulled out of the Potomac.
As we speak, you can see here on sophisticated, navigable radar that...
That the helicopter simply didn't follow orders.
Again, this is a VIP helicopter service that flies between the CIA and various military bases all around Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. is the capital city.
There's military bases everywhere.
There are helicopters flying at all times.
We have members of our staff that live in Washington, D.C. Currently, right now, producer Danny lives in D.C. There's helicopters flying all day and night over your home.
Some of them are police.
Some of them are military.
And you can see right here.
This was the military aircraft right here, and you can see then the collision course as it appears on sophisticated radar equipment.
That's the collision right there.
Goodness, it's awful.
It's awful.
Ladies and gentlemen, just really quickly, I want to get to President Trump's commentary on this because President Trump is angry about this.
President Trump, of course, no stranger to commercial, to...
Air travel, has his own plane, has a lot of photos of him in the cockpit of this plane, and a lot of anger from our commander-in-chief about this, especially since it included a military aircraft that President Trump would presumably see over.
So here we go.
This is Donald Trump's commentary on it.
Donald Trump is furious about this.
The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach.
To the airport, the helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time in clear night.
The lights on the plane were blazing.
Why didn't the helicopter go up or down or turn?
Why didn't the control tower tell the helicopter to do that instead of asking why they saw the plane?
This is a bad situation.
It could have been prevented.
Not good.
Our newly minted the day of...
That's why it seems very mysterious to me.
It seems very strange to me, honestly.
I don't like it.
And I'm not trying to...
Foment any insane theories right now.
But, and President Trump here is saying it's been a terrible night.
And then, guys, do we have the Sean Duffy clip saying that this was preventable?
That I want to get to next.
And then we're going to move on to Kash Patel.
But I just want to belabor for one more point here.
What was going on exactly?
Again, Your car, if you've bought a car even in the last 10 years, it has collision detection and it'll automatically break.
If you're backing into a pole, if you're coming up on somebody really quickly at a traffic stop, think about how much more sophisticated our next generation military technology is and these aircraft are.
Some type of horrible, preventable error.
That is most likely human happened here.
And again, I'm not going to float anything that I think is irresponsible as a theory.
I'm simply going to state the matter of fact that a 20-year special forces operative blew up a vehicle out front of Trump Tower in Las Vegas.
This man was minted through the United States military and had the highest possible level clearance.
Would have to be seen as a psychotic break.
And then another army veteran went on an ISIS-inspired rampage, killing 15 Americans on New Year's Day.
What the hell was that about?
Then the media leaves his entire trailer park open for, the feds leave the entire trailer park open for the media to go through, opened up certain passages of the Quran.
It's very strange.
Why are there so many military accidents happening right now?
I mean, that's just three weeks.
There are three deadly military accidents in three weeks that have direct connection to the United States military.
We've got to clean this place up.
Pete Hegseth with also a post, if we could grab that because I want to give Secretary Hegseth an opportunity to ring in here.
He has a statement that he made about what actually happened.
It should be the first statement.
There it is.
Okay, let's pop that up.
So, here's the statement that Hegseth posted last night.
We can confirm that the aircraft involved in tonight's incident was an Army UH-60 helicopter from Bravo Company, 12th Aviation Battalion out of Davidson Air Force Army Base, Fort Belvoir, during the training flight, was working with local officials to provide additional information once it becomes available.
So, confirmed.
There were fake reports that this was like a police helicopter, that it was flying dark.
Nope, that's not true.
What does Hegseth say here?
Latest blow, tragic, search and rescue efforts, prayers for all impacted souls and their families, investigation launched immediately by Army and DOD.
And of course, I don't want to incorrectly blame anyone for this.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I'm not an avionics expert, but I do have friends who have planes.
I have flown in the cockpit of those planes.
I do know how connected and how secure these systems are.
I mean, you're in constant contact.
You're in constant communication.
With air traffic control.
And these people seem on the ball.
This is why there hasn't been a deadly commercial airline collision in two decades in America.
150 million commercial flights have happened since the last deadly commercial crash.
Yet here we are a week into President Trump's term and this happens.
Some of the most evil people on the internet are blaming this, of course, on President Trump.
You should never listen to those people again.
And I'm going to simply reserve my blame until I hear what actually happened.
Sean Duffy is the new Transportation Secretary taking over for Pete Buttigieg, who clearly wrought horrors upon America's infrastructure and transportation through DEI, the explosions in East Palestine, all of the flight delays, the many, many near collisions, misses, and the nightmare that occurred in the infrastructure of this country under Pete Buttigieg.
He has been replaced by Sean Duffy.
A good dude who had this to say at Reagan Airport.
He's literally been at Reagan Airport all night.
And here he is this morning briefing reporters.
unidentified
Don't read into that, that we had how many hours the pilots on a military aircraft.
And you had another question for me that was...
Last night, the President had said that this could be prevented and also that air traffic control questioning why they may not have communicated with the helicopter telling them what to do.
So we are going to wait for all the information to come in from this vantage point, but to back up what the President said, what I've seen so far, do I think this was preventable?
And then when we go back to DOJ and FBI, we still don't have all the lists, all the FISA's, all of the stuff they did to 275,000 Americans illegally in one year.
Put that out there.
I'm not saying put in the recipe on how to do it.
We can keep the hood on the engine.
But we can show the American people how they violated our rights.
And to me, what you said is the most important.
Restoring trust in our agencies and departments.
The way to do that is not to get a piñata and just punch him mercilessly and hoping for some bubblegum to pop out.
The way to do that is to literally give the American people the truth.
And that's what they feared about Donald Trump.
He's going to come in there.
And maybe give him the Epstein list.
And maybe give him the P. Diddy list.
You know, he's going to come up there and maybe do all these things.
Yeah, I believe that's part of the reason why Jimmy Kimmel was crying last night on his program.
But also, I believe that this is something that the American public desperately want.
And most importantly, this is how you restore honor and how you restore trust.
Now, many may not know.
Some will.
That you are personally responsible for the research on the Russiagate collusion.
Everything we know about Russiagate, and we know maybe like less than half of what really happened with Russiagate, Kash Patel is the one who found it out with Devin Nunez.
So, Kash, you have an excellent pedigree in rooting out the truth.
Will we get the full ditty list?
Will we get Epstein?
Will we get JFK?
Will we get the rest of what happened with Russia collusion?
I'd like to say that our prayers are with the victims and the first responders of the horrible tragedy at Reagan Airport.
It's reported that more than 60 souls were on board the plane and the helicopter that collided over the Potomac River.
This is a horrible, hard to understand disaster that demands answers.
As first responders continue their recovery effort and as investigators begin their work, Congress will work with the administration to get to the bottom of this and keep all those, and we should all keep the people impacted in our prayers.
So maybe we should just, for a short period of time, think about this tragedy.
Good morning.
I want to welcome everyone to this very important hearing to consider the nomination of Kesh Patel to serve as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations.
Congratulations on your nomination.
And thank you for your willingness to serve.
Before we get started, I want to set out a couple of ground rules.
Kind of ordinary for controversial hearings like this.
I want everyone here to be able to watch the hearing without obstruction.
If people stand up and block the view of those behind them, or if they speak out of turn, it's quite obvious that it's not fair or considered to everybody else in this room.
So officers would immediately read.
Remove those individuals.
Now I will explain how we're going to proceed.
I'll give my opening remarks and then invite Ranking Member Durbin to give opening remarks.
Then Senator Tillis will introduce the nominee.
After that, Mr. Patel will have a chance to give his opening statements after we swear him.
Following Mr. Patel's statement, we'll begin the first rounds of questioning.
Each senator will have an initial seven-minute round of questions.
After the first round, we'll do a second three-minute round of questions.
I ask members to do their best to adhere to these limits so that we can proceed efficiently.
And I thank each of the members of this committee because when we had Attorney General nominee Bondi here.
Everybody stayed within their time.
I expect Mr. Patel to be treated fairly by my colleagues.
We're here today to consider the nomination of Kash Patel to serve as Director of the FBI.
Opening remarks and then invite Ranking Member Durbin to give opening remarks.
Then Senator Tillis will introduce the nominee.
After that, Mr. Patel will have a chance to give his opening statements after we swear him.
Following Mr. Patel's statement, we'll begin the first rounds of questioning.
Each senator will have an initial seven-minute round of questions.
After the first round, we'll do a second three-minute round of questions.
I ask members to do their best to adhere to these limits so that we can proceed efficiently.
And I thank each of the members of this committee because when we had Attorney General nominee Bondi here, everybody stayed within their time.
I expect Mr. Patel.
To be treated fairly by my colleagues, we're here today to consider the nomination of Kash Patel to serve as Director of the FBI.
You're nominated, Mr. Patel, to one of the most important offices in our government.
And to get here, this far along in the process of your nomination, you gave us much information.
You submitted over 1,000 pages of records to the committee, over 1,000 individual interviews, and many hundreds of hours of media.
I thank your family for coming.
I know some of them have traveled to get here, and I know they're very proud of you, and I determined that by looking them in the face.
And the FBI is low.
Only 41% of the American people think the FBI is doing a good job.
It's no surprise that public trust has declined in an institution that has been plagued by abuse, lack of transparency, and weaponization of law enforcement.
Nevertheless, The FBI remains an important, even indispensable institution for law and order in our country.
It's the people on the top floor of the J. Edgar Hoover building, not your local FBI agents, that have caused the low approval rating.
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.
Your extensive background gives you a unique position to make this happen.
Mr. Patel's career has been a study in fighting unpopular but righteous causes, exposing corruption, and putting America first.
For almost a decade, Mr. Patel served as a public defender, defending the constitutional rights of some of the least popular people in this country.
After serving as a public defender, Mr. Patel joined the Department of Justice under President Obama as a counterterrorism prosecutor in the National Security Division.
In this role, he investigated.
And he prosecuted many important cases, including the World Cup bombing in Uganda in 2010, for which he received an award of excellence.
In 2017, Representative Devin Nunes asked Mr. Patel to join the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to uncover the truth about Russiagate.
And Mr. Patel did uncover the truth.
It was during this period of time that, if you remember, I first met you, Mr. Patel.
Through tireless works, Mr. Patel showed that Crossfire Hurricane was based upon fraudulent, discredited information paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.
As reward for his efforts to uncover the truth.
Mainstream media, can you believe this, personally attacked Mr. Patel, and the FBI secretly subpoenaed his records.
Now, I know what that is because my staff received similar treating during my investigation.
The attacks Mr. Patel faced during his work in the House of Representatives are similar to the ones that he faces today.
Underhanded attacks will be repeated today.
Mr. Patel has been accused of having quote-unquote an enemies list.
This is not a fair characterization as he stated quote there is no revenge list end of quote.
Mr. Patel has identified those he believes have put politics and personal ambition.
He's called out those who've used the institutions like the FBI to achieve their own personal gain.
Mr. Patel has said he believes that people who do this should be named and that Americans deserve transparency so that they can make their own judgment as they did in this last election.
Other attacks against Mr. Patel are similarly unfounded.
To take just one example, he's been accused of jeopardizing hostage rescues.
In fact, those allegations have been repeatedly shown to be false smears.
As numerous national security officials have said publicly and on the record, Mr. Patel played a critical role in returning Americans safely home and has done so through hard work and personal cause to him.
Mr. Patel has been accused of being unqualified to be FBI Director.
This suggestion ignores his impressive career at the highest levels of government service.
After exposing Russiagate scandal in the Congress, Mr. Patel served in roles such as Senior Director of Counterterrorism at the National Security Council, Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and Chief of Staff to the Acting Secretary of Defense.
Mr. Patel managed large intelligence and defense bureaucracies.
identified and countered national security threats, prosecuted and defended criminals.
He's done this while fighting for transparency and accountability in the government.
Mr. Patel has precisely the qualifications we need at this time when the FBI is not being respected by our public.
Mr. Patel, should you be confirmed, you'll take charge of an FBI that is in crisis.
Recently, my oversight exposed that a special agent in charge of the FBI New Orleans field office was on vacation during New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.
Of course, that was also included in the Sugar Bowl.
Senior personnel should be at their posts, not on vacation, during critical security events.
And we all remember what happened at that time in New Orleans.
But of course, the FBI agent, this FBI agent, would find it acceptable to do what he did.
In August 2022, an FBI oversight hearing of this committee, Director A decided to leave early.
I asked him to stay just one hour and 20 minutes longer, but he already made up his mind that he was going to leave.
Later, under questioning in November of that year by Senator Hawley, Director Wray admitted that he left this committee hearing early so that he could go on vacation.
These two instances.
Among others are examples of a blatant disrespect that the FBI leadership has shown to this committee and indirectly to the American people.
In November 22, I released internal FBI records that my office received pursuant to lawful whistleblower disclosures.
Those records provided data about how hundreds of FBI employees who had retired or resigned to avoid discipline, many of those employees engaged in sexual misconduct in the workplace.
Those records also showed lower-level FBI employees were punished.
Of the FBI were punished more harshly than senior level employees.
Now, fairness was out the window.
Over one year later, with no response from the FBI, I asked Director Wray about this at a December 523 hearing before this committee.
He publicly pledged to get me the data I requested November, a year before.
He and his deputy director never followed through.
I also questioned Director Wray about improperly classified information relating to Afghan evacuees placed in our country.
At that time, approximately 50 evacuees were already deemed potential national securities.
So what's the number now?
The public has a right to know.
I've also raised concerns about whistleblower disclosure, saying that the FBI moved agents from child sex abuse cases to those January 6th cases.
The FBI under Director Wray never got his priorities straight.
With respect to weaponization, I'd like to turn to a letter I wrote July 20 of 2022.
That letter noted that Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Thiebaud, was a key official involved in opening the elector case that became the John Jack Smith Lawfare operation.
That's not supposed to happen.
An official at Tebow's rank and position isn't supposed to open cases.
That's the job of special agents.
For those who don't remember, Tebow was the anti-Trump agent that violated the Hatch Act for his political conduct in office.
My letter also noted that Richard Pilger Who ran the Justice Department's election crime branch was involved in the approval.
Now I'd like to call the committee's attention to something I'm going to share with you, information about the FBI's that never been made public before.
Do you have those?
Oh yeah, I'm sorry.
In my hand.
Are a series of FBI emails.
The first is an email that Tebow sent to a supporting agent on February the 14th, 2022.
He said, quote, here's the draft opening language we discussed, end quote.
The draft opening was a text and it included material.
That would later become part of Jack Smith's elector case.
The second email, February 24, 2022, email from Thiebaud to John Crabb, a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, saying, quote, I had a discussion with the case team, and we believe there is predication.
To include former President of the United States, Donald J. Tump, as a predicated subject, end quote.
This FBI case would later be codenamed Arctic Frost.
The third email, February 24, 2022, email from Tebow to John Crabb, noting that the Attorney General and the FBI approval will be sought.
To open the case.
The fourth email, February 25th, 2022, email from Tebow, subordinate agent, saying they added Trump and others as a criminal subject to the case.
Tebow responded, quote-unquote, perfect.
The fifth email, March 22, 2022, from Tebow.
Emailing a version of an investigative opening for approval.
This didn't include President Trump.
I want to make clear, that one didn't include President Trump as a criminal subject.
The sixth email is on April 11th, 2022, from Tebow.
These emails and documents substantiate my July 2022 letter, which the FBI ignored.
And I hope you, when you get there, won't ignore my letters.
Partisan FBI agents and DOJ officials tried.
And ultimately succeeded in launching a full-field criminal investigation and prosecution of the President of the United States.
Justice Department and FBI leadership acted in concert to further a political scheme to take down Trump, just like they did with Crossfire Hurricane.
They have yet to learn a lesson.
Learn that lesson for them, or teach that lesson.
And their conduct, yet again, seriously enroded integrity of this once-storied institution.
As I've said before, if a politically charged investigation is to be open, it must be done the right way.
And that didn't happen here.
Mr. Patel, in my time...
I've never seen our law enforcement intelligence community institution so badly infected with political decision making.
And I say intelligence community because you know what happened when 55 people, former or present intelligence agency signed a letter in 19 or 2020 that the laptop was a Russian hoax as an example.
So all of this is these institutions breaking faith with we the people.
Mr. Patel, you must be fair, you must be consistent, but you must be aggressive.
Your actions must be based on accountability.
And transparency brings accountability.
Should you do so, you'll have my support.
And remember, Either you're going to run your agency or the agency's going to run you.
And the agency certainly ended up running Director Wray and probably people before him.
Without objection, I'm going to put in this letter in the record.
and this letter is sent to Director Wray December the 9th last year calling for him and his deputies to step down and it's titled quote-unquote failures.
Now I turn to ranking member Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I appreciate your commitment to the Judiciary Committee's longstanding bipartisan practice of vetting presidential nominees.
A little history.
The FBI dates back to the start of the last century, 1908, when then Attorney General Charles Bonaparte Organized a special agent force.
J. Edgar Hoover became director of the FBI in 1924 and led the Bureau for 48 years until his death in 1972.
He is credited with professionalizing the Bureau and developing its investigative ability.
However, with little or no oversight, Hoover also used the Bureau's investigative powers improperly.
He infamously directed the FBI to spy on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Thurgood Marshall, and other civil rights leaders of the day.
In 1975, the United States Senate created Frank Church's Committee, and they disclosed widespread abuses by the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies.
The Church Committee concluded these agencies had engaged in illegal surveillance, and as a result, quote, Groups and individuals have been assaulted, repressed, harassed, and disrupted because of their political views, social beliefs, and their lifestyles.
And quote, the intelligence agencies have served the political and personal objectives of presidents and other high officials.
The Hoover era of the FBI, the Watergate scandal, The findings of the Church Committee highlighted the risk of political interference in FBI investigations and led to significant, important reform.
In 1976, Congress passed a law that limits the FBI Director to a single term of 10 years, which was intended to insulate that position from political influence.
And critically, we made the FBI Director's appointment subject to the advice and consent of the Senate.
That's why we're here today.
Since 1935, the motto of the FBI has been fidelity, bravery, integrity.
These qualities represent the Bureau's core values and the high standards that are expected of all of its employees, including the director of the FBI.
After meeting with Mr. Patel and reviewing his record, I do not believe you meet this standard.
Mr. Patel has needed the experience, the temperament, I know the judgment to lead an agency of 38,000 agencies and 400 field offices around the globe.
During the time I've served on this committee, I've had the opportunity to consider four FBI director nominations.
Each one was a Republican, and I voted for all of them.
My concerns about the director of the FBI are not partisan.
As much as Republicans claim that President Biden And former Attorney General Garland weaponized the FBI.
Let's look at the record.
President Biden kept the FBI director, a lifelong Republican, who had been appointed by President Trump.
Contrast that with President Trump.
Fired his first FBI director, James Comey.
Forced out his second FBI director, Chris Wray, for being insufficiently loyal.
With Mr. Patel, however, obviously the president has found a loyalist.
Mr. Patel's loyalty includes touting conspiracy theories that threaten theories and threatened efforts at President Trump's enemies.
How do we know Mr. Patel's theories, his beliefs, what motivates him, what he really believes?
He wrote it in a book.
This book, Government Gangsters, I urge all of you to read before you cast a vote for this gentleman.
Mr. Patel has published at the back of this book a list of 60 people whom he calls, quote, members of the deep state, 60. This list includes many distinguished public servants who've dedicated their lives to our nation.
Among them are Democrats and Republicans, including former Trump administration officials like the former Secretary of Defense Esper.
Then there is Mr. Patel's plan to quote, and I quote him, Shut down the FBI Hoover building on day one.
Reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state.
And he has said, quote, We're going to come after people in the media.
We're going to come after you.
Whether it's criminally or civilly, we're putting you all on notice.
Does this sound like the kind of nonpartisan law enforcement professional who should lead the FBI?
No, not to me.
This is someone who's left behind a trail of grievances throughout his life, lashing out at anyone who disrespects him or doesn't agree with him.
Don't take it from me.
Listen to these Republicans who worked with him during the Trump's first administration.
Attorney General Bill Barr, and I quote, I categorically oppose making Patel deputy FBI director.
I said it would happen 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.
National Security Advisor John Bolton I didn't think he was qualified.
He demonstrated no policy aptitude at all.
I was forced to hire him.
President Trump's Deputy National Security Advisor Charles Kupperman The idea that Kash Patel is going to be the FBI director is appalling.
His legal career is modest at best.
His ideas are ludicrous.
CIA Director Gina Haspel threatened to resign after President Trump proposed making Mr. Patel's CIA Deputy Director.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Mr. Patel lied about whether Nigeria had approved a hostage rescue operation.
Putting American lives at risk.
But Mr. Patel would have us believe that all of these public servants, all Republicans, all from the first Trump administration, and apparently anyone else who's critical of him, are nothing but government gangsters and deep state members.
Many of them have made his list of enemies.
Just this week, CNN reported that during the Trump administration CIA officials referred Mr. Patel to the Justice Department for criminal investigation for sharing classified information without authorization.
Last week, I asked the Justice Department and intelligence community for information on any criminal referrals relating to misconduct by Mr. Patel.
I have yet to receive a response.
Mr. Patel's record is clear.
He traffics in debunked conspiracy theories.
Let's start with January 6th, and he dedicates a whole chapter in this book on January 6th.
That's something that each and every one of us, as witnesses to January 6th, have our own view of.
I'll be grateful always to the Capitol Hill police officers who risked their lives defending me, members of Congress, and visitors to the United States Capitol on that day.
Mr. Patel posted on social media, quote, January 6th, never an insurrection.
Cowards in uniform exposed.
End of quote.
Let me repeat that.
Cowards in uniform exposed.
Who was in the Capitol building on January 6th in a uniform?
The Capitol Police were.
Do you think they were cowards?
Many of them risked their lives and some gave their lives in defense of this building.
How about the D.C. police who were here as well?
They were in uniform.
Cowards risking their lives as well.
Some of them being battered and beaten by these mobsters that came into the Capitol.
And Mr. Patel claims that the FBI agency aspires to lead, get this now, was planning January 6th for a year.
He says the FBI was planning January 6th for a year.
That's a quote.
He has described this January 6 choir as, quote, political prisoners.
Political prisoners.
But at least six members pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement officers on January 6. All six have now been pardoned by President Trump.
Here are some of those people who received blanket clemency by President Trump on his first day in office in the second term.
Julian Cater assaulted Capitol Police officers with pepper spray, incapacitating three officers.
Ryan Nichols sprayed pepper spray on multiple police officers after the attack.
Nichols posted on Facebook and I quote, "So yes, I'm calling for violence and I will be violent." Jordan Mink struck officers, quote, aggressively with the long pole.
He spat at officers and threw large items at them.
Armed with a knife, Ronald Sandlin shouted at officers, quote, You're going to die!
Get out of the way!
Sandlin shoved officers when they tried to lock the doors to the Senate gallery.
After breaching the Capitol, James McGrew struck an officer and lunged for his baton.
McGrew also threw a wooden handrail with metal brackets at officers.
I want to read a sentence from this book on the January 6th experience.
Just to give you an idea of Mr. Patel's take on what he calls a haphazard riot.
By everything we could see, the crowd at the Capitol was unarmed or armed only with non-lethal objects like bottles, flagpoles, or bike racks.
Mr. Patel has also peddled conspiracy theories for his own financial benefit, promoting a line of dietary supplements that claim to help people detox from COVID-19 vaccines.
During my time on this committee, I was fortunate to get to know and work with former FBI Director Bob Mueller.
I met him a few days after 9 /11.
That's when he took over the FBI.
I trusted him.
I worked with him.
I did everything I could to help him, because I believe that the FBI was a critical, central agency in restoring America's confidence that we were safe.
Bob Mueller was an extraordinary man.
Oh, he was a Republican.
Make no bones about it.
He said it and admitted it, and I knew it.
He comes from the San Francisco area.
And when he was in college and graduated, a friend of his a year ahead of him had enlisted in the Marine Corps and was killed in Vietnam.
Bob was inspired to do the same thing, join up in the Marine Corps, and he did.
And he was a first lieutenant in Vietnam.
He received a bronze star with a valor pin, and he also received a purple heart.
He was injured in battle.
I read about his experience because...
After he was healed from that wound to his leg, he returned to combat.
He was just that kind of fellow.
Regardless of party, he was a real American.
He was a longtime federal prosecutor, a U.S. attorney, the head of the DOJ's criminal division, and acting deputy attorney general before he became head of the FBI.
After 9-11, I worked with him, and we had a good relationship, a professional relationship.
We didn't always see eye to eye, but I respected him so much for what he had given to this country.
In this book, Mr. Patel calls Director Bob Mueller, quote, a swamp creature.
With all due respect, Mr. Patel, I've not worn the uniform of this country and neither of you.
To think that you would denigrate Bob Mueller's service to our country and call him a swamp creature is an indication of the depths your political views take you.
The FBI plays a critical role in keeping America safe from terrorism, violent crime and other threats.
Our nation needs an FBI director who understands the gravity of this mission and is ready on day one, not someone who is consumed by his own personal political grievances.
The American people deserve an FBI director focused on keeping our families safe from terrorism, drug trafficking and violent crime.
Not this checklist of grievances we find in this book.
Mr. Patel, your record makes it clear you're not that person.
Before I call on Senator Tellis, I want to clear up something the way I see it, and I think I'm going to invite everybody that can be cleared up this business about what Mr. Patel said about cowards in uniform.
It's a mischaracterization of what he actually said.
So I'm going to invite you to listen to the interview Mr. Patel gave that linked to his post to hear what he actually said.
When he said cowards in uniform, he was talking about senior Pentagon leadership failing to mobilize the National Guard to protect the Capitol.
His comments had nothing to do with police.
Mr. Patel made his comments while discussing an article in the New York Times exposing grave miscommunication between the Department of Defense and the D.C. National Guard.
Colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee, it's my honor to introduce Kash Patel, President Trump's nominee to be FBI Director.
I've completed due diligence on his life and career, and I'm convinced that Kash possesses significant expertise and ironclad commitment to justice, and he's an outstanding choice to lead the FBI.
Kash's parents are Indian immigrants of Gujarati ancestry.
They're up here in the front row.
The Gujarat state is a melting pot of religions, including Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, with temples, mosques, and other religious sites scattered across the state.
His father was raised in Uganda, but his family had to flee the country to escape repression under Idi Amin.
His mother was born in Tanzania.
They met and married in India, and ultimately made their way to New York City by way of Canada, where his parents, along with seven brothers and sisters, and their spouses, and at least a half a dozen kids, lived under the same roof.
His parents raised Cash in the Hindu faith, and they instilled in him the values of hard work and education.
Cash is a devout Hindu, and consistent with his faith, he's shown respect to people of all faiths.
Cash attended the University of Richmond, where he earned his bachelor's degree in criminal justice and history.
He went to Pace University School of Law, where he earned his JD, and an international law certificate from the University College of London, Faculty of Laws.
Cash began his career as a public defender in Florida, where he led or co-led more than 60 jury trials in state and federal court.
Cash led the defense of Jose Pedro in United States v.
Pedro, a high-profile case in Florida in 2015.
Pedro was one of the Colombian nationals arrested in a major drug bust involving Operation Back Rim.
Cash and his co-counsel successfully argued that key evidence was withheld by the prosecution, leading to Bedrago's release.
I suspect some of Cash's disdain for prosecutorial misconduct stem from this experience.
Cash was hired as a senior counsel on the House Permanent Select Subcommittee on Intelligence Committee, I should say, in 2017.
He told me he distinctly remembers my friend Trey Gowdy comments shortly after they were introduced.
He said in Trey's dialect, Cash, Congress is where righteous investigations go to die.
I hope you're ready.
I think Cash was ready, and he went on to establish a solid reputation for pursuing the facts, and from there...
He held senior post at the NSC, the Department of Defense, and the DNI.
Since leaving the administration in 2020, Cash has written articles and books on national security, law, and governance.
Through his work as an author, Cash continues to advocate for justice and transparency, and to be ever vigilant in defending our great democracy and the rule of law.
Colleagues, I created a cash bingo card that I have available to any of my colleagues who would like it on the other side of the aisle.
Some may view this as an unserious caricature and not appropriate for this committee.
Sadly, I consider it a serious caricature of what I expect to be witnessed today.
I think we'll have words like enemies list and deep state.
I've already X'd out four boxes in the opening statements alone.
The fact of the matter is, some people will be here to simply substantiate a false narrative.
At worst, they may be just going through an unfounded litany of Of quotes and half quotes and half truths, some of which have already been dispelled by the chairman after the opening statements.
Mr. Chair and Ranking Member, in my 10 years in the Senate, I hope I've established a reputation for being fair, doing my homework, and taking tough positions that have been met with harsh criticism.
Heck, I've even been censured by my entire state and 30 counties.
for taking tough positions and I stand by those decisions today and my decision to support Cash Patel.
When President Trump announced his intent to nominate Cash, I contacted Trey Gowdy and others who worked with Cash and they gave me glowing recommendations.
So I called Cash on December the 2nd and I offered to help him with his nomination.
Since then, we have spent hours together, in person and on the phone.
I've asked them difficult questions, and I've urged them to reach out to members across the aisle.
In fact, Kash Patel has met with 60 members of the U.S. Senate.
Every member except the last three who were sworn in, and the majority of the members on the other side of the dais in this committee and members off the committee.
Chair Grassley, Ranking Member Durbin.
Friends and colleagues on the committee, I've completed my due diligence of Kash Patel, and I am honored to provide my strongest recommendation for his confirmation.
Before I swear you, I wanted to make clear that before you give your statement, if you want to introduce family and friends in the audience, you're welcome to do that.
Would you please stand?
Raise your hand.
Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to give to the committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Chairman Grassley, Ranking Member Durbin, and members of the Judiciary Committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear today.
I must start with a word of prayer.
For the tragic accident that befell our nation last night, where we lost civilians and service members.
I pray for their families.
I pray for law enforcement and military personnel.
And I pray for their souls.
And hopefully God will find them peace in the near future.
I'd like to welcome my father, Pramod, and my mother, Anjna, who are sitting here today.
They traveled here to get here from India.
My sister's also here, Nisha.
She also traversed the oceans just to be with me here today.
It means the world that you guys are here.
Jesse Greshna.
I wouldn't be here today without their guidance, their unwavering support, and their relentless love.
When President Trump informed me of his intention to nominate me as the director of the FBI, I was deeply honored.
Sitting here today, I carry not only the dreams of my parents, But also the hopes of millions of Americans who stand for justice, fairness, and the rule of law.
My commitment to these principles is deeply rooted in my family's history, which has profoundly shaped my worldview.
My father fled Idi Amin's genocidal dictatorship in Uganda, where 300,000 men, women, and children were killed based on their ethnicity, just because they happened to look like me.
She studied in India, as did my dad, and they were married there.
They would later emigrate to New York, as the senator pointed out, where I was born, and we were raised in a household of my father's seven siblings, their spouses, and at least half a dozen children.
That's the only way we knew how to do things at the time, in the 70s and 80s, the Indian way.
But we would soon learn the American way.
These values have shaped and been the driving force of my career in 16 years of government service.
Protecting the rights of the Constitution is of the utmost importance to me and has been every single time I've taken that oath of office.
The recent terrorist attacks in New Orleans tragically claimed the lives of 14 Americans and serve as a stark reminder that our national security is at threat, both internally and externally.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice, where I served, play a pivotal role in securing our freedoms and our safeties for American citizens.
If confirmed as the next FBI Director, I will remain focused on the FBI's core mission.
That is to investigate fully wherever there is a constitutional factual basis to do so and to never make a prosecutorial decision that is solely the providence of the Department of Justice and the Attorney General.
For the first eight years after law school, I served as a public defender, first for Miami-Dade County and later for the Southern District of Florida.
During that time, I represented some pretty awful human beings charged with some pretty heinous.
But what I learned there was the core value that has been enshrined in me since.
That due process must be provided without bias to all Americans.
And if we cannot provide due process to the worst, then there can be no due process for anyone.
And our constitutional republic fails.
But I battled on that hill for that due process.
I would later serve in the Obama Justice Department.
As a terrorism prosecutor in the National Security Division, where we successfully contributed the prosecutions of terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab, and others.
I was honored to receive the 2017 Assistant Attorney General's Award from Loretta Lynch for my work in helping the Ugandans bring members of Al-Shabaab to justice for murdering 74 innocent people, including an American.
I would also receive the Human Intelligence Award from the intelligence community for related work on that mission.
My experiences at the National Security Division would later be followed by my experiences on the National Security Council as Senior Director for Counterterrorism and later as a Deputy Director of National Intelligence responsible for the production, creation, and promulgation of the Presidential Daily Briefing, our nation's most sensitive classified information and secrets to protect our country.
My time in the White House was preceded by a time right here in Congress as a staffer on the House Intelligence Committee, where I spearheaded the investigation that exposed serious FISA, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, abuses by members of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
That misconduct eroded the public trust in our FBI.
The erosion of trust, as Chairman Grassley pointed out, is All too low today.
40% of Americans have trust in the FBI.
In order to get it back, there's a two-fold track, Senator.
One, violent crime is exploding in this country, and we cannot afford to them to allow it to run away.
We must tackle violent crime.
Just in 2023 alone, there was 100,000 rapes.
100,000 drug overdoses and 17,000 homicides.
The priority of the FBI, if I'm confirmed, will be to ensure that our communities are protected and safeguarded and our children have parks to play in and not needles to walk over.
The way we do this, we let good cops be cops.
We let law enforcement And we provide them with the tools necessary and resources they need to get after violent crime.
The second way we do this on equal track is aggressive constitutional oversight from Congress.
The public trust can only be restored if there is full transparency, and I am committed to that full transparency.
Members of Congress have unfortunately submitted hundreds of questions that have been unanswered by the FBI in recent times.
That will not occur if I am confirmed.
All appropriate requests for information will be responded to expeditiously and fully.
I'm committed to working alongside the dedicated men and women of the FBI.
They are warriors of justice.
And I will always have their backs because they have the backs of the American people.
I look forward to answering your questions, and I want to take a moment to thank my family, my friends, people who traveled here, and my entire team that has made this day possible.
God bless America, and I look forward to your questions.
Mr. Patel, I'm not going to go through all the things that you've done through your career, because I said those are my opening statements, but Democrats on the committee say you don't have experience.
What are you most proud of from your career in public service?
It's really humbling to be afforded the opportunity to have served this country for 16 years.
But I think what I'm most proud of is my work in national security, protecting the no-fail mission, returning American hostages, killing high-value terrorists that brought hate and destruction to our shores.
I've served that mission in Democratic and Republican administrations, and it is the one mission that we cannot fail, and it is the one mission where the FBI must play a critical role.
You and I have heard a lot of criticism about various statements about January 6th.
You said, quote, those who broke actual laws should be prosecuted, end of quote.
But you've also called out the partisan nature of prosecutions and compared how the Biden Justice Department treated January 6th defenders with how they ignored.
Many other crimes.
Those include crimes related to illegal immigration, as well as riots that took place around the country.
So explain your position on January 6th to this committee, and how do you respond to critics who say that you're anti-law enforcement?
Mr. Chairman, I greatly appreciate the question and the opportunity to discuss that.
If anyone wants to consider me as anti-law enforcement, then look at my 16 years in government service.
Whether I was trying 60 jury trials in state and federal court upholding the rights of the indigent and breathing life into constitutional due process, or later as a national security prosecutor where I served this country and overseas.
And later, when I was a Joint Special Operations Command civilian embedded with SEAL Team 6 and Delta, chasing down some of the most high-value target terrorists there are on this earth and successfully achieving a mission and state.
I have always respected law enforcement.
I have taken that oath and will take that oath again, God willing, to be the next director of the FBI.
As for January 6th, I have repeatedly, often...
Publicly and privately said there can never be a tolerance for violence against law enforcement.
And anyone, anyone that commits an act of violence against law enforcement must be investigated, prosecuted and imprisoned.
And on January 6th, I said the same thing about acts against law enforcement.
The Capitol Police, who I have served with.
And when I was Chief of Staff at the Department of Defense, rushing to the aid of the members of this committee and your colleagues to provide the National Guard was my top mission priority, not politics.
And that is my love of this country to protect our laws and our way of life.
And it was no different.
If there's any ever corruption, I have been the first to call it out.
And I will continue to call out corruption in government service because it is a privilege to serve this nation.
In fact, I have publicly, including in the interviews provided to this committee, rejected outright QAnon baseless conspiracy theories or any other baseless conspiracy theories.
They must be addressed head-on with the truth, and I will continue to do that, and I will always continue to support Americans who support law enforcement, are military, and want a secure border.
Over the past four years, the FBI and Justice Department have weaponized law enforcement.
You, along with even members of my staff, were the victims of FBI overreach when they secretly subpoenaed your records during the investigation into Crossfire Hurricane.
Inspector General Horowitz of Justice Department was right to say actions like this have a, quote, Unquote, chilling effect on whistleblowers.
How do you intend to make sure that this kind of misconduct never happens again?
He's a man who's been found guilty of numerous crimes.
The one described this morning was outrageous.
The situation where he beat his three-year-old child to a point where the poor kid couldn't even sit down for a week.
Mr. Huddle was one of the demonstrators who came to the Capitol on January 6. He was incarcerated and charged with and pled guilty to crimes that he had committed, violence against police officers.
After he was released by President Trump, he returned to his home state of Indiana.
A few days later, he was stopped on the road, pulled a gun on a policeman.
The policeman, sheriff's deputy, turned, shot, and killed him.
This is not the only instance of a person who received President Trump's clemency committing another crime.
Peter Schwartz was mentioned this morning on the radio.
38 criminal convictions.
38. He'd been sentenced to 14 years in prison.
He was released because of the president's unconditional clemency, which was given to him as well.
So I guess my question is this.
Was President Donald Trump wrong to give blanket clemency to the January 6th defendants?
And as we discussed in our private meeting, Senator, I have always rejected any violence against law enforcement, and I have, including in that group, specifically addressed any violence against law enforcement on January 6th, and I do not agree with the commutation of any sentence of any individual who committed violence against law enforcement.
Senator, I have not looked at all 1,600 individual cases.
I have always advocated for imprisoning those that cause harm to our law enforcement and civilian communities.
I also believe America is not safer because President Biden's commutation of a man who murdered two FBI agents, Agent Kohlers and Williams' family, deserve better than to have the man that point-blank range fired a shotgun into their heads and murdered them, released from prison.
I'm very proud of the Cash Foundation and the $1.3 million we've given to families in need across this country, including active duty service members, police officers, putting kids in college, and helping people in disaster relief areas rebuild their homes and their communities.
Like any other charity, we had to go out and fundraise, something I'm sure every member of this committee is familiar with.
And we used digital marketing campaigns, and I believe we paid a digital marketing company through 1&0 a quarter million dollars to raise $500,000, which we gave away to families in need, like when hurricanes struck Florida, Texas, and North Carolina.
Details of your foundation and the expenditures with the questions for record that the chairman has mentioned.
I look forward to it.
You'll have a chance to answer those under oath.
Mr. Patel, you frequently associated with and sometimes praised extremist figures with the well-documented histories of racism, anti-Semitism, conspiracies, and the like.
In September of 2023, you appeared with Laura Loomer at an event promoting your book.
This one here.
You shared a photo of yourself and Loomer in which you held her book and she held yours.
Just a few months before this event, Ms. Loomer posted on X that the September 11 terrorist attacks were, quote, an inside job.
Around that time, she accused Florida's First Lady, Casey DeSantis, of exaggerating her cancer diagnosis to gain voter sympathy.
A number of my Republican colleagues on this committee have criticized Ms. Loomer's extremism.
One of my colleagues described her as a "crazy conspiracy theorist who regularly utters disgusting garbage." Another called her "really toxic." Given all this, why did you associate with Ms. Loomer?
Senator, as you can see, I took a photograph with an individual who showed up at a book event.
I don't believe I'm guilty by association, and I certainly don't believe that an individual who is the first minority to serve as the Deputy Director of National Intelligence for this country is a racist in any way, and I detest any conjecture to the contrary.
My association, as you loosely define it, is by appearing in media over a thousand times to take on people who are putting on conspiratorial theories and to devour them of their false impressions and to talk to them about the truth.
That is something that I will always continue to fight for, Senator.
Well, if you look at the record from January 6th, where I testified before that committee, because of my personal information being released by Congress, I was subjected to a direct and significant threat on my life.
And I put that information in the record.
I had to move.
In that threat, I was called a detestable, and I apologize if I don't get it all right, but it's in the record, a detestable sand nigger who had no right being in this country.
You should go back to where you came from.
You belong with your terrorist home friends.
That's what was sent to me.
That's just a piece of it.
But that's nothing compared to what the men and women in law enforcement face every day.
Still had no proof to support the statements, then it was just talk.
The primary sub source claimed to the FBI that his information came from word of mouth and hearsay, conversations he had with friends over beers, and some of the information were statements he heard made in jest.
Do you believe that Crossfire Hurricane was one of the most disgusting episodes in FBI history of a corrupt investigation led by corrupt people who wanted to take Donald Trump down?
Without Crossfire Hurricane, this guy wouldn't be here.
And my friends on the other side, like pulling teeth, the Horowitz investigation, the inspector general labeled this fraudulent at its core, mismanaged at its core, running stop signs.
At every turn, they went forward when they should have stopped.
The Durham report said it was obviously politically motivated.
FBI agents were telling anybody and everybody that would listen, this is not reliable, this is not trustworthy, but they plowed on.
And because of you and Trey Gowdy and others, we now know about this.
Everybody who signed the warrant, Under questioning by me said if they knew then what they know now, they wouldn't sign the warrant.
Comey said that.
Yates said that.
Rosenstein said that.
The reason you're here is because most of the public, almost every Republican, believes that the FBI has been used continuously in a political fashion, ignoring evidence.
Making up evidence, lying to get Donald Trump.
And when it came to the Hunter Biden laptop, they told every social media outlet in October 2020, "Oh, that's Russian disinformation." That was BS too.
Right before the election, the FBI intervened to shut reporting on the Hunter laptop down as being Russian misinformation, according to Zuckerberg.
Do you promise all of us those days are over at the FBI?
I remember January 6th, colleagues running through our halls to flee the mob.
Colleagues shouting that rioters should be shot.
Us returning to our constitutional business through hallways cleared for us by automatic weapons carrying SWAT teams.
None of you, none of us, said those violent rioters should be pardoned.
A Republican colleague said such pardons would be hard to believe, even absurd.
Your former colleague J.D. Vance said the violent rioters should not be pardoned.
Even Jim Jordan said pardons would, and I quote, focus on all the people who didn't commit any violence.
Well, Trump pardoned all of them.
And there's a lesson in that.
Every time you think Trump would never go that far, rethink that.
We all seem to agree that violence against police is unacceptable.
Yet more than 600 people who physically attacked Capitol Police officers were just put back on the street, part of a 1,500-person personal Trump army, now out there with people who have proven themselves willing to do violence on Trump's call.
In only 10 days, some are already back committing crimes.
We've also tried as a committee, together, to address the dangers of illicit drug sales over the Internet, and I assume we're all against murder for hire.
But Trump also just pardoned a dark web operator sentenced to life in prison for trafficking illegal drugs online and accused of soliciting murders for hire.
Those pardons, as Mr. Patel has said, are a mistake, but they are also a signal.
That we are entering a strange and dangerous time.
That is the context for today's hearing.
Warnings that the FBI could become Trump's enforcer, use the powers of law enforcement to stifle speech and dissent, punish political rivals of either party, and hand out free passes, get out of jail free cards to violent supporters, are warnings we should heed.
Here are some warnings of this nominee's Trump administration colleagues.
Former Attorney General Bill Barr said, this nominee has virtually no experience that would qualify him to serve at the highest level of the world's preeminent law enforcement agency, end quote, and we would never be able to command the respect necessary to run the day-to-day operations of the Bureau.
That's for the deputy position.
Former CIA Director Gina Haspel was reported threatening to resign rather than have this nominee serve under her.
John Bolton, Trump's former national security advisor, said, I didn't think he was qualified.
I was forced to hire him.
Trump's deputy national security advisor, the nominee's former supervisor, said, his ideas are ludicrous.
He's absolutely unqualified for this job.
He's untrustworthy.
And it's an absolute disgrace to even consider an individual of this nature.
That's from Republican appointees who worked with him.
Regarding his publication of his enemies list, Mr. Patel proclaimed, the manhunt starts tomorrow, and reposted a video depicting him taking a chainsaw to his political enemies.
Is that you, Kash Patel, re-truthed, reposting that at the top of that page?
An inspector attorney general investigation found that that was false.
And you said we should impeach judges who rule against Donald Trump who are, in your words, political terrorists.
When this nominee tries to explain all this away, keep one thing in mind.
He's testified under oath.
Before a Colorado judge who presided over a Trump case in which he was a witness.
And the judge found, and I'm quoting here, he was not a credible witness.
His testimony is not only illogical but completely devoid of any evidence in the record.
That's from a judge.
This is a dangerous time.
And I ask all my colleagues to consider whether these plain comments by this person and by his own Trump administration colleagues should be given a blind eye, just overlooked, or whether, like the warnings of pardoning violent January 6 offenders, there are warnings to be heeded.
There is an...
Unfathomable difference between a seeming facade being constructed around this nominee here today and what he has actually done and said in real life when left to his own devices.
Conduct shows character.
And if you look at history, You see the danger of security chiefs in authoritarian regimes becoming the tools of political power.
The characteristics that they often show are that they are vengeful, that they are grandiose, that they are intemperate, that they are partisan.
And blindly loyal and that they are servile and won't say no.
I'm afraid that the history of this nominee's conduct raises those warnings.
In the collective, all of those statements are taken out of grotesque context.
And anyone that thinks my 16 years of service is an exemplary on how I would proceed if confirmed as FBI is intentionally putting false information into the public ether and creating more public discourse.
The only thing that will matter if I'm confirmed as a director of the FBI is a de-weaponized, depoliticized system of law enforcement completely devoted to rigorous obedience of the Constitution and a singular standard of justice.
And even Director Wray, at that time former Director Wray.
said that that shouldn't have happened and Judge Michael Conahan who took kickbacks for wrongly sending juveniles for profit detention centers and Alex Saab who laundered illicit proceeds for narcotics terrorists Nicholas Madero and was a key connection between Venezuela and Iran and five family members Of his own family.
I believe that the two most important institutions in America to preserve and protect and enforce the rule of law are the FBI.
And the sort of politicalization that Senator Graham and others have already talked about during the Crossfire Hurricane investigation or project of James Comey at the FBI and the abuse of intelligence tools like Title I of Section 702 are a betrayal of American values and
adherence to the rule of law.
And I think your biggest task is going to be, along with Pam Bondi at the Office of the Attorney General, is to restore the rule of law to the Department of Justice and the FBI.
Do you believe President Trump, as the commander in chief, needs access to all of the lawfully available intelligence that can be collected by the American intelligence community in order to inform him so that he can make good judgments as commander in chief to assure the safety and security of the American people?
Having been responsible for the collection and predication and promulgation of that intelligence, I firmly believe he and every president must have it.
So let me just ask you, you and I have talked about this a number of times, and this has come up before in a number of different contexts.
But as I've always said, I think Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is the most important law that most Americans have never heard of.
But when I was questioning my fellow Texan, John Ratcliffe, who now has been confirmed as the director of the CIA, about this...
We talked about some of the reforms that have been made to Section 702 over the years.
This has been an ongoing conversation here in Congress.
People like my colleague here, Senator Lee, and others have proposed reforms, which I think have gone a long way to help protect the privacy rights of American citizens.
But let me just point out some of the improvements that have been made over the years.
This is not the same 702 that was in effect during President Trump's first terms.
These are a number of things that we did together on a bipartisan basis to make sure that the balance between the national security interests of the American people and the privacy and constitutional rights of American citizens were protected.
And I think Senator Tillis, with his typical outstanding graphics, has a wonderful handout which lays all of that out.
But one of the things that's come up, and we've discussed this, is the idea that in order to query lawfully collected intelligence under Section 702, that somehow, if a U.S. person's name is involved, that a warrant would be required.
Now, you're a lawyer who's represented defendants as a public defender.
You understand that what probable cause is required, what sort of evidence is required.
To be produced to a judge in order to get a warrant, do you believe a warrant requirement is a practical and workable or even a necessary element of 702?
Having a background not only utilizing FISA and 702 as a national security prosecutor, but as a civilian at JSOC and later as an intelligence official and the deputy director of national intelligence, 702 collection The issue for me is not with FISA and 702.
The issue has been those that have been in government service and abused it in the past.
And so we must work with Congress to provide the...
Protections necessary for American citizens.
Dealing with these matters, including hostage rescue operations in real time, which we use FISA collection to find and save American hostages, having a warrant requirement to go through that information in real time is just not comportive with the requirement to protect American citizenry.
I'm all open to working with Congress on finding a better way forward, but right now...
These improvements that you've made go a long way.
Well, and Director Ratcliffe said that he did not believe that given the context of 702 collection, whether a foreign target communicates with a U.S. person, that there would be sufficient evidence to go to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or any other court to demonstrate probable cause.
And similarly, do you agree that tools like Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act can be used appropriately to protect national security?
But they can also be abused by people who are willing to cross a line they should not cross.
They're both true, and that's why we need to work together to make sure Americans have trust again in these surveillance measures that we utilize to protect our country.
Mr. Patel, I think you know that I have great respect for the men and women of the FBI, their mission, fidelity, bravery, integrity.
I believe they deserve a director who respects our work and sacrifices, and they deserve a director who's focused on their mission.
This is not about bingo cards or games.
This is not about revenge.
This is about the safety of our country and the people that work in the FBI.
And the FBI runs on facts.
It runs on truth.
Truth matters.
And without truth, the whole system breaks down.
You said...
That Donald Trump has every right to tell the world that in 2020, 2016, and every other election in between was rigged by our government because they were.
I will put that statement on the record, but I think everyone in this committee, including the Republican members, knows that these statements were rejected by courts.
You were asked about the police officers in the Capitol who testified in the January 6th hearings, and you accused them of lying.
Your mission, though, has been to go after people.
I've looked at it.
I've read this stuff.
Yes or no?
When Trump wins, did you say this?
When Trump wins in 2024 and is in power in 2025, we can prosecute them, referring to Justice Department officials for an actual RICO statute violation for criminally organizing the United States government to break the law to rig presidential elections.
Okay, he said about you, you would never be able to command the respect necessary to run the day-to-day operations of the Bureau.
That was actually in writing in his book.
He had virtually, about you, no experience that would qualify you to serve at the highest level of the world's preeminent law enforcement agency, and that your appointment, as noted by Senator Durbin as Deputy Director to the FBI, would happen over his dead body.
Is it, yes or no, why you would put him on the list of deep state as a former Attorney General Trump, Attorney General of the United States?
Because he wouldn't break the law for Donald Trump.
As you know, he repeatedly told the President in no uncertain terms that he did not see evidence of fraud that would have affected the outcome of the election.
Did you say in February of 2021 that the election stuff was never my job and I stayed all of it all?
Is it true, though, that in December of 2020, you reached out to the Trump acting deputy attorney general and asked him to investigate a conspiracy theory claiming that people in Italy had used military technology and satellites to remotely tamper with voting machines in the U.S. and switch votes for Trump from Biden to...
You have said that the FBI, including today, you said that they remain utterly corrupt.
This is an agency with agents who have taken down terrorists, taken down bank robbers, taken down crime.
And you wrote that the FBI has become so thoroughly compromised that it will remain a threat to the people unless drastic measures are taken.
Do you know that under Chris Wray's leadership, he took over at a very difficult time, we all know that, appointed by President Trump, that during his tenure, the applications to the FBI has, in fact, tripled?
Do you think people would be applying to that agency, like in those numbers, if they thought it was so corrupt?
Before I call on Senator Lee, could he just answer the question if he said that the FBI headquarters, where they investigate cybercrime and terrorism, should be shut down and open as a deep state, as a museum?
Did he say that the headquarters should be shut down?
I deserve an answer to that question.
He is asking to be head of the FBI, and he said that their headquarters should be shut down.
If the best attacks on me are going to be false accusations and grotesque mischaracterizations, the only thing this body is doing is defeating the credibility of the men and women at the FBI.
I stood with them here in this country.
In every theater of war we have, I was on the ground in service of this nation and any.
Accusations leveled against me that I would somehow put political bias before the Constitution are grotesquely unfair.
And I will have you reminded that I have been endorsed by over 300,000 law enforcement officers to become the next director of the FBI.
During that time, on January 6th, I was serving as Chief of Staff at the Department of Defense.
And days prior, we had received the authorization from the President to issue the National Guard to protect you and your colleagues.
But as you know, the law requires a request before the deployment of that Guard.
That request did not come in until the afternoon of January 6th.
Once that request came in, this unfortunately, as has been confirmed by his own testimony, I believe, the Secretary of the Army, Ryan McCarthy, failed.
to immediately deploy the National Guard and instead took a break to speak to media and make personal phone calls.
That endangered the safety of you and your colleagues.
And if you look at the Biden Inspector General report, we at the Department of Defense Authorized the fastest cold start of the National Guard since World War II and the largest occupation since the American Civil War, and the Biden Justice Department said that we, including myself as Chief of Staff when it came to the deployment, employment, and National Guard acted swiftly and without undue delay.
The Uniform Code of Military Justice is for uniformed officers who betray the code of justice and also act inappropriately.
And I thought, any delay.
To have the National Guard arrive on scene here must be called out, whether it was a fellow Republican or not, especially someone under my auspices running the Department of Defense.
I do find it significant that we've heard all kinds of aspersions cast in your direction by people who do not know you, by people who do not share your worldview, by people who do not share your commitment to the Constitution or your commitment to public service.
I find it astounding that they're willing to say this amidst such great ignorance, and I find it equally heartening.
That the 56 former FBI officials who know you best, who have worked with you, who actually know who you are, who actually share your view of the Constitution, of the view that you ought to be a law enforcement agency and not a weapon of political warfare, these are the people who stand by you.
Those who cast aspersions don't share those views.
Let's talk about the Fourth Amendment for a moment.
The Fourth Amendment tells us that in order for the government...
To breach your expectation of privacy relative to your person, your home, your papers.
If they want to search that, if they want to seize you, they've got to get a warrant.
That warrant has to describe with particularity the persons or places to be searched or to be seized and to connect them up with a showing of probable cause.
Now, in the case of FISA-702, we're dealing with a somewhat different universe.
Now, moments ago, we heard some discussion.
About FISA-702, about suddenly we've got a different FISA-702 than what we had when President Trump was last in office.
And there was also some back-and-forth discussion about FISA-702 and the use of it and the fact that in real time it might not work to get a warrant.
This, in my view...
This is the point.
The concern that the American people have with FISA-702 is not about the real-time collection of communications regarding foreign targets.
The concern is that once those communications are stored, you have within them what are referred to as incidentally collected communications of Americans.
Text messages, emails.
Recorded phone calls and so forth.
If they want to go in and search for someone, let's say you, if someone wants to go into one of those databases after they've been collected, let's say if you're unwittingly communicating with somebody who, unbeknownst to you, happens to be an agent of a foreign power or otherwise under surveillance under FISA 702.
If they wanted to search for you, they wanted to enter your name, your phone number, your email address, or some other personal electronic identifier, would they have to get a warrant?
Under current law, they routinely access that without getting a warrant.
In order to access it, they've got their own internal procedures.
They're not supposed to use this for light or transient reasons.
They're supposed to have a perfectly good reason.
And yet we found that on hundreds of thousands of occasions, they have accessed the private communications of Americans searching for those individual Americans.
By name, by number, by email address, whatever it is, without a warrant or anything tantamount to it.
On occasion, they've even been used for overtly nefarious reasons.
One agent deciding to look in on his father because he suspected his father might be having an extramarital affair.
On another occasion, an agent looked at people who were thinking about renting an apartment from him to make sure they were upstanding citizens and could be trusted.
We would never breach the trust of the American people.
Do you know what they were lying?
I was willing to believe that they thought they were telling the truth, but they were mistaken But they were lying time has told us they were lying you will not lie and that's why I wholeheartedly support you In the closing seconds that I have, I want to add my dismay and my disgust for the fact that you've been smeared, you've been attacked.
You've been associated with racism, with being a Nazi.
You are none of those things, sir.
Just as your father lived as a racial minority in Uganda, you've been raised as a racial minority in this country, and you've been nothing but a patriot.
Your commitment to the Constitution, to the rule of law, and to the American people is remarkable.
And I'm honored to know you, to call you my friend, and to give you my vote.
Mr. Patel, to you and your family, congratulations on your nomination.
And we had a constructive conversation last week.
I appreciate your taking the time.
In particular, a conversation about the prosecution of the World Cup bombing in Uganda that took the life of a Delawarean whose family I knew I found moving.
But the role you've been nominated for is central, central to our security as a nation, central to the protection of our constitutional rights.
And I voted to confirm Trump's previous FBI director, Chris Wray.
I believe he's lived up to the Bureau's motto of serving with fidelity, bravery, and integrity.
And I also think my vote for him and for many of Trump's cabinet in his first term shows I take my constitutional advice and consent role seriously and do not reflexively vote against his nominees.
I look at three factors when I assess a nominee.
Qualifications and experience.
Policy views and whether they're in the best interest of the American people and character and capacity to do the job independently where called for.
My colleagues have referenced quotes from Attorney General Barr, National Security Advisor Bolton.
The FBI is enormous, 38,000 agents, $9 billion budget.
I am troubled by your lack of senior law enforcement leadership.
We disagree on some important policy views, but the thing that bothers me the most is a whole series of statements you've made in a variety of settings that suggest you would struggle to be independent from White House direction or control, as has long been the modern history of the FBI.
Who does the director of the FBI work for, Mr. Patel?
Attorney General Bondi gave a different answer when I asked her the same question, that they work for the Constitution and the American people.
President Trump's made clear in public statements he wants to use the FBI to persecute political adversaries.
He's publicly said that folks ranging from Liz Cheney to Adam Kinzinger to former Vice President Harris should be investigated and criminally prosecuted.
If President Trump were to order you to open an investigation into any of these individuals, let's say Vice President Harris, would you?
Senator, this question speaks directly to my ability to leave political bias and allow independent behavior to be the only guiding light.
As a public defender, I learned that in the harshest of arenas.
Law enforcement investigation if I'm confirmed that the FBI will only be launched on the following qualification: a factual, articulable, legal basis to do so.
The president has said publicly that he will allow the FBI to remain independent, and I have said as much as well.
So if FBI agents brought to you a factual, legal basis, predication, and you are about to refer it to a prosecutor, and you get a call from the White House saying, "Don't proceed." This is a major donor.
So your predecessor, I went back and looked and I asked the same questions of Director Comey and Director Wray.
Director Wray, quoting former Attorney General Bell, said you should be willing to resign, if necessary, over conduct if you're pressed to engage in it that's unethical, illegal or unconstitutional.
Mr. Patel, your predecessors in this role have been clear that they would be willing to resign if forced or directed to do something unethical or illegal.
I'll proceed.
One of your past statements that's concerned me, it's both a post on Truth Social and something you said in a podcast, the Sean Morgan report, that your predecessor, Chris Wray, has broken the law.
We need to prosecute him.
The FBI should go after people like him.
And the month before this, July 2023, you said there should be a criminal referral for FBI Director Wray.
If confirmed, are you going to follow through on these previous statements that Director Wray needs to be prosecuted?
Senator, this reminds me of the conversation you and I had, which I greatly appreciated.
There is enough violent crime in this country and enough national security threats in this country that the FBI is going to be busy going forward preventing 100,000 overdoses, 100,000 rapes, and 17,000 homicides.
As the co-chair of the Law Enforcement Caucus with Senator Cornyn, One of the things I've worked hard on, and I hope to continue being able to work hard on with this administration, is partnership between federal, state, and local law enforcement to pursue violent crime.
You did say, as my colleague asked, and I look for a longer answer, that you want to close the FBI Bureau's headquarters on day one.
How would shutting down the FBI headquarters impact its ability to prosecute violent crime and drug traffickers?
It was to highlight the significantly greater point that I was actually making in that interview, which is well documented over and over again.
38,000 FBI employees.
7,500 FBI employees work in the Washington Field Office and Hoover Building alone.
If you increase that aperture just slightly to encompass the National Capital Region, that is 11,000 FBI employees work in the National Capital Region.
A third of the workforce for the FBI works in Washington, D.C. I am fully committed to having that workforce go out into the interior of their country, where I live, west of the Mississippi.
I work with sheriff's departments and local officers and having one agent prevent one homicide and having one agent in Washington prevent one rape.
And I will do that over and over and over again because the American people deserve the resources, not in Washington, D.C., but in the rest of the country.
Before I call on Senator Hawley, I'd like to enter letters into the record from scores of state attorneys general, former U.S. attorneys, former U.S. Department of Justice officials who support the nominee.
They state, quote, Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I enjoyed our conversation in my office a while back.
Let me ask you this.
Is it appropriate?
For the Federal Bureau of Investigation to attempt to recruit spies or informants into religious institutions in this country, particularly Catholic parishes.
Mr. Patel, are you familiar with the recent actions of the FBI in this regard, including this memo that I have right here?
Making a list of Catholic churches and parishes that they regard as potentially suspect and directing the potential recruitment of informants and other spies, let's be honest, into those parishes?
Mr. Patel, would you commit to me that you will, if you are confirmed, that you will finally and officially withdraw this memo?
And make it clear that this is not only unacceptable, but that it is an absolute violation of the First Amendment that every American joins under the Constitution of the United States.
Will you also commit to me that you will conduct an investigation and find out who wrote this memo?
Who spread this memo?
The field office is involved in this memo, because I can tell you we've had your predecessor sit right where you're sitting, and he has repeatedly, repeatedly lied to, there's no other word for it, lied to this committee.
He told us initially...
That it didn't happen.
That the FBI didn't make any lists of churches.
That's not true.
We have it.
A whistleblower brought forward the list for us.
He said then that only one field office had worked on it.
Turns out we know from another whistleblower, multiple field offices worked on it.
He said that it was never posted on the internal system.
It turns out it was.
We believe it's still in effect.
Will you find out who was involved in this gross abuse of Americans' First Amendment rights?
And will you discipline them?
And if you possibly can, will you fire them?
unidentified
Senator, you have my commitment to investigate any matters such as this one that are important to Congress.
I will fully utilize, if confirmed, the investigative powers of the FBI to give you the information you require and also to hold those accountable who violated the sacred trust placed in them at the FBI.
I'm glad to hear you say that and I'm glad you used the word sacred trust because that's exactly what it is.
The FBI is the most powerful law enforcement body in this nation.
Arguably the most powerful law enforcement body, at least in a free nation in the world.
And to have this body corrupted politically such that it is targeting people of faith in this country and then lying about it to this committee of the American people is unimaginable.
I'll be honest with you.
I never thought this would happen in the United States of America.
I just didn't.
If you had told me five years ago we'd be reading memos like this, I would have said, no way.
No way.
That's bad fiction.
In fact, it's a horrible reality.
The department needs to be cleaned up, the agency does, and rights restored and protected.
I'm glad to hear you say that.
Let me ask you this.
Do you think it is appropriate for the FBI to be sending agents, including counterterrorism agents, to the parents of children who went to school board meetings and asked about critical race theory in their schools, asked about the school's masking policy during COVID?
Should those parents be treated as domestic terrorists?
parents who have the courage to ensure their children are taught what they feel is right and those who have the courage of their convictions to go houses of worship in my book will never be domestic terrorists I'm delighted to hear you say that.
You're familiar, I am sure, with this memorandum issued by the Attorney General, the last Attorney General, Merrick Garland, directing the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to look into Parents who went to these school board meetings,
and we know from whistleblowers who've come forward to this committee and given us the evidence that in fact the FBI opened multiple cases against multiple parents across the nation, I believe including in my home state of Missouri, another gross abuse, incredible political power brought to bear against everyday citizens.
Do you think it's appropriate for the FBI to target people of faith, particularly those who hold pro-life convictions?
Do you think it's appropriate for the FBI to single out and target people of faith in order to discourage the exercise of their First Amendment rights?
The FBI and DOJ together brought numerous, numerous prosecutions under the FACE Act for nonviolent protests.
President Trump has recently pardoned some of these folks, but it also includes individuals like Mark Houck from Philadelphia region, from Pennsylvania, who had an FBI SWAT team arrive at his door in the early hours of the morning, armed, of course, terrorizing him and his children, took him into custody.
Because he took his young son to a peaceful demonstration outside an abortion clinic.
When his young son was shoved to the ground, he defended him.
Mark Houck was acquitted by a jury.
Acquitted.
Nevertheless, the FBI used their full resources, including a SWAT team, to try and terrorize him.
Meanwhile, how many...
Churches that were firebombed or pregnancy care centers that were firebombed, how many of them were protected by the last administration?
Just about zero.
It is an unbelievable instance of targeting.
Mr. Patel, will you end this targeting?
If you get to the FBI, if you are confirmed, will you end it?
And will you make clear to all agency personnel that there can be no targeting on the basis of religious belief and this will never happen again in the United States of America, at least not under your watch?
Senator, if confirmed, and it speaks to an issue we were talking about earlier, there will be no such targeting if I'm confirmed as FBI director.
And the resources of the FBI, which are funded by the American taxpayer dollars, in the seven minutes that you and I have been talking about, two people have died from fentanyl overdoses, one person has been shot to death in this country, and three people have been raped.
The resources of the FBI will go to that mission set and that mission set alone, because America deserves a better brand of justice, and I'm going to give it to them.
Do you think it's appropriate for the FBI to try and pressure the largest technology corporations in the world, the most powerful corporations in the world, social media companies, do you think it's appropriate for the FBI to pressure them to censor the political speech of everyday American citizens to try and violate the First Amendment?
Senator, if confirmed, I will work with Congress to expose any corrupt activities the FBI has participated in, especially involved in the censorship of free speech.
Because we know from the court cases that have been brought across this country, and we know from the voluminous factual finding that was done as in the record, that the FBI and other agencies of this government under the last administration Senator
At almost exactly the moment that you were talking to me, the Department of Justice was firing more than a dozen lawyers who worked with the special counsel, Jack Smith, simply because they were involved in that case.
You've committed That the FBI will not be politicized.
So here's your first test.
Will you commit that you will not tolerate the firing of the FBI agents who worked with the special counsel's office on these investigations?
And I'm not going to accept that answer, because if you can't commit that those FBI agents will be protected from political retribution, we can't accept you as FBI director.
That is a test of professional diligence because it is the measure of whether you will stand up and say no to the president if he gives you an unlawful or illegal order.
And you know about the song that, in fact, you produced, you promoted, and you used to, as you put it, support, raise awareness and support for the political prisoners still locked in jail.
You won't stand behind your own statements made in tweets, countless of them.
As a matter of fact, as you put it to Steve Bannon on his show, then we went into a studio and recorded it, mastered it, digitized it, and put it as a song.
No part of that song or anything I've done in my 16 years of government service glorifies or advocates for violence against law enforcement.
And the fact that you would be willing to say that in front of these people in the American audience shows how much of a divide we actually have to restore a law enforcement that is constitutionally based, de-weaponized, and depoliticized.
You have my commitment to do that.
In your office, we had a lot of common ground.
I'm committed to working with you on things like Section 230 and making sure the I welcome your statement, Mr. Patel.
And it doesn't go to your credibility in denying you know who these people are after.
And I have to say, in this tweet and in others, I have a raft of them.
I'm going to ask the chairman that they be...
made a part of the record if there's no objection without objection you glorified you promoted you supported these individuals Ronald Sadlin he struck an officer in the head hand and shoulders and grabbed another officer was he a political prisoner I don't know who that is senator well the simple fact is that You knew about
the J-6 choir.
You knew what they did in assaulting and endangering police officers who sought to defend the Capitol on that day, were severely injured, and some, as a consequence, died.
I think the FBI deserves better.
The men and women in the FBI put their lives on the line every day.
I've worked with them as United States Attorney for four and a half years, and then as Attorney General off and on for 20 years.
I've admired them for the 14 years that I've been in this body.
As we turn to Senator Cruz, I'll notice that the statement that he has up does say without trial, and I think that plays some role in the context of that statement.
Thank you for saying yes when President Trump asked you to serve in this role.
I think there are very few roles in all of government that are more important than director of the FBI.
And there are very few roles in all of government that are more in need of a fundamental change.
You and I have both spent much of our adult lives working in and around law enforcement.
The loss of respect from the American people of the FBI and of the Department of Justice is one of the most tragic developments of the last four years.
Both the Department of Justice and the FBI have a long history of being apolitical, outside of politics, of being faithful to and focused on upholding the rule of law.
And keeping the American people safe.
And in many ways, the worst legacy, in my opinion, of the Biden administration was the complete politicization and weaponization of both the Department of Justice and the FBI, turning them into tools to attack the perceived enemies of the Biden White House.
Now, you have been charged with going in and restoring integrity of the FBI.
That is not going to be an easy task.
But before you can carry out that task, and I am confident you will be confirmed and you will be in the position to carry out that task, you've got to make it through the gauntlet of the Senate Judiciary Committee and my colleagues on the Democrat side of the aisle who I don't know how many spots On Senator Tillis' bingo card have been filled, but it looks like he's playing blackout and they're all filled right now.
But you will be and have been accused of just about everything they can, but I want to focus on what several Democrats have done recently, which is trying to blame you for the violence that occurred on January 6th, which even in the annals of ridiculous attacks, This one really takes the cake.
So let's just focus on some facts.
Let me ask you a question.
What role did you occupy in the days immediately before January 6th?
On that day specifically, responding to preparing to mobilize and deploy the National Guard once we got the lawful request from the local governing authority, which was the mayor of D.C. and the Speaker of the House.
We were in the Oval Office on an unrelated national security matter with the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and myself.
And the President authorized up to 20,000-plus National Guards men and women to secure any security measures necessary related to the Capitol.
So we were moving to the fullest extent of the law before the requisite request.
You know, I have to say it is ludicrous but sadly predictable that Democrats are endeavoring to tarnish you, to paint a false caricature.
Based on innuendo and smoke, and so you're working to protect the Capitol on January 6th, and yet they're trying to blame you for the violence that occurred.
Let me ask you this just as a straightforward matter.
What is the job of the FBI, and what will the FBI's role be if and when you are confirmed as its director?
As part of my responsibility as a member of this committee, I ask the following two initial questions of all nominees before any of my committees.
Since you became a legal adult, have you ever made unwanted requests for sexual favors or committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature?
Mr. Patel, you have been a champion of the January 6 prison choir.
You have stated that the choir's members were, quote, incarcerated as a result of their involvement in the January 6, 2021 protest for election integrity, end quote.
One of the choir members is Julian.
Cater, who pled guilty, he pled guilty to assaulting officers with a deadly weapon.
On January 6th, he attacked Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick with pepper spray.
And the next day, Officer Sicknick suffered from two strokes and died.
Mr. Patel, was Mr. Cater protesting for election integrity?
You're not willing to say that, but you were willing to describe this choir as consisting of people who were protesting for election integrity, and yet you testify you don't know them.
We have heard already your book includes a list of 60 people who you think make up part of the executive branch Deep State.
Mr. Patel, if confirmed, do you plan to investigate President Trump's former FBI Director Christopher Wray?
I've made that commitment to many of your colleagues who have tribal issues and tribal crimes plaguing their communities, and I'll make that commitment to you as well, Senator.
My time is almost up, but I would like to note that on the many questions asked about the choir, the J6 choir, it included at least five men who pled guilty to assaulting police officers.
And these are the people whose record this nominee promotes.
Okay, we'll go to Senator Kennedy next, and then as directed by the chairman, we will take a 30-minute recess at the conclusion of Senator Kennedy's questioning.
As my FBI agents, the BRIC agents, told me when I was running cases with them across this country and around the world, if you're not taking off some people, you're not doing your job right.
Not just that, but what a political party was doing with a secure compartment and information facility with direct access to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Do you remember when the Inspector General, not his colleagues, turned him in, Inspector General found that Mr. Peter Strzok said, quote, sent an email to his girlfriend, quote, just went to a Southern Virginia Walmart.
Senator, I think if anyone commits a wrong in government service, the American public deserve to know the absolute secular detail of that corrupt activity.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, here we freaking go.
Kash Patel on fire today.
On fire!
Thank you so much for watching our program, The Benny Show, shouted out by hysterical, unhinged Democrats who we triggered their salty tears.
They fill our cup.
The salt, it flows right into our cup.
Thank you so much, Senator Klobuchar.
We really appreciate it.
We literally drink your tears.
What is going on inside of the Senate?
Republicans are asking question after question after question of Kash Patel about how the FBI has been weaponized as a flipping terrorist organization against the American people.
There are too many instances to count, but let's begin by having FBI agents persecute and prosecute innocent J6ers, by having them spy on Christians, by having them torture pro-life activists.
By having them turn the other way for BLM and Antifa.
By having them give pardons, literally, to Hunter Biden, Joe Biden.
Never investigating any Democrat.
This is Democrat privilege, well known in Washington, D.C. And Democrats on the other side of the dais are losing their damned minds over the fact that the Democrat privilege stops now.
And it's ending.
And what Cash Bertel is simply doing is resetting the table.
And how many times have you heard them bitch and mule scream and cry about podcast appearances, about the January 6th choir?
How many questions have there been asked about the January 6th choir?
By the way, when we were having dinner with President Trump a couple weeks ago, what I mean by that is we were seated with Trump right at dinner at Mar-a-Lago.
The first song that Donald Trump played, he pulled out his iPad, and he played the January 6th choir.
That was the first song he played was Kash Patel's...
I don't think it was actually Kash Patel, but Kash Patel assisted in the promotion of this.
So did I!
I thought it was an amazing song.
It's just the January 6th choir singing the national anthem?
And then President Trump saying the Pledge of Allegiance.
That's what they're talking about.
They're obsessed over it.
They're losing their minds over this.
You'd think that Democrats would ask about, I don't know, fentanyl, sex trafficking, murders, rapes, crime statistics, transnational criminals, mass shootings, anything that the FBI is supposed to do to help the American people, but they continue.
To do this absurdity, this blue-anon, broke-brain absurdity where they're, like, losing their minds over somebody's memes.
Which, by the way, we have a meme for you here, ladies and gentlemen.
Here's Amy Klobuchar doing the cat meme.
Ladies and gentlemen, Amy Klobuchar doing the cat meme along with many of the...
Let's do that one, but then let's do the other one, please.
Doing the cat meme.
Send Klein, please.
The cat meme.
Ladies and gentlemen, Amy Klobuchar did the meme.
She did it.
Zoom, zoom, zoom.
Let's see all of these special little...
These have been our hearing memes.
Look at this.
Dude, the battle of the civilization, of Western civilization, will be won by the Alpha Chad men who stare as the hysterical, psychotic, overly medicated cat ladies scream and shriek.
Here we go.
They did the meme.
We caught them.
Caught him lacking, as they say.
They did the meme, and Kat Patel is the perfect cat.
Maybe we'll call him Kat Patel for just a moment.
Here is a little bit of that exchange with Amy Klobuchar when she shouts out your boy!
She shouted out our show!
To our great honor, ladies and gentlemen, I just want to put this up.
It is our great honor that The Benny Show triggered hysterical Senate Democrats in their unhinged psychotic meltdowns against Cash Patel.
We love your salty tears.
They are delicious.
They fill our cup.
They taste like gumdrop smiles.
Cash has always spoken truth on our show in his many, many appearances.
We have Cash's back 100% of the time.
By the way, if you're just tuning in, ladies and gentlemen, you are watching the number one stream for Cash Patel's hearing.
You are watching the number one fastest streaming show.
Give us a subscribe.
Give us a subscribe.
You will not be disappointed.
Not only is the chat on fire, but also we will give you the front row seat to the golden era.
We had some things planned in DC actually today.
But we're unable to travel there due, of course, to the crisis in Washington, D.C. with the 70 dead Americans and also some Russians.
We're going to get to Donald Trump's press briefing on that in just a moment.
And Kash Patel will be back in 30 minutes, they said.
And they've kept to time as of yet.
A couple of senators have gone over, but we expect them to keep to time with this hearing.
So we want to get to a ton of breaking news.
Also, Tulsi Gabbard.
Ladies and gentlemen, you are in the right place.
This is your front row seat to the golden era.
Here is Senate Democrats getting triggered by our program.
Give us a sub and get punched like for that alone, ladies and gentlemen.
Producer Alex, can you please send to the chat your posts about Amy Klobuchar?
Amy Klobuchar is so unhinged.
She made her staff eat salads with a comb because they forgot to bring her a fork.
She apparently, according to anonymous staff reports, is the biggest sociopath in the entire Senate, as evidenced.
By her absolute psychotic meltdowns and literal physical abuse, Democrat presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar ate a salad with a comb after berating aid for not bringing her a fork.
Okay, not particularly hard to find forks, but nonetheless, here she is.
Do we also have a photo of Amy Klobuchar announcing her doomed presidential race?
She was entering the presidential race in 2020 in the middle of a gigantic blizzard.
She could barely speak.
She was shivering from the cold.
She had snow in her hair.
People call her the snow woman for this.
And she spent the entire speech talking about global warming and how terrible it is for America.
President Trump blames Biden, Democrats, for DC plane crash that has killed 70 and unqualified FAA employees.
For putting policy first instead of human lives.
President Trump has been on a rampage at the White House.
I'm going to play you what President Trump has said from the press dais.
This is President Trump's first time in the press room.
People are even trying to blame.
Can you imagine this?
Trump's been in office for a week.
And people are trying to blame Donald Trump for the cataclysmic crash that killed, again, I believe, can I get an accurate number, ALX?
I believe it is 70 Americans at least.
It's horrifying.
If you're...
If you're just joining us or if this news is new to you, a Blackhawk helicopter smashed into a commercial airline, an American airline, right over this very high traffic D.C. airport called Reagan National Airport.
And there were no survivors, including the service members.
And there's now a rampage to figure out what the hell happened.
This is, of course, a very popular airport.
This is where every senator and every congressman flies in and out of.
Yeah, the president flies out of here, right?
64. 64, okay, I want to get this number correct.
64 confirmed deceased as of now.
It is a total tragedy.
Here's the president speaking just moments ago at the White House explaining what happened.
I speak to you this morning in an hour of anguish for a nation just...
Before 9 p.m. last night, an American Airlines regional jet carrying 60 passengers and four crew collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter carrying three military service members over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., while on final approach to Reagan National Airport.
Both aircraft crashed instantly and were immediately submerged into the icy waters of the Potomac.
Real tragedy.
The massive search and rescue mission was underway throughout the night, leveraging every asset at our disposal, and I have to say the local, state, federal, military, including the United States Coast Guard in particular, they've done a phenomenal job.
So this is President Trump setting the table, ladies and gentlemen, setting the table for what now his rapid response team at the White House is laying the groundwork for, which is...
President Trump doesn't even have his people in office yet.
Libs are, in my timeline, trying to blame this on Trump.
Oh, this is all Trump's fault!
No, ladies and gentlemen, this has been a long erosion of these standards at the FAA.
This started with Obama.
We'll play you this Tucker clip in just a moment, but I'm going to let President Trump speak here about what he believes is the true root of the We must have only the highest standards for
I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary.
You remember that.
Only the highest aptitude, they have to be the highest intellect and psychologically superior people were allowed to qualify for air traffic controllers.
That was not so prior to getting there when I arrived.
2016, I made that change very early on because I always felt this was a job that-- and other jobs, too-- but this was a job that had to be superior intelligence.
And we didn't really have that, and we had it.
And then when I left office and Biden took over, he changed them back to lower than ever before.
I put safety first.
Obama, Biden, and the Democrats put policy first.
And they put politics at a level that nobody's ever seen, because this was the lowest level.
Their policy was horrible, and their politics was even worse.
So, as you know, last week, long before the crash, I signed an executive order restoring our higher standards for air traffic controllers and other important jobs throughout the country.
So it was very interesting.
About a week ago, almost upon entering office, I signed something last week that was an executive order, very powerful, on restoring the highest standards of air traffic controllers and others, by the way.
And my administration will set the highest possible bar for aviation safety.
We have to have our smartest people.
It doesn't matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are.
It matters intellect, talent, the word talent.
You have to be talented, naturally talented geniuses.
Yeah, well, let me tell you what, ladies and gentlemen, that standard came back and came back with a vengeance during Joe Biden's reign of terror on this nation.
And now is deserving of the critique that is going to get.
And I have a feeling seeing President Trump this angry at the White House today is going to be the start of something.
He's already purged, obviously, a number of DEI offices and DEI hires across the federal government.
But he was...
President Trump was livid today.
I want to get to an update from Pete Hegseth, because we haven't seen Pete Hegseth in this position, and he's in charge of the Department of Defense.
He's handling this with great aplomb.
He's done...
Nothing but be open and transparent about everything going on, recording his own videos at his own desk, explaining to the American public what's happening.
I think he did a bang-up job here talking about the investigation into why these pilots couldn't see the aircraft.
Again, I want to echo what the Transportation Secretary said about your leadership.
From the moment we found out about this, we were in contact with the White House trying to determine exactly what happened.
I would echo it as well.
No excuses.
We're going to get to the bottom of this.
We first and foremost from the Defense Department want to pass our condolences to the 64 souls and their families that were affected by this.
Never should happen.
And certainly the three service members, the three soldiers, a young captain, staff sergeant, and a CW-2 chief warrant officer on a routine annual retraining of night flights on a standard corridor.
For a continuity of government mission.
The military does dangerous things.
It does routine things on the regular basis.
Tragically, last night, a mistake was made.
I think the President is right.
There was some sort of an elevation issue that we have immediately begun investigating at the DOD and Army level.
Army CID is on the ground investigating.
Top-tier aviation assets inside the DOD are investigating, sir, to get to the bottom of it so that it does not happen again because it's absolutely unacceptable.
But I want to echo what the Transportation Secretary and you, Mr. President, said because it pertains to the DOD as well.
We will have the best and brightest in every position possible.
As you said in your inaugural, it is colorblind and merit-based.
The best leaders possible, whether it's flying Blackhawks and flying airplanes, leading platoons, or in government.
The era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department, and we need the best and brightest, whether it's in our air traffic control, or whether it's in our generals, or whether it's throughout government.
So thank you for your leadership and courage on that, sir, and we'll stand by you on it.
I want to get us some Tulsi clips here before we're back with Kash Patel, but one thing my producers continue to flag to me is this clip where CNN's Caitlin Collins, who's taken the place of Jim Acosta, who's just fired or...
Quit, depending on which version of the story that you wish to believe.
Either way, he's gone at CNN and now he's starting a substack.
I'm sure that's going to be really successful, Jim.
I don't yet know the names of the 67 people who were killed.
And you are blaming Democrats and DEI policies and air traffic control and seemingly The member of the U.S. military who was flying that Black Hawk helicopter.
Don't you think you're getting ahead of the investigation right now?
I just want to reemphasize something the President said, and you've heard from the Secretary of Transportation and of Defense.
There really was a whole-of-government response.
We were all on the phone.
We were all communicating yesterday, trying to get to the bottom of this immediately, but also try to communicate with the American people about what happened.
Something the president said that I think bears re-emphasizing, which is that when you don't have the best standards in who you're hiring, it means, on the one hand, you're not getting the best people in government.
But on the other hand, it puts stresses on the people who are already there.
And I think that is a core part of what President Trump is going to bring and has already brought to Washington, D.C., is we want to hire the best people because we want the best people at air traffic control, and we want to make sure we have enough people at air traffic control who are actually competent to do the job.
If you go back to just some of the headlines over the past 10 years, you have many hundreds of people suing the government because they would like to be air traffic controllers, but they were turned away because of the color of their skin.
That policy ends under Donald Trump's leadership because safety is the first priority of our aviation industry.
The fact is, what truly unsettles my political opponents is I refuse to be their puppet.
I have no love for Assad or Gaddafi or any dictator.
I just hate al-Qaeda.
I hate that we have leaders who cozy up to Islamist extremists, minimizing them to so-called rebels.
As Jake Sullivan said to Hillary Clinton, quote, al-Qaeda is on our side in Syria.
Well, Syria is now controlled by an Al-Qaeda offshoot, HTS, led by an Islamist jihadist who danced in the streets on 9-11 and who was responsible for the killing of many American service members.
Democrat senators in the past resorted to anti-Christian bigotry against some of President Trump's judicial nominees like Amy Coney Barrett and Brian Boucher.
I condemn those actions as a Democrat in Congress at the time, as religious bigotry must be thoroughly condemned by all of us, no matter the religion.
Unfortunately, there are some Democrat senators who still don't understand the principle of freedom of religion in Article 6 of the Constitution.
Quote, no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
Unfortunately, they're once again using the religious bigotry card, but this time trying to foment religious bigotry against Hindus and Hinduism.
If anyone is sincerely interested in knowing more about my own personal spiritual path of Hinduism, I welcome you to go to my account on X where I'll share more on this topic.
If confirmed as Director of National Intelligence, I will continue to live by the oath that I have sworn at least eight times in my life, both in uniform and as a member of Congress.
I will support and defend our God-given freedoms enshrined in the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.
The American people elected Donald Trump as their president not once but twice.
And yet the FBI and intelligence agencies were politicized by his opponents to undermine his presidency and falsely portray him as a puppet of Putin.
Title I of FISA was used illegally to obtain a warrant to spy on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page using a Clinton campaign-funded false dossier as their so-called evidence.
Biden campaign advisor Tony Blinken was the impetus for the 51 former senior intelligence officials' letter dismissing Hunter Biden's laptop as disinformation specifically to help Biden win the election.
Former DNI James Clapper lied to this committee in 2013, denying the existence of programs that facilitated the mass collection of millions of Americans' phone and Internet records, yet was never held accountable.
Under John Brennan's leadership, the CIA abused its power to spy on Congress, to dodge oversight, lied about doing it until he was caught, and yet has never been held responsible.
Under Biden, the FBI abused its power for political reasons to try to surveil Catholics who attend traditional Latin Mass, labeling them as quote-unquote radical traditionalist Catholics.
Personally, just 24 hours after I criticized Kamala Harris and her nomination, I was placed on a secret domestic terror watch list called Quiet Skies.
Wonderful and refreshing and exciting for us, actually.
We got a tingle watching those who come on this program, who have stated their vision and their belief and outlined it live on this show to us, who respect this audience, who respect this movement, respect what we're building, to watch them be put in such high positions of honor.
We're just so proud of this moment, frankly.
Cash Patel at FBI and Tulsi Gabbard.
For Director of National Intelligence.
Both are doing incredible today.
Both are doing incredible today, and we wish to show zero favoritism.
We just simply are so fixated on the FBI and its torturous routine against the American people.
We are going to take the cash hearing, and the cash hearing will be live back in seconds.
If you do tune in to our program, and if you have been a longtime listener, then you certainly have seen cash and Tulsi.
Dozens of times on the show, at least, we haven't really tallied them, enough to have Democrats lose their minds over our show and shout it out.
All the more reason, ladies and gentlemen, why you should watch our show on a Patriot Mobile device.
Patriot Mobile is a sponsor of our program.
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All right, ladies and gentlemen, as we await, you can see here, this is the Cash Patel sort of holding screen.
That's not Cash Live.
That was from earlier.
You can see the senators are sort of retaking their seats, and it says that the hearing will resume shortly.
So we'll be back to that hearing.
Let's pop on over, ladies and gentlemen, to Tulsi Gabbard.
One more.
Very interesting commentary from Tulsi about the disastrous intelligence that led to the war in Iraq, a war that Tulsi Gabbard fought in so she would know more than any of these blowhard Democrat senators.
Tulsi Gabbard just doing a spectacular job, ringing like a bell.
For too long, faulty, inadequate, or weaponized intelligence have led to costly failures.
And the undermining of our national security and God-given freedoms enshrined in the Constitution.
The most obvious example of one of these failures is our invasion of Iraq based upon a total fabrication or complete failure of intelligence.
This disastrous decision led to the deaths of tens of thousands of American soldiers, millions of people in the Middle East, mass migration, destabilization, and undermining of the security and stability of our European allies.
The rise of ISIS, strengthening of al-Qaeda and other Islamist jihadist groups, and strengthening Iran.