Sept. 16, 2025 - Tim Pool Daily Show
02:06:35
Participants
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Cash Patel is expected to testify before Congress very soon. | ||
| And so uh we'll be going live with you this morning. | ||
| We have it pulled up and we are currently waiting. | ||
| But in the meantime, of course, we can go over some of the latest news theories, conspiracies, and and so much more about what we're currently seeing with the Charlie Kirk assassination case and the breaking news around it. | ||
| There's of course a lot of other breaking news. | ||
| Trump bombed a boat of narco-terrorists, or I should say, I haven't read the story. | ||
| Uh the Trump administration has said they have bombed a boat of narco-terrorists, and I always I always take a little take it with a little bit of grain of salt. | ||
| But I will say this. | ||
| The times when they bombed the wrong person, they don't publicly admit it. | ||
| So if they're coming out and they're saying, hey, look at this image, look at this video, we bombed these guys. | ||
| But could you imagine if Trump was like, hey, we just blew up this button narco-terrorists. | ||
| Are you sure? | ||
| No. | ||
| It'd be kind of crazy if someone was like, actually, it turns out they're not. | ||
| And Trump would be like, whoops. | ||
| So I'm pretty sure when they're going to publicly declare a thing, they they, you know, cross their T's dot their eyes. | ||
| All of that good stuff, my friends. | ||
| So we are currently waiting. | ||
| Uh the hearing to begin. | ||
| They're always late, of course. | ||
| Uh coverage begins at nine a.m. | ||
| It's expected to begin first thing. | ||
| I imagine this one will be pretty long, but considering the answers we are looking for pertaining to the Kirk assassination, as well as the handling of the FBI. | ||
| We will uh we'll grab this one for you. | ||
| But in the meantime, I ask you guys to uh share this live stream. | ||
| It's the most powerful way to help. | ||
| We are in a crazy time of social media. | ||
| And it's almost impossible to actually share stuff anymore, if you've noticed. | ||
| I mean, there's acts. | ||
| But even on Facebook, the reach is diminished and almost worthless. | ||
| They censor half the things you post. | ||
| YouTube doesn't have a direct share function, technically, unless you have subscribers. | ||
| So, yeah, they're they're really working overtime to make sure that we can't share. | ||
| Uh, so it looks like we have the uh welcome. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's beginning. | |
| I might need to crank the volume up. | ||
| Uh observe. | ||
| This is our annual FBI oversight hearing. | ||
| We meet today in the aftermath assassination of Kirk, a school shooting, and the senseless murder of Ukrainian refugees, and also to remember several weeks ago the killings in Minnesota. | ||
| Charlie Kirk was a man of God, faith, family, and country. | ||
| I pray for his wife Erica, children, the whole family. | ||
| God bless you, Charlie Kirk. | ||
| I've asked uh Director Patel for an update today on this matter. | ||
| As we proceed with the hearing, Dr. Patel, Director Patel. | ||
| I'd like to note that you've agreed to one 10-minute round of questioning. | ||
| That's more time than your predecessor agreed to. | ||
| When Director Ray appeared before this committee, he left early to go on a family vacation, and he wanted me to think it was business he had to conduct. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Since your confirmation, you've been acquainted with the bureaucracy that you must uh reform and hold accountable, and that's no simple task. | ||
| You begun the important work of returning the FBI to its law enforcement mission. | ||
| According to the FBI, since January 20th of this year, the FBI has been involved in the arrest of more than 23,000 violent criminals. | ||
| This year, the FBI assisted in the arrest of more than 1,500 child predators and 300 human traffickers. | ||
| I think Cash is doing a good job. | ||
| And this year, the FBI helped rescue more than 4,000 children from predators. | ||
| FBI teams nationwide are working alongside immigration and custom enforcement. | ||
| This teamwork has resulted in the arrest and removal of a historic number of violent criminal aliens, gang members, and child sex offenders. | ||
| Those are overwhelmingly better records than at least two of your past predecessors. | ||
| During the Ray era at the FBI, the Bureau reallocated resources from child crimes to January 6th work. | ||
| You've also moved agents from headquarters to field offices to better assign align with their law enforcement mission. | ||
| Under your leadership, the FBI has apprehended several most wanted fugitives and secured the extradition of senior leaders of the Central American gangs like MS-13. | ||
| Well, it's well understood that your predecessor left you an FBI infected with politics. | ||
| Understatement. | ||
| I'm going to provide examples of that today, including making public new whistleblower records. | ||
| At your nomination hearing, I made public records that whistleblowers provide me about Arctic frost. | ||
| Arctic Frost was the FBI case opened and approved by anti-trust Trump FBI agent Tebow. | ||
| Arctic Frost then became Jack Smith's elector case against then Citizen Trump and now President Trump. | ||
| These new records show that Arctic frost was much broader than just an electoral matter. | ||
| The case was expanded to Republican organizations. | ||
| Some examples of the group that Ray FBI sought to place under political investigation, included the Republican National Committee, Republican Attorney General's Association, and various Trump political groups. | ||
| In total, 92 Republican targets, including Republican groups and Republican-linked individuals, were placed under investigative scope of Arctic Frost. | ||
| On that political list was one of Charlie Kirk's group's turning point USA. | ||
| In other words, Arctic Frost wasn't just a case to politically investigate Trump. | ||
| It was the vehicle by which partisan FBI agents and Department of Justice prosecutors could achieve their partisan ends and improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus. | ||
| So today, Senator Johnson and I are making these records public for the entire country to see, and I hope a lot of people are interested in seeing what government can do when various agencies have a political agenda. | ||
| My investigative work has also exposed the political way in which Peter Navarro was investigated and prosecuted. | ||
| When FBI agent Tebow found out that Biden's DOJ would prosecute Navarro, he said, wow, great. | ||
| That's a quote unquote. | ||
| Through whistleblowers, I've obtained a audio recording of special agent Gio Gardina and Special Agent Sebastian Gardner's delivery of a subpoena to Navarro. | ||
| I make in that audio public today. | ||
| In a court document filed by the Department of Justice, Navarro's interaction with the FBI was unfairly described as quote unquote the word combative. | ||
| That intervention with Navarro was just as a justification to later aggressively arrest him. | ||
| Then we get to the Clinton Annex and the Durham Annex. | ||
| The Clinton Annex showed that the Comey FBI had evidence necessary to complete the Clinton investigation, the one about her mishandling of emails and classified information, but the FBI never did its job because it never reviewed the evidence at that time. | ||
| The Durban Annex showed that the Clinton campaign had a plan to falsely tie Trump to Russia, yet the Comey FBI failed to investigate that information. | ||
| Instead, the Comey FBI used the discredited Clinton campaign-funded steel dossier to advance cross-fire hurricane against Trump. | ||
| Director Patel. | ||
| Thanks in a large part to you. | ||
| Both annexes were finally declassified. | ||
| That may be history, but it's history to make sure we don't repeat the history of the past. | ||
| And the people ought to be concerned when the weaponization of government is used in this way, whether it's done by Republicans or Democrats. | ||
| Last Congress, I made public an FBI document called 1023 4 that alleged A bribery scheme with the Biden family. | ||
| To date, the FBI has never answered Congress whether they investigated the text messages, the audio files, and the financial records referenced in that 1023. | ||
| Whistleblowers have provided my office with two additional FBI 1023 documents. | ||
| These documents memorialize statements from FBI sources. | ||
| These two new 1023 documents are from separate FBI confidential human sources during different years. | ||
| So in total, we now have three different FBI confidential human sources providing information about the Biden family and potential criminal conduct. | ||
| Today, Senator Johnson and I are releasing these records. | ||
| Let me say this for the partisan media, the people that are supposed to be policemen of our Republican form of government. | ||
| We aren't saying the allegations are true. | ||
| We want to know what the FBI did to fully investigate their lack thereof and what they concluded. | ||
| Let's put this matter to rest one way or the other. | ||
| Starting with my chairmanship, I've given one example after another of disgraceful partisan weaponization by federal law enforcement. | ||
| Since the Trump administration took power, many FBI agents have been removed. | ||
| The removal included agents and prosecutors who became partisan weapons that lost their way, and I've made records public to prove it. | ||
| And many of my whistleblowers were aggressively retaliated against by some FBI agents who were subsequently fired. | ||
| One FBI whistleblower publicly said of these terminations, quote, ensuring that they no longer work at the FBI isn't retribution, it's responsible leadership, end of quote. | ||
| Which brings me to my final and favorite topic, whistleblowers. | ||
| In August, ten of my whistle, ten of my FBI whistleblowers secured compensation agreement because of your leadership, Director Patel. | ||
| It included a mix of reinstatement of the to the FBI, reinstatement of security clearances, and monetary compensation. | ||
| At the beginning of this month, another of my FBI whistleblowers got their job back. | ||
| All told across government agencies, almost 20 whistleblowers have received fixes to their retaliation. | ||
| Today, you'll get a lot of grief from some members of this committee, but in the short amount of time you've been director, you've corrected whistleblower retaliation, increased transparency more than any other FBI director I've seen, whether that FBI director was appointed by Republicans or Democrats. | ||
| And I've been around here more than anybody else on this committee. | ||
| I yield to Senator Dermott. | ||
| Thanks, Chairman Grassley, for holding this oversight hearing during a critical period in the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. | ||
| During my four years as chair, I held four hearings with then FBI Director Ray. | ||
| As a reminder to Republicans who claimed the Biden administration weaponized the FBI, President Biden retained Director Ray, a lifelong Republican, who was President Trump's nominee for the office. | ||
| After his second election in an unprecedented move, President Trump forced out Director Ray and nominated Cash Patel, arguably the most partisan FBI director ever. | ||
| Director Patel came to the FBI with a political mission, and he spelled it out in writing in detail. | ||
| He wrote government gangsters, quote, the rot at the core of the FBI is not just scandalous, it's an existential threat to our Republican form of government. | ||
| End quote. | ||
| And with the power of his office and the blessings of the president, he attacked the FBI with a vengeance. | ||
| Mr. Patel had falsely claimed the FBI, quote, was planning January 6th for a year, end quote. | ||
| He even went so far as to produce a song by the January 6 rioters who violently assaulted police officers in the Capitol. | ||
| He compiled an enemies list of public servants he called government gangsters, like former FBI Director Muller, whom Patel called, quote, an utter swamp creature. | ||
| Former Trump officials who served with Mr. Patel warned us he would weaponize the FBI to protect the President's allies and target his critics. | ||
| And indeed, Director Patel has already inflicted untold damage on the FBI, putting our national security and public safety at risk. | ||
| Since January 20th, the Trump administration has engaged in an unprecedented purge of FBI officials. | ||
| As we heard from highly credible whistleblowers, Mr. Patel was involved in directing this purge even before he was confirmed, despite his sworn testimony to this committee. | ||
| It began with terminations and forced retirements of all six nonpartisan career officials who run all six branches of the FBI, the executive assistant directors. | ||
| Since then, at least 18 of the 53 special agents in charge of FBI field offices have been removed, along with many other senior officials. | ||
| Individual individual agents have been targeted for termination simply due to the work that they were assigned, such as January 6th investigation. | ||
| In fact, according to former acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll in a lawsuit filed last week, Director Patel made this very plain, telling Driscoll personally, quote, that his own job depended on the removal of agents who worked on the cases against the president, end quote. | ||
| And even though he knew, quote, the nature nature of summary findings were likely illegal. | ||
| At the same time, Director Patel has installed mega loyalists as political appointees in key career positions, including conspiracy theorist Dan Bongino as FBI deputy director, the first time in the history of the FBI that this position has not been held by a career FBI agent. | ||
| Director Patel has also reportedly initiated loyalty test, loyalty test, requiring dozens of officials to sit for polygraph exams and answer inappropriate questions about whether they've made negative comments about him personally. | ||
| Of course, as is often the case in the Trump administration, the rules apply to thee, but not to me. | ||
| As we understand it from highly credible sources, key members of Director Patel's senior executive team and others on the seventh floor had disqualifying alerts on their initial polygraph exams. | ||
| Well, how did they survive? | ||
| They survived because of a personal waiver by either the director or the attorney general to remain employed by the Bureau. | ||
| Understand the context here. | ||
| Political operatives in key positions given the routine FBI polygram exam failed and had to receive waivers to continue their positions. | ||
| They were lucky to keep their political appointments. | ||
| They were, but the 5,000 career civil servants, the director is so far forced out of the Bureau's ranks, were not offered that same courtesy. | ||
| Five thousand. | ||
| This mass exidence has created a disastrous brain drain, particularly in the fields of cybersecurity, counterterrorism, counterintelligence. | ||
| For example, my office has received information indicating that cuts to the Bureau's cyber division will cut personnel by half, despite the ever-increasing threats posed by adverse foreign actors. | ||
| The brain drain is exacerbated by Director Patel's misuse of remaining FBI personnel resources to focus on other priorities of this administration. | ||
| According to reports, the 25 largest FBI field offices have been ordered to divert 45 percent of their agents from their primary missions to work on the mass deportation of immigrants. | ||
| Just as concerning is Director Patel's plan to hire fewer qualified agents by removing the college decree degree requirement and reducing new agent training at Huanaco from 18 weeks to just eight. | ||
| So we have a brain drain and a significant water ordering down of training. | ||
| Quite a record, Mr. Patel. | ||
| Crime Or has recently fired special agents and others of warned fast tracking inexperienced and improperly trained people into critical national security jeopardizes the Bureau's ability to effectively protect America. | ||
| Director Patel himself had no training or life experience for this position. | ||
| The result of that incompetence is staggering. | ||
| For example, after Attorney General Bondi publicly stated in February that the Epstein client list was, quote, sitting on my desk right now to review. | ||
| That's what she said on Fox. | ||
| Director Patel diverted more than a thousand FBI personnel from their critical missions to work on 24-hour shifts reviewing over a hundred thousand pages of Epstein-related records. | ||
| These personnel were instructed to flag any records in which President Trump was named. | ||
| But that review ended in an unsigned memorandum from DOJ and FBI stating simply there is no incriminating client list, close quote. | ||
| Director Patel still has not responded to my letter from two months ago asking about his role in this cover-up. | ||
| On the day of the horrific shooting of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, Director Patel again sparked mass confusion by incorrectly claiming on social media that the shooter was in custody, which he then had to walk back with another social media post. | ||
| Mr. Patel was so anxious to take credit for finding Mr. Kirk's assassin that he violated one of the basics of effective law enforcement. | ||
| At critical stages of an investigation, shut up and let the professionals do their job. | ||
| Notably, Director Patel recently forced out special agent in charge at Salt Lake City, my am Said, a counterterrorism expert with 20 years experience who would have led this high profile profile investigation. | ||
| The men and women who serve at the FBI and the American people deserve a director who has the ability and the character to restore the Bureau to its place as the preeminent law enforcement agency. | ||
| I want to close on a personal note. | ||
| I came of age in the 1960s. | ||
| We experienced a number of horrific assassinations, including President John Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King. | ||
| We are going through a similar period of division and political violence. | ||
| All of us in public life on both sides of the aisle have a responsibility to bring down the temperature and to work to unite the American people. | ||
| Let's be clear. | ||
| Republicans are not Nazis and Democrats are not evil, as Mr. Patel has claimed. | ||
| Democrats are not responsible for the murder of Charlie Kirk and Republicans were not responsible for the murder of Melissa Hortman. | ||
| Our political opponents are not our enemies. | ||
| We are all Americans and we should be working together to keep the American people safe and protect their constitutional rights. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| You please uh stand so I could swear. | ||
| Sworn in, let's go. | ||
| Do you affirm that the testimony you're about to give before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. | ||
| So help you God. | ||
| Please be seated and you can give your statement now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Durbin, and members of the committee. | ||
| It's an honor to be here with you today as the ninth director of the FBI. | ||
| I want to provide by providing a briefing into the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk. | ||
| It's important that this FBI is transparent as possible without jeopardizing investigations. | ||
| Charlie Kirk was shot at 1223 a.m. excuse me p.m. on September 10th. | ||
| I think this timeline is critically important. | ||
| Less than a day later, the FBI at my direction released the first set of images of the suspect that we captured based on our analysis on the ground. | ||
| Later that evening, while conducting extensive interviews and cell phone analysis, and also flying out evidence response teams and hostage rescue teams and evidence tacticians who were collecting evidence in live time and flying them back to Washington, D.C. in our laboratories for media analyses. | ||
| We were able to extract video from the campus feed and at my direction at 8 p.m. in partnership and promise to working with the public to bring this fugitive to justice. | ||
| We released a newly uh never be never before seen video of the suspect. | ||
| We also released new enhanced photos of the suspect. | ||
| A few hours later, that suspect was in custody, pursuant to the interrogation of the suspect's own father who stated when I saw that video that you released, I recognized it was my son, and I confronted him, and he was handed over to lawful law enforcement authorities. | ||
| That is the FBI working with the public as a promise, being transparent and provided critical information along the way in the manhunt for the suspect or suspects involved in Charlie's assassination. | ||
| We received over 11,000 tips in the first 24 hours alone. | ||
| We received 16,000 submissions to our digital media enterprise and tip lines. | ||
| That is a large number of material to go through. | ||
| I want to thank President Trump and the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, for their unwavering support and commitment resources to this and all investigations. | ||
| I also want to specially thank our colleagues in Utah, the governor's office, DPS, and the sheriffs out there. | ||
| State and local law enforcement partnership has been a cornerstone since I took over at the FBI, and it was no different here. | ||
| And our teams in Salt Lake City, our SACs out there across the country, our lab tacticians in Quanaco who raced to complete the evidence analysis so the public could have the answers they need. | ||
| These people worked through the night without sleep for days on end. | ||
| They are to be commended. | ||
| They are not to be attacked. | ||
| And many, many, many more people I don't have time to thank here today. | ||
| But I do want to thank the American people especially. | ||
| The mission of the FBI is for them and with them and by with and through them. | ||
| And it's that mission and that ethos that I brought to this investigation and so many others, and that's why that suspect is in custody. | ||
| We cannot do our job without the American public and credible reporting in the media. | ||
| And that's why Tyler Robinson is in custody today, about to face charges. | ||
| The last time I appeared before this committee was in January for my confirmation hearing. | ||
| I told you then that if I were confirmed, I would provide and do everything I can to provide a safe and secure America. | ||
| I promised to provide the courageous men and women of the FBI the tools and resources they need to crush violent crime and defend the homeland. | ||
| I pledged myself to commit to full transparency, oversight, and accountability so we could restore the public's trust in the FBI. | ||
| That's exactly what I've done. | ||
| Under this administration, the FBI has arrested more than 23,000 violent criminals. | ||
| That's more than twice for the same time period from last year alone. | ||
| 23,000, more than twice from the same time period last year. | ||
| We've taken off over 6,000 illegal firearms off the streets. | ||
| That number is an exponential increase. | ||
| We've identified and located more than 4,700 child victims. | ||
| More than 4,700 child victims have been found by this FBI. | ||
| That is a 35% increase from the same time period last year. | ||
| 1,500 child predators have been arrested. | ||
| That's a 5% increase from the same time last year. | ||
| 300 human traffickers have been arrested. | ||
| That's a 10% increase from the same time last year. | ||
| Over 350 members of Trende Aragua, foreign terrorist organization, have been arrested, and we have 42 ongoing cases. | ||
| That is a 250% increase from the same time last year. | ||
| Those are just some of the things the FBI is doing differently and better because we are leading the mission to crush violent crime and defend the homeland. | ||
| We have also arrested four captured four top ten fugitives from the FBI's top 10 most wanted list. | ||
| To put that in perspective, that's the same amount I've captured in seven months than my predecessor did during the entirety of the Biden administration. | ||
| Those are real results, and the credit is to the men and women at the FBI. | ||
| We've been able to achieve these results because the FBI recognizes violent crime doesn't just happen in Washington, D.C. That's why one of my first decisions as a director was to get the people, the Bureau's professional staff out to the field. | ||
| And we've done that with great speed. | ||
| In every single one of your districts and states has received a plus up of FBI personnel agents and special operators to the tune of almost a thousand. | ||
| We did that because crime had unexpectedly and unacceptably exploded across the country. | ||
| In fact, one of the stats that the American people should thank the FBI the most for we are on track to have the lowest murder rate in modern American history. | ||
| The lowest murder rate by double digit percentages. | ||
| A major factor in the drop of this violent crime is the FBI's flagship operation Summer Heat. | ||
| We use this initiative at the direction of the President and the Attorney General, surging resources to our major and mid-major cities across America, conducting intelligence-based operations to target the worst of the worst, to target the gangs, to target the transnational organizations, to target the TCOs, and to target the drug trafficking cartels. | ||
| And we have taken them out city by city. | ||
| There's a lot of work left to be done, but we're off to a great start. | ||
| Just ask the citizens of Seattle, Miami, Memphis, Charlotte, Chicago, and so many more places, specifically in New Orleans and Nashville alone. | ||
| There has been an increase in the number of violent crime arrests by an average of 250% for each of those cities. | ||
| And there has been a drastic reduction in crime across the board in mid-major cities across this country, thanks to the men and women of the FBI. | ||
| How are we doing that? | ||
| We are attacking the drug epidemic. | ||
| We've seized nearly a thousand kilograms of meth and cocaine off the streets of America. | ||
| We've taken over 1,600, 1,600 kilograms of fentanyl off the streets. | ||
| Maybe one of the greatest achievements we have this year, 1,600 kilograms of fentanyl. | ||
| That's a 25% increase from the same time last year. | ||
| To put things in perspective, that's enough fentanyl to kill a third of the American populace, 115 million Americans. | ||
| We're also going after the companies that manufacture these precursors overseas in places like mainland China and their cutting agents. | ||
| In fact, this month in Cincinnati, we announced groundbreaking charges aimed at the individuals and businesses responsible for flooding these opioids and their precursors and cutting agents into the streets of America. | ||
| And for the first time that I can remember, we are charging these businesses and enterprises, not just in America, but in mainland China and seizing their operational necessity to have money by seizing their cryptocurrency wallets. | ||
| We're also equally important to protecting the homeland. | ||
| We know we have a no-fail mission. | ||
| We're committed to keeping our nation safe from terrorism, cyber attacks, and foreign adversaries. | ||
| Whether stopping threats inspired by foreign terrorist organizations or loan wolf actors or sponsored by hostile nation states. | ||
| This year, we've already made nearly 60 counterintelligence arrests. | ||
| 60 counterintelligence arrests this year alone is a 30% increase from the same time period last year for the CI work at the FBI. | ||
| I'm proud when we can share our successes, such as when an espionage charge was brought against an active duty U.S. Navy sailor caught spying for the People's Republic of China. | ||
| But I want the American people to know the FBI is protecting the homeland from foreign adversaries in a way that will never make the news, and a lot of the good work that they do will never be able to discuss in this setting. | ||
| We're working on cyber threats. | ||
| We're attacking malware infrastructure, going after ransomware attackers, delivering a new partnership with the private public sector engagements we've taken with the companies who are attacked by these foreign adversaries and nation state actors and individual enterprise rings from around the world. | ||
| We are combating salt typhoon, vault typhoon, flax typhoon, and so many other ransomware and cyber threats this nation faces. | ||
| We're also arresting people such as uh Tajik National In Brooklyn, who is suspected of sending tens of thousands of dollars to support ISIS. | ||
| We're going after the new form of what I refer to as modern day terrorism in America, 764 crimes that involve harming our children by going after them online, causing self-mutilation, suicide, sexual abuse, and steering them in the wrong direction. | ||
| Currently we have 3,500 international terrorism investigations. | ||
| Specifically, we have in this country 1,700 domestic terrorism investigations, a large chunk of which are nihilistic violent extremism, NVE. | ||
| Those who engage in violent acts motivated by a deep hatred of society, whatever that justification they seem is. | ||
| The FBI has seen a 300% increase in cases opened this year alone versus the same time last year. | ||
| In the last couple of months, the FBI secured a guilty plea for a man in Tennessee who tacked an energy facility with drones and explosives. | ||
| We secured the indictment of a violent Sinaloa cartel faction leader in Chicago or narco-terrorism charges. | ||
| Our folks in San Francisco excuse me, Sacramento collaborated with domestic and international partners to secure a guilty plea for leader of a transnational terrorist organization who solicited the murder of federal officials. | ||
| But the Bureau's job is not done. | ||
| I'm committed to this transparency. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, you alluded to our work with Congress. | ||
| To date, in the seven months that I've been FBI Director, we have produced 33,000 pages to the United States Congress. | ||
| 33,000 pages. | ||
| Just to put that in perspective, my predecessor in his seven-year term issued 13,000 pages to Congress. | ||
| And his predecessor in his four-year term issued 3,000 pages to Congress. | ||
| I've issued 33,000 pages in seven months, and we're going to keep going. | ||
| I'm dedicated to restoring the trust that the public has and needs and the integrity at the FBI, and it's being done every day by the men and women of the FBI. | ||
| Now I know that there's a lot of talk about Epstein. | ||
| And I'm here to testify that the original sin in the Epstein case was the way it was initially brought by Mr. Acosta back in 2006. | ||
| The original case involved a very limited search warrant or set of search warrants and didn't take as much investigatory material, it should have ceased. | ||
| If I were the FBI director, then it wouldn't have happened. | ||
| The search warrants were limited to small time periods to include 2002 to 2005 and 1997 to 2001. | ||
| Mr. Casa allowed Epstein to enter in 2008 to a plea and non-prosecution agreement, which then the courts issued mandates and protective orders legally prohibiting anyone from ever seeing that material ever again without the permission of the court. | ||
| The non-prosecution agreements also barred future prosecutions for those involved at that time of those individuals. | ||
| Still, this administration at the direction of President Trump has done more to turn over all the credible information we are legally able to do so, and we will continue to work with Congress to achieve that end. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Under the direction of the President, we excuse me, thank you for your support for our mission to working to jointly deliver transparency and congressional oversight to the United States. | ||
| Lastly, I want to close with the President's initiative here in Washington, D.C., as an example of what we're doing around the country. | ||
| And I think our next city is Memphis. | ||
| 21,000 arrests in DC with our federal partners, a huge decrease in violent crime. | ||
| 60 percent decrease in gun crimes in Washington, D.C. in the last month, 74 percent decrease in carjackings in Washington, D.C. in the last month, 53 percent decrease in homicides in Washington, D.C. in the last month. | ||
| The drugs are disappearing, people are freely walking around the states, and we're storing the nation's capital to its glory. | ||
| That work is through the interagency process that the FBI is proud to be a part of and the initiative spearheaded by President Trump and the Attorney General. | ||
| And perhaps most notably for investigations in Washington itself, it was the intelligence that the FBI gathered through our source network here in DC that helped us identify the suspects in the horrific murder of the DC intern Eric Tarpinian. | ||
| We're proud to be a part of that investigation. | ||
| We're proud to put the resources to bear of the FBI. | ||
| And in closing, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee and ranking member Durbin, I'm honored to be the ninth director of the FBI. | ||
| I'm not going anywhere. | ||
| If you want to criticize my 16 years of service, please bring it on. | ||
| Over to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's go. | |
| No, we can't hear you, buddy. | ||
| His mic's off. | ||
| Um I've observed uh when whether it's Republican or Democrats want a yes or no answer, that uh the witness and the senators talking over each other. | ||
| So I thought what I'd do this time rather than have that happen, if there's something you don't get a chance to answer because of the demeanor of a Republican or Democrat senator before we uh when we get done with that uh questioner, I'd give you a chance to fill in if there's something you didn't didn't get a chance to say. | ||
| Uh since 2019, I've sought greater transparency about Jeffrey Epstein and the government handling of the matter. | ||
| I've continued to investigate during this Congress. | ||
| Director Patel, was Jeffrey Epstein an intelligence asset for the United States government or the foreign government? | ||
| And if so, which agencies or governments? | ||
| Mr. Chairman, I can only speak to the FBI as the director of the FBI, and Mr. Epstein was not a source for the FBI. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Uh would you commit to providing my office with all classified and unclassified records relating to the Epstein matter? | ||
| I will commit to providing all records. | ||
| I'm legally permitted to do so under the court orders. | ||
| It seems to me that uh I accept your answer to my question, but the broader intelligence community ought to answer these questions as well. | ||
| Uh victims deserve an answer. | ||
| Uh regarding the initial FBI 1023 uh document that I made public last Congress. | ||
| That document mentioned one text messages, two audio recordings, and three financial records that allegedly proved a bribery screen scheme with the uh Biden family in foreign interest. | ||
| Regarding those records, did the Ray FBI make any effort to determine whether they existed? | ||
| Uh, did the F uh Ray FBI make any effort to obtain those records? | ||
| Not to my knowledge, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Since this matter hasn't been fully investigated, the FBI has an obligation to the public to do exactly that and figure out why it wasn't investigated. | ||
| Uh next question. | ||
| Uh I've done a lot of oversight relating to sexual misconduct by the FBI agents. | ||
| In fact, I believe this is something I discussed with Ray, one of his appearances before this committee. | ||
| According to the FBI inspection division, it opened nearly 300 investigations based on sexual misconduct referrals between 2017 and 2024. | ||
| According to whistleblowers of Biden Ray uh FBI totally dropped the ball on this question. | ||
| One credible accusation of sexual misconduct is uh too many, of course. | ||
| Are you committed to reviewing the Bureau's policies to ensure responsible responses to uh credible allegations of misconduct that they're swift and adequately protect victims? | ||
| Yes, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Relating to a similar subject during child uh crimes and sexual misconduct related investigations, are any private sector companies less than cooperative with you? | ||
| What improvements in information sharing need to be made to catch those criminals? | ||
| Mr. Chairman, we can always do better with their private sector companies. | ||
| I've reached out to uh the leaders of most of them asking them to provide more material so that we can be responsive and take legal action and protect the youth of this country. | ||
| Um I'm happy to discuss you know possible legislation that we can do to allow for these companies to continue. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Say maybe one inch up on the microphone. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| Not I think you're close enough, but I think it's just a little bit lower. | ||
| When you raise your head, it's uh difficult to hear. | ||
| Uh Director Patel, since 2021, I have raised concerns about the Biden administration failure to properly vet Afghan evacuees. | ||
| U Director Gabbard informed my office that as of August 2022, approximately 1,600 evacuees located in the United States had ties to uh terrorism and other derogatory information. | ||
| That's why I and many others have opposed bills giving blanket approval. | ||
| Are you aware of what steps your predecessor took to investigate these evacuees? | ||
| And what steps have you taken to investigate them? | ||
| And what, if any, national security current concerns still exist? | ||
| Mr. Chairman, I can't speak to the steps my predecessor took, but I will um uh make sure we do a sweeping review and get back to you on that. | ||
| As far as the Afghan refugees and evacuees um, as during my tenure, we are going through the databases to make sure that no known or suspected terrorists enter this country to harm our nation. | ||
| And also, as my resolve as FBI director, one of the first acts we undertook was a mant of one of the Abbey Gate bombers and leaders in that crime spree that killed 13 brave Americans. | ||
| And within two weeks, within two weeks, we caught one of the leaders of the Abbey Gate bomber and brought him to justice here in two weeks from Pakistan. | ||
| And so my commitment to you on Afghanistan in all matters is complete and without border. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Through my and other investigations, we found that the Biden administration lost thousands of undocumented children. | ||
| We never heard a peep from uh uh senators wanting to help find them, even after I invited them to do so. | ||
| In September 2025, uh the Trump Health and Human Services announced the creation of an interagency crime coordinator cell uh to find these and other mislead uh missing children. | ||
| That interagency group report reportedly includes your agency. | ||
| Uh what resources and personnel have the FBI assigned to this new interagency effort, and what steps have the FBI taken to assist in locating missing children uh that the incompetent Biden administration lost? | ||
| Protecting our youth is maybe the top priority for the FBI. | ||
| Um, as it specifically relates to your question, Mr. Chairman, as I stated, we've surged resources not just to this cell, but across the nation to our FBI's field office to locate children who have been trafficked, who have been victims of sexual abuse. | ||
| And we have located 4,700 children in the seven months since I've been FBI director. | ||
| And that is a 35 percent increase from the same time period last year. | ||
| And we're not stopping, and we're committed to doing that work on our tribal lands as well, and we are finding victims of child trafficking and child abuse every county and every district, and we're not gonna stop. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Um as I mentioned during my opening, I'm releasing documents with Senator Johnson about Arctic Frost. | ||
| Specifically, the documents show its scope expanded to include 92 Republican organizations. | ||
| From evidence that I've seen, it looks to me like another political hit job against Republicans. | ||
| What steps has the FBI taken to make sure improperly predicated investigations and weaponizations like this don't happen again? | ||
| The simple answer, Mr. Chairman, is the FBI will only bring cases that are based in fact and law and have a legal basis to do so. | ||
| And anyone that does otherwise will not be employed at the FBI. | ||
| We are doing a prospective and retrospective analysis of individuals who may have weaponized the department and the agency. | ||
| And as I have committed to you during my confirmation hearing and my conversations with you, this FBI will not be weaponized anymore in either side of the aisle. | ||
| In June of this year, I raised concerns about the FBI's use of resit restricted access and prohibited access systems. | ||
| According to the FBI, quote, when search teams uh when search teams that exist in a prohibited uh access status cases are searched in sentinel, uh the particular search will receive a false native sentencing uh search response, end of quote. | ||
| Clearly, this is not only uh affects FBI agents. | ||
| It impacts congressional requests and court cases, and the Biden administration used it to thwart oversight. | ||
| How are you ensuring that restricted access and prohibited access files are produced to Congress during court cases? | ||
| And have you identified any Biden family records in restricted and prohibited status? | ||
| As I have committed to you with the My Transparency Initiative, whether it's restrictive or prohibited, every single thing we can legally provide to Congress, we will. | ||
| We've also restructured how these restrictive and prohibited cases are labeled and provided access to more people in the chain of command so that more people have knowledge of what these restricted and prohibited cases are, including myself and the deputy. | ||
| Do you commit to providing any records that are available? | ||
| I do, sir. | ||
| The uh you publicly said that your team quote found a room that Comey and others hid from the world in the Hoover building full of documents and computer hard drives. | ||
| Uh no one had ever seen or heard of. | ||
| That's a quote from you. | ||
| I've received a whistleblower disclosure that the room contained some information kept outside the FBI record keeping. | ||
| I also have been informed via a whistleblower disclosure that the room included materials related to Special Counsel Mueller, former Director James Comey, and other documents maintained outside of the FBI. | ||
| Has the FBI now reviewed and analyze those records? | ||
| Has the FBI properly recorded the documents? | ||
| And these records are clearly responsive to my as well as my colleagues, congressional requests. | ||
| What steps have you taken to ensure all responsive records are produced to Congress? | ||
| That's what has to be my last question. | ||
| What is supposed to happen is leadership at the FBI is supposed to pursue into the records act correctly store these records that are information management division IMD. | ||
| In this room, we found a plethora of hard drives, computers, hard documents, soft documents that were not so recorded, a voluminous amount of information. | ||
| So we are continuously processing that information. | ||
| So A, we subscribe to the Records Act and commit that those records will be kept permanently at the FBI. | ||
| Two, we are reviewing those materials. | ||
| A lot of those materials are related to ongoing investigations. | ||
| And three, we are on a rolling basis providing Congress the documents that we can, and we will continue to do so. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Senator Durbin. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Uh Director Patel, in addition to the extensive purge of nonpartisan career FBI official reports, reports indicate that dozens of remaining officials have been suggested, have been subjected to polygraph exams to test their loyalty. | ||
| My understanding is that approximately 40 officials have been asked to sit for a polygraph during your administration, and several have been asked whether they have ever made negative comments about you. | ||
| Director Patel, FBI agents pledge their loyalty to the Constitution of the United States, not you personally. | ||
| What is the basis for requiring polygraph exams or your workforce and asking them if they have made negative negative comments about you? | ||
| I don't have a report. | ||
| I don't know what reports you are referring to, ranking member, and I reject any reporting that has false information in it, so I'm not going to respond to that. | ||
| As far as polygraphs go, generally they are always and always have been utilized at the FBI to track down those that leak sensitive in information and have unauthorized disclosures to the media, and we will continue to use them to ensure the integrity of the FBI. | ||
| Did any individual on your senior executive team, the director's advisory team, or who serve in the positions on the seventh floor receive disqualifying alerts on their polygraphs? | ||
| Senator, I'm not going to get into the personnel discussions that were had on a polygraph. | ||
| Those are private discussions, and many of them relate to ongoing investigations. | ||
| Did you or Attorney General Bondy provide any individual with a waiver so they can remain employed after they receive disqualifying alerts on their polygraphs. | ||
| I'll have to get back to you. | ||
| You don't remember that? | ||
| No, sir. | ||
| My priority is protecting the American public, not getting into the weeds of polygraphs. | ||
| And to have a decent memory when you come before a committee. | ||
| I'm happy to talk about all the good work the men and women of the FBI are doing, including providing the lowest crime rate in American history. | ||
| If you want to talk about how to protect the citizens of Chicago, has seen a 30 percent reduction in its murder rate because of the men and women of the FBI. | ||
| I will happily do that. | ||
| The interagency partners and the men and women, the Chicago PD have never been more local law enforcement, please. | ||
| Have you ever seen my testimony across this country where I always lead with our interagency partnerships with state and local law enforcement? | ||
| It is the pillar of what I am doing. | ||
| And on the seventh floor for the first time in FBI history, I have installed police officers and sheriffs right on my seventh floor to report to us every day what's going around the country on the street level, because that is a priority of the FBI and is the only way we are going to work. | ||
| I don't take credit for the anything, but I will defend the men and women of the FBI and the cops that help us get it done. | ||
| You should. | ||
| Director Patel, to your knowledge, did a whistleblower ever make a disclosure to Attorney General Bondy indicating that the New York Field Office was withholding Epstein-related records? | ||
| I'm not familiar with that whistleblower. | ||
| Whoa. | ||
| There you know that there was such a whistleblower. | ||
| I'm not familiar with that whistleblower. | ||
| In response to the blowback she received, Attorney General Bondi also pushed the FBI to review approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records on an arbitrarily short deadline in March. | ||
| And the FBI was directed to flag any documents that mentioned President Trump. | ||
| Nothing came of that review until July when DOJ and FBI released an unsigned memorandum stating there is no incriminating client list. | ||
| Why was this July 7th memorandum unsigned? | ||
| Would you prefer I've used autopen? | ||
| Well, why was it understanding? | ||
| The memorandum had the insignia of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and in our effort to secure transparency for the American people, because the three prior administrations had not done so. | ||
| We conducted an exhaustive search of everything related to the Epstein cases, and we produced what was legally and permissibly able to be produced to Congress and the American public. | ||
| So there's a congressional subpoena, and we're continuing to do so. | ||
| Did I personally direct what investigation? | ||
| Of the Epstein records for any reference to President Trump. | ||
| Again, you are citing reporting that I think is baseless. | ||
| We conducted an investigation of the Epstein case files pursuant to the direction of the President of the Administration to provide all credible information, and we are working with Congress pursuant to a congressional subpoena to turn over all the documents we can. | ||
| All individuals. | ||
| Who at DOJ and FBI were was responsible for its drafting and conclusions? | ||
| Many individuals at the Department of Justice and the FBI are no lead person? | ||
| The Attorney General leads the Department of Justice, and I lead the FBI. | ||
| So the Attorney General is responsible for that? | ||
| The Attorney General leads the Department of Justice. | ||
| Director Patel, much like you, Deputy Director Don Bongino was a conspiracy theorist who built a lucrative career making inflammatory and unsubstantiated statements about the FBI that would be disqualifying in any administration that cared about nonpartisan law enforcement. | ||
| For instance, Mr. Bongino called the placement of pipe bombs outside the DNC and RNC headquarters on January 6th, quote, an inside job, and went on to say this was a setup. | ||
| I have zero doubt. | ||
| And whoever goes into the FBI, you better get an answer about why. | ||
| Director Patel, you and Deputy Director Bangino are now leading the FBI. | ||
| What is the evidence to suggest the pipe bombs placed outside of the DNC and RNC on January 6th were an inside job? | ||
| I appreciate the opportunity to discuss Director Bongino as my record. | ||
| So many on this committee in the media, Jettison, our 31 years of public service. | ||
| I'm answering the question. | ||
| And I'm going to answer the question. | ||
| The pipe bomb investigation is ongoing, and I'm not going to discuss the details of the pipe bomb investigation. | ||
| Mr. Bongino was a secret service agent for 15 years, a police officer for five. | ||
| I served this country in multiple Administrations for 16 years. | ||
| We were also private citizens, and we are now back in government service. | ||
| And what we have the ability to do is set aside our personal beliefs to deliver the mission of justice for this country, and we're doing it day in and day out. | ||
| And I find it disgusting that everyone and anyone would jettison our 31 years of combined experience that is now at the helm of the FBI delivering historic results at historic speeds for the American people. | ||
| So you have no evidence? | ||
| I got a lot of evidence, and I'll give it to you when I can. | ||
| Looking forward to it. | ||
| There's a New York Times story this morning about Chris Meyer. | ||
| As I understand it, he was your personal pilot, at least for some period of time. | ||
| Mr. Meyer has quite a record himself. | ||
| Flew over 350 hours as an Air Force pilot on three aircraft types in Afghanistan. | ||
| Mr. Jardina, another former FBI agent, a 1999 graduate of U.S. Naval Academy, commanded 100 Marines in combat during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, participated in several firefights, followed up with 2011 deployment as reservist to Afghanistan, where he interrogated senior Taliban officials. | ||
| It appears that you terminated these two agents. | ||
| Why? | ||
| I'm not going to get into personnel decisions that we made. | ||
| This is awesome. | ||
| So you're not accountable for your decisions to take people who served our country so admirably and terminate them without any cause. | ||
| That's a one-sided story. | ||
| Anyone that has been terminated from the FBI generally failed to meet the needs of the FBI and uphold their constitutional duties, and you providing a one-sided story from your perch is absolutely disgraceful because the men and women of the FBI deserve better. | ||
| And your attack on the current leadership of the men and women of the FBI is equally disgraceful because now you're attacking the leaders that are our brave SACs in the country. | ||
| I mean who are doing the job that this country needs. | ||
| We will continue to do it. | ||
| Excuse me, it's disgraceful when Mr. Meyer and Mr. Jardina, who served our country so well are terminated apparently because of the rants of a podcaster. | ||
| That is your opinion. | ||
| It is not a fact. | ||
| Well, it's certainly my opinion I can back up with fact. | ||
| Let me ask you to explain the situation in Baltimore, if you will. | ||
| Did you read the story about the termination of the project in Baltimore? | ||
| Which story? | ||
| 764 group? | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| Which story? | ||
| 764 group, the Baltimore agents were investigating. | ||
| Are you familiar with that? | ||
| No, sir. | ||
| Well, I'm not I'm not going to go into detail. | ||
| It would take too long to do it. | ||
| But apparently that this group, 764, a nihilistic, violent extremist group seeks to blackmail children to perform vile acts on a camera under investigation by Baltimore, which was terminated by you. | ||
| I'd like you to respond in writing, if you will, as to the circumstances of that termination. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Our our operations against NBEs, as you are referring to, has been historically high, and we've taken down multiple NBE rings, including 764 rings, who are harming children and causing them to be mutilated and the other. | ||
| Last question, can you explain why you are eliminating the uh requirements for college degree for your agents? | ||
| I appreciate the opportunity to address that. | ||
| Um you said in your opening statement we are reducing the training requirements at Quantico. | ||
| We are not, we are expanding them. | ||
| You are referring to an 1811 crossover program because I believe the men and women of places like the DEA, the ATF, and the Marshall Service, and the Secret Service who want to work at the FBI should deserve that opportunity in a shortened conbridged program, which we provided. | ||
| We are also keeping the 1818-week BFTC as is traditionally being held at the FBI. | ||
| So we're not reducing any requirements. | ||
| We are increasing those that we bring into the FBI. | ||
| Do you change any of the requirements on college degrees? | ||
| We are allowing police officers who have served for a number of years to come into the FBI who did not obtain the requisite college degree to apply to be federal agents because we feel they have the street level experience we need to conduct this mission. | ||
| I yield, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| He couldn't counter that. | ||
| Cops are good, right? | ||
| I have to respond to this business about you not treating uh employees properly because I uh served under the previous administration when uh uh Democrats willingly turned a blind eye to Biden administration retaliation against my whistleblowers. | ||
| Uh they didn't get due process when their careers and lives were up-ended. | ||
| I'm talking about people like Dina Perkins, Jeffrey Beltry, uh, Timothy Dunan were removed from their positions. | ||
| Several whistleblowers were reported that they targeted FBI employees for the political beliefs by suspending and revoking security clearances. | ||
| One FBI whistleblower said that Perkins, Vetery Dunan, and other FBI leaderships were, quote, responsible for what happened to me and my family, ensuring that they no longer work at the FBI isn't retribution, it's responsible leadership. | ||
| Another whistleblower that is a registered Democrat said they spoke out against abuses and security clearances processes committed by FBI senior leaders, particularly Veltree and Perkins, then Veltree, then Perkins and Dunan suspended their security clearances and put them in unpaid leave. | ||
| I'm going to put some more examples like this in the record so I don't take up a lot of time for my colleagues. | ||
| Thanks, Senator Graham. | ||
| Welcome to the committee. | ||
| The numbers sort of speak for themselves. | ||
| You've done a lot in a small period of time. | ||
| So all those folks out there making this happen, thank them for me. | ||
| As to uh how to be an FBI agent, you've made a decision that uh local law enforcement folks, people who have served uh in law enforcement without a college degree are able to apply now. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Makes sense to me. | ||
| So experience out in the field might be as valuable as a college degree, believe it or not. | ||
| More value. | ||
| Um we're blowing boats out of the water in the Caribbean because they're connected to uh international narco-terrorist groups. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Yes, that mission is being led by the Department of Defense, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| What legal authority do we have to do that? | ||
| Sir, I would defer the questions on legal authority to the attorney general and the department. | ||
| Fair enough. | ||
| Do you believe that uh Maduro runs a narco-terrorism state in Venezuela based on I believe based on the intelligence and prosecutions and investigations we are currently running, a large portion of the cocaine that exits out of South America, its origination point is in Venezuela, and using transshipment points through Haiti? | ||
| They're using the navigable waterways in the Caribbean to the end state delivery, which is the United States of America, and we will hunt down every single one of those narco traffickers with the authorities. | ||
| There's some actual indictments of Maduro as an individual for being involved in that. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Uh Senator, I think you're referring to the DEA indictment on that one. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So I guess the point is, would it be fair to say that Venezuela is a good candidate to be labeled as a state sponsor of terrorism under U.S. law? | ||
| Senator, from from my perch, um, we will provide the intelligence necessary for anyone who meets the threshold to be a state sponsor of terrorism in this administration. | ||
| I think they are, so we'll be going down that road. | ||
| China, uh, on a scale of one to ten, one being nothing, ten being great. | ||
| Um, how is China helping with the fentanyl problem here in the United States? | ||
| Under this administration, we have taken, as I highlighted the Cincinnati case, um, the precursors are the problem. | ||
| The fentanyl is the end state that kills American citizens. | ||
| Precursors are made in China, right? | ||
| They're made in China. | ||
| And so for the first time in a decade, I had a call with my counterpart and the MPS, the Ministry of Public Services, to attack the precursor chemical companies and have those labels, have those chemicals labels. | ||
| We have indicted multiple businesses in China. | ||
| We've also cut off the transit transshipment points of those precursors. | ||
| They switched. | ||
| Once we got on their track about their delivery routes to the Mexican drug cartels directly, they started going to India. | ||
| We call the Indian authorities and they shut down those transshipment points. | ||
| So we're continuing to work with our partnership. | ||
| China is helping, would you say? | ||
| They are starting to help. | ||
| Um, and we are hoping, under this administration's leadership, we can get more. | ||
| Let me know, you know, in the coming months if that continues, because if they are helping, that's a good thing. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| We need to celebrate the breakthrough. | ||
| If they're not, that would be a bad thing. | ||
| Uh so after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, there seems to be one reframe from everybody. | ||
| that's about the effect of social media. | ||
| Do you believe that social media is one of the instruments radicalizing America and inciting violence? | ||
| Well, it's not my belief is based on the data, and the data shows that social media is wildly out of control when it comes to radicalizing. | ||
| So what did you just say? | ||
| This guy's the FBI director. | ||
| He says that social media is wildly out of control. | ||
| Now, free speech, we all agree with that, but you can't yell fire in the theater, right? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Free speech doesn't allow you to go all in and groom a child for sexual No, it does not. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Free speech doesn't allow you to go on the internet and basically incite somebody to kill another person, right? | ||
| Absolutely not. | ||
| So if it's illegal offline, it should be illegal online, agreed, whatever the law is. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Just because you're online doesn't give you a get out of jail free card. | ||
| No, sir. | ||
| So if a parent is worried about a child being bullied on a website, what rights do they have under U.S. law? | ||
| We have to balance the rights, as you said, Senator of free speech versus those that encroach the government. | ||
| Is there any law that can shut down one of these sites for bullying children or allowing sexual predators on the site? | ||
| We are able to attack certain sites on the dark web when it comes to the open internet infrastructure system. | ||
| We have to reach a threshold to attack a company's position that only subscribes to violence. | ||
| Can the parents sue that company? | ||
| They can. | ||
| They can't? | ||
| They can sue not the social media companies. | ||
| That's what I'm talking about. | ||
| They can sue the companies. | ||
| I'm talking about the social media company that gives lives to this behavior. | ||
| No, you're referring to Section 230, sir. | ||
| Would you advocate a sunsetting of Section 230 to bring more liability to the companies who send this stuff out? | ||
| I've advocated that for that for years. | ||
| All right. | ||
| We need to do this, folks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whoa. | |
| These companies are taking content that it makes you sick, that could get you killed, get you poisoned, and there's nothing we can do about it under our law, a person can do about it because of Section 230. | ||
| So if your child is being sexually groomed online or bullied online, and you go to the social media company and ask them to take it down, they refuse. | ||
| You have like zero rights. | ||
| How many images of sexually exploited children are perveyed every year on social media sites? | ||
| The number is astronomical. | ||
| And Senator, if I can just add one step to that analysis. | ||
| Please. | ||
| It's not just what's on social media that is quote unquote real. | ||
| It's the introduction of artificial intelligence and generative AI that is creating even more child sexually abuse material and even more uh sexually uh violent acts online and mimicking people. | ||
| Would you say that the way social media is structured today? | ||
| Really no accountability, 36 million images in 2023 of sexually exploited children. | ||
| That this is a public health hazard? | ||
| It is. | ||
| Would you say that it's a mental health problem, particularly for younger people? | ||
| It absolutely is. | ||
| Do you agree that some of these sites are designed to be addictive? | ||
| I think not only are some of these sites designed to be addictive, unfortunately the reality is some of these sites are designed to generate income. | ||
| And many people are generating income based on this illegal trade. | ||
| Do you think it's now time for America to deal with this problem? | ||
| I'm all in. | ||
| I have been all in, and I'm happy to work with Congress to do so. | ||
| Well, I tell you what, having the FBI director all in is great news for me, and I hope the committee will respond and that we'll be all in, trying to fix a problem that I think is doing a lot of damage to our country. | ||
| When it comes to John Bolton, was there new evidence involved in the raid on his home? | ||
| Sir, that investigation is very much ongoing, as you know, there was a rate of his house pursuant to a legality. | ||
| Was there a warrant up thing to go in? | ||
| Absolutely, sir. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Um We're looking to have that search warrant um unsealed at the end. | ||
| Yeah, I think that would be good, quite frankly. | ||
| Um in December 2023, Director Ray said he sees blinking lights everywhere regarding to foreign terrorist threats against our homeland. | ||
| How would you characterize the state of threats to our homeland by foreign terrorist groups? | ||
| Foreign terrorist organizations have adapted and started utilizing online platforms, and so is the FBI. | ||
| And so while they are adapting, expanding how they harm our country, we have as well. | ||
| They have not stopped. | ||
| There's been a resurgence in places like West Africa and elsewhere of foreign terrorist organizations and also the newly emboldened drug trafficking organizations in Mexico. | ||
| It's going to take a whole of government approach to uh to get the. | ||
| Is Hezbollah fall within that group? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| So Hezbollah is involved in not only terrorism but narco terrorism? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| So DC consider Hezbollah a threat to the United States. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| All right. | ||
| Finally, um. | ||
| Do you have enough people to do all this? | ||
| Do you need more people? | ||
| You're involved in a lot of things, and the numbers speak for themselves. | ||
| You have FBI agents helping here in Washington, D.C., you have FBI agents helping in illegal immigration. | ||
| That's good. | ||
| You've got a chance here to tell us if you need more people. | ||
| Seems to me that threat level of this country is pretty high right now. | ||
| You got thousands of uh domestic terrorism cases. | ||
| How many are being investigated? | ||
| I I think 3,500 off the top of my head. | ||
| 3,500, okay. | ||
| Anyway, it seems your plate is pretty full. | ||
| I would urge you to get with your people. | ||
| And if you think you need more people, now's the time to do it. | ||
| It would be a shame to miss an opportunity to plus up the FBI if the threats justified it. | ||
| Will you look? | ||
| I will look, sir. | ||
| Okay, but are you comfortable you have enough people right now? | ||
| Right now I'm comfortable with the reallocation of agents and personnel outside of Washington, D.C. and plussing up states like South Carolina in double digit numbers, and I'll get back with my team on this one. | ||
| Thank you for your service. | ||
| Senator White House. | ||
| Boy, is my timing good. | ||
| It is very good. | ||
| Director Patel, welcome. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| Um when you were here for your confirmation, we talked about your uh so-called enemies list. | ||
| Um it appears to me that there have been adverse actions of various kinds taken against about 20 of the 60 people on your enemies' list. | ||
| You've been in office for seven months at that rate. | ||
| You've got 14 months until you've hit all 60. | ||
| Can you explain that? | ||
| Again, that is an entirely inaccurate presupposition. | ||
| I do not have an enemies list. | ||
| You can continue to characterize it as you wish. | ||
| The only actions we take, generally speaking, for personnel at the FBI are ones based on merit and qualification and your ability to uphold your constitutional duty. | ||
| You fall short, you don't work there anymore. | ||
| Well, there was a list. | ||
| You don't like it to be called an enemies list, and it had about 60 names, and about 20 have had an adverse action. | ||
| So those are, I think, pretty clear facts. | ||
| Let me move on to your grand jury testimony, which we also talked about uh when you were here. | ||
| Um I think you indicated that you understood that a witness in the grand jury is free to discuss afterwards whatever they told the grand jury. | ||
| Um then went on to suggest saying I can't go into court orders granted by the DC district chief judge, and you want me to violate a court order? | ||
| In those remarks, you fairly plainly suggested that there was a court order of some kind that somehow restricted or limited your ability to discuss your own testimony to that grand jury. | ||
| Since then, that chief judge that you mentioned, Judge Boseberg has written, and I'm quoting him here. | ||
| Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6E allows witnesses like Patel to divulge the contents of their testimony, meaning that nothing was preventing him from doing so before the committee. | ||
| Can we confirm here today that there is no court order of any kind that limits your ability as a witness before the grand jury to discuss your own testimony to that grand jury? | ||
| We can confirm that pursuant to my action that that grand jury testimony has been released, the transcript. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whoops. | |
| Let's um whoops. | ||
| In what forum was it released, man? | ||
| Publicly. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| We'll check on that. | ||
| Um, the FBI does background investigations. | ||
| In the case of a U.S. attorney, Janine Perot. | ||
| It has come to light that in a civil proceeding, um, that Fox News executives, prior to her confirmation, called her, I'm quoting here, | ||
| a reckless maniac who makes, quote, insane comments, and said, I don't trust her to be responsible, and noted her penchant for what they called random conspiracy theories on weird internet. | ||
| My question to you is did that turn up in her background investigation? | ||
| For any background investigation, Senator, we do not discuss those publicly. | ||
| And for every background investigation, when there's an adjudication, it is not made by me. | ||
| It is made by the career professionals who run the inspection division and background check system. | ||
| Do you know if that information was found? | ||
| You see, we're an oversight body here, and there are really three possibilities here. | ||
| One is that the FBI background investigation didn't find that stuff. | ||
| That's worth noting because these investigations, full field background investigations, are supposed to find that stuff. | ||
| That's possibility one. | ||
| Possibility two is that the FBI did in fact find that information and then did not report it to the administration or to the committee. | ||
| And the third is that you found it, you reported it to the administration, and they went ahead with her nomination, knowing that she had been described as a reckless maniac who made insane comments, who wasn't trusted by colleagues to be responsible, and who had a penchant for random conspiracy theories on weird internet sites. | ||
| Insults are meaningless to the qualifications. | ||
| Does not have any authority or reason to look into which of those things is true? | ||
| This committee can look into anything it wishes. | ||
| I'm telling you that the background investigations that are done by the HRD division are done by career individuals. | ||
| They do not report the details of those to me. | ||
| They adjudicate those independently and individually. | ||
| That's how it's always been done. | ||
| You're asking the wrong question. | ||
| What happened to the during the pause of back FBI background investigations that was uh alleged in the complaint uh against you and the FBI by the FBI agents who were terminated? | ||
| On February 12th, Emil Bovey directed the FBI, quote, to pause any FBI background investigations of Trump nominees until Patel was confirmed, which happened on February 20th, is the general description of what they alleged. | ||
| Why do you know were background investigations paused? | ||
| Was it so material like this could be scrubbed out of them? | ||
| And have they been resumed without that pause fully and normally after your arrival on February 20th? | ||
| I can speak to the time period since I got there. | ||
| Background investigations have been ongoing across the board at the FBI. | ||
| Why was the pause? | ||
| Do you know? | ||
| They believed fake stories. | ||
| Wasn't explained to you when you got there. | ||
| Oh, by the way, boss, they've had a multi an eight day pause on background investigations. | ||
| You'd think that would be something that would be explained to you at some point? | ||
| Again, I leave it to the men and women at the HRD division to run background investigations. | ||
| I do not interfere with them. | ||
| I get that. | ||
| But what I don't get is whether you were told about that pause and why would you not be told about that pause? | ||
| I don't recall that, sir. | ||
| All right. | ||
| The uh allegation also uh relates that employee review of senior staff was whether or not they voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. | ||
| Since when is who you voted for? | ||
| A proper question for agents to be asked. | ||
| It's probably not real. | ||
| Probably fake news. | ||
| I don't know what allegation you're referring to, Senator. | ||
| If it's from an ongoing matter in litigation, I can't discuss that, but what I can discuss is I can only speak to the FBI's background investigations. | ||
| There are other background investigations conducted across the government. | ||
| I can only speak to the just to clarify, I'm not talking about the FBI full field background investigations. | ||
| I'm talking about internal employee reviews for promotion for termination for job actions of various kinds. | ||
| And my question to you is it now the policy of the FBI to ask agents who they voted for, and since when is who agents voted for a proper question for the FBI to ask? | ||
| Taking those in reverse order, it's not a proper question, and it's improper to allege that I'm doing that. | ||
| And also at the FBI specifically, under my leadership, we do not ask who you voted for. | ||
| And just one correction for the record, if I may, Senator, it's security division that runs background investigations, not HRD. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I'll accept that uh correction. | ||
| And um in the event that we cannot locate your grand jury transcript, um, just expect a question for the record that will give you the chance to either provide that transcript again if it had been previously provided, or to make the statement that Grand Jury Rule 6E allows you, to the best of your recollection, truthfully, about what it is that you told that grand jury. | ||
| Do you understand that? | ||
| That's why I wanted the transcript released, and we'll get it to you, sir. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you, Chairman. | ||
| I think I want to take an opportunity when we hear about uh your uh political weaponization to remind my Democratic colleagues uh that uh what's happened the last decade, federal law enforcement intelligence community, even when Trump was thrown everything at him. | ||
| They've even gone after his associates and Republican Party organizations. | ||
| One investigation after another, one prosecution after another. | ||
| Uh I I use examples you have heard me already say today, crossfire hurricane and Arctic Frost. | ||
| Uh these were all built on defecty uh foundations of political bias. | ||
| And then we released the Clinton Andex and the Durham index to uh and the FBI uh FBI's failures to investigate. | ||
| So uh uh I've been acquainted with this because I've been trying to get to the bottom of it, and we had to get a new FBI director to get all this information, Senator Corner. | ||
| Director Patel, welcome. | ||
| Thank you for uh your willingness to serve in this uh very challenging position. | ||
| How many people work for the FBI today? | ||
| Approximately 36,500, give or take. | ||
| I've always wondered whether an organization that big and that diffused all across the nation was actually capable of being managed. | ||
| Um Have you experienced any surprises in terms of the uh as the director in terms of your management of the uh of the organization? | ||
| In my experience, Senator, the leaders in the field are supposed to lead. | ||
| So we have empowered and we have changed the structural operation of the FBI to empower SACs in the 56 field office, 55, 56 come one October, to lead the mission. | ||
| We've also empowered the respective assistant directors and operational directors to lead the mission. | ||
| That is how you manage 36,537,000 people. | ||
| No one or two people can do it. | ||
| And that's been the transition is the power structure is being pushed out to the field operations. | ||
| Which sounds like a very practical way to approach it and uh how is morale? | ||
| Morale when I travel around the country, in my experience, has never been higher. | ||
| The FBI and the police officers that we work hand in glove with across this country are excited to do the work. | ||
| And the stats that I'm citing are no achievement of mine. | ||
| The stats that I'm citing in the seven months that I've been there, such as a uh 42 percent increase in cyber arrest alone this year, is because the men and women at the FBI have been empowered in the field, they want to do the work, they're getting the opportunity to do the work. | ||
| And with our great partners in the respective states like Texas, um where we just returned a top 10 most wanted fugitive in Cindy Singh, are getting the ability to make those prosecutions a reality. | ||
| By the way, Senator Durbin was asking about polygraphs. | ||
| Aren't polygraphs a standard part of the uh um standard test given to people with security clearances across the intelligence community? | ||
| They are. | ||
| As a condition to maintaining your security clearance? | ||
| I believe they are. | ||
| Speaking of intelligence, um, one of the things that I've wondered about over time is uh, you know, the FBI is the number is a premier law enforcement agency in the nation, but you also have other important responsibilities in counterintelligence. | ||
| And uh there's been different debates or uh uh people wondering whether, including me, whether that's an appropriate role for the FBI to play. | ||
| And I guess the the most challenging part of that is if it's not at the FBI, where would it go? | ||
| Uh but can you uh given your background I know as uh working on the HIPSI and your intelligence background? | ||
| Can you talk a little bit about uh how you what you think about the counterintelligence role of the FBI agents and how how that's working, whether you think it's performing the way it should, or whether there are other changes or reforms need to be made in order to improve its its functioning. | ||
| As you know, uh the threats from our adversary nations are just proliferating uh uh every day. | ||
| So what do you what do you think? | ||
| The espionage activities of our adversaries have never been so high, and I think the counterintelligence mission is properly housed within the FBI because we've been vested with those authorities for Congress, and I believe that mission set is working. | ||
| And if I can, sir, since January 20th of this year, the FBI has made 55 arrests on the counterintelligence mission alone. | ||
| That's a 30 percent increase in CIRS from the same time year to date last year. | ||
| We have arrested 33 uh 33 percent increase in PRC counterintelligence arrest, an 83 percent increase in Russia counterintelligence arrests from the same time last year, and a 60 percent increase on Iran counterintelligence arrests from the same time period last year. | ||
| So we are already on total exceeding the entirety of the number of arrests from the previous year on counterintelligence matters across the board. | ||
| And in my opinion, the FBI is the only agency that can do it. | ||
| Now we work with the interagency to do it, and we need them, but we have the mission set. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You know, sometimes uh I wonder whether we sort of repeat the way we do things because we've always done it that way, and I'm gonna uh building up to this issue of the narco trafficking and what uh uh what President Trump has ordered the Defense Department to do in terms of to take out some of these transnational criminal organizations that are importing poison into the United States and responsible for killing tens of thousands of Americans, | ||
| uh maybe hundreds of thousands of Americans over time. | ||
| Do you think a law enforcement model for dealing with these uh narco traffickers is adequate to deal with the threat? | ||
| Um, Or do you think we need to start thinking about this in maybe uh new and different ways? | ||
| Obviously, we're not engaged in a in a war per se, uh although it is a war metaphorically, um, and the law enforcement model seems to be not working from the standpoint of uh dealing with the volume of the threat and the uh magnitude of the threat. | ||
| Uh do you think we need to start thinking about how do we deal within constitutional legal parameters to deal with this problem in a different way to be more effective in protecting the American people? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And the way to analgize this and why I have advocated for the designation, and I'm thankful that the Trump administration has designated these cartels and narco-traffickers as foreign terrorist organizations is because we must treat them like the foreign terrorist organizations post-9-11. | ||
| We must treat them like the Al-Qaeda's of the world because that's how we're operating. | ||
| And just treating them with law enforcement capabilities alone was wholly insufficient to wipe out the targets in their entirety. | ||
| They always had the next man up philosophy. | ||
| If you take out the leader, they got 10 guys behind it. | ||
| But in order to eliminate, and that's the key, eliminate the drug trade and eliminate the pouring into this country of narcotics. | ||
| We have to use authorities at the Department of War and the intelligence community to go after the threat like we did terrorists when we were manhunting them. | ||
| And now we have that ability, and we're seeing that in live time, whether it's on the uh the strike on the boat or going down into Mexico and working with our Mexican authorities with these intelligence assets to say we've located not just the person in charge, the cadre in charge, but the entire network, and we are now able to dismantle that entire network. | ||
| It's going to take time. | ||
| The manhunt after 9-11 took some years, and this is going to be a years-long mission. | ||
| Well, I'm glad you mentioned the counterterrorism mission because we've had a lot of experience, uh the U.S. government writ large with dealing with terrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere. | ||
| And uh obviously some of our uh friends and allies, like Mexico, for example, are very sensitive about sovereignty and uh being able to uh uh control what happens on their on their territory, but but yet uh we're beginning to see more and more cooperation, as you point out in that regard. | ||
| And um so in your opinion, has the counterterrorism model have the lessons learned uh by the U.S. government writ large, uh, are they being aggressively applied? | ||
| Or there are other things we need to do to make sure that those uh uh those skills, those uh uh lessons learned are applied more broadly to the threat of uh narco trafficking? | ||
| Uh I can only speak to the FBI. | ||
| We are applying all of them to our counter the CT mission set to the CN mission set, and we're using our new authorities given to our intelligence community partners in the Department of War to combine these collective efforts and in a new way meeting together and creating an interagency process that gets after the threat dynamic. | ||
| And whether that's in a kill operation, a capture operation, a surrender operation, or a host nation takedown, like we did with the counterterrorism mission sets in Afghanistan, in Iraq and Pakistan and elsewhere, we are applying that to the drug traffickers in Mexico and Venezuela and Colombia. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And now thank you, Mr. Chair, bringing a Democrat in. | |
| We have seen too much political violence in this country. | ||
| We all know that. | ||
| Just uh last week, Director, your friend Charlie. | ||
| Cook Kirk was gunned down on a college campus. | ||
| I'm sorry for your loss. | ||
| In Minnesota only two months ago, a madman took the life of my friends, uh, Melissa and Mark Hortman shot Senator John Hoffman and his wife of at it combined 17 times. | ||
| And evidence indicates that it would have killed a lot more if law enforcement hadn't intervened. | ||
| Jess, last month in my state, we were again shook to the core when little kids were shot down through stained glass windows in Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis. | ||
| And while the victims weren't politicians in this case, they were six-year-olds and eight-year-olds. | ||
| The manifesto That the shooter left behind was political. | ||
| But in the words of your own federal law enforcement, this person was an all-purpose hater. | ||
| Went after blacks, Hispanics, the president, Muslims, Jews, nearly everyone. | ||
| And this happened during uh the first mass of the year for these kids. | ||
| They were excited to see their friends meet their new teachers. | ||
| And two children, eight-year-old Fletcher Merkel, 10-year-old Harper Moiskey were murdered, 21 other people injured some of the kids, 18 kids severely. | ||
| Fletcher was just starting third grade. | ||
| He loved his family, his friends, he loved fishing and cooking, and his dad's words, any sport he was allowed to play. | ||
| Harper, the other child, we celebrated her life this Sunday, thousands of people. | ||
| Her parents described her as bright, joyful, and a deeply loved 10-year-old whose laughter, kindness, and spirit touched everyone that she knew. | ||
| We've heard the words of young children who were saved because 12-year-olds laid on top of them, or a kid with disabilities who is paralyzed, whose teacher pulled him out of the wheelchair, threw him under the pew, and laid on top of him. | ||
| We do thank the local FBI director and the local U.S. attorney's office for their work in both of these cases, the Hortman case and this. | ||
| But I did want to focus on one local law enforcement moment that I'm not sure has made with all the news going on in Minnesota. | ||
| When the first 911 call, and you've heard about other places where this waited and waited. | ||
| The first 911 call was made at 827 a.m. | ||
| The first officer was on the scene just four minutes later, local Minneapolis police at 8:31 a.m. | ||
| The chief, Chief O'Hara shared with me uh the actual numbers. | ||
| Listen to this. | ||
| Over 20 people were in ambulances just 14 minutes, all of them after the police got on this scene. | ||
| 14 minutes after the first call, tourniquet stretchers, and they got them all to Hennepin County Medical Center or Minneapolis Children's Hospital. | ||
| And I think it is worth looking at what happened there because one of the dads whose daughter was severely injured, still in the hospital that I met on Sunday, told me that there is absolutely no way her his beautiful daughter would have survived if police hadn't been there. | ||
| So it is worth looking at for all of us. | ||
| So my focus on behalf of these parents, because I promised I would do this on Sunday, was just to figure out how we can do anything to stop this from happening again. | ||
| So expanded background checks, ghost gun bans, every shooting is different. | ||
| Raising the minimum age to purchase assault weapon, even if we're not going to ban them, I favor banning them. | ||
| But that's one idea that's out there when so many of these shootings are people who are 18, 19, 20, 21. | ||
| The one at Annunciation Church was 23. | ||
| Both shooters in Yuvaldi and Buffalo had just turned 18 when they purchased the assault weapon bands. | ||
| I'm not saying any one of these things would prevent every single shooting, but I really ask everyone to look at these. | ||
| We also need to tackle social media, and I really did appreciate Senator Graham's questions. | ||
| I think we have to protect free speech and not engage in censorship. | ||
| But for years, I have supported repealing Section 230, which was made when these companies were little companies starting up in garages. | ||
| And I think it is one way to get at making this better environment online and preventing violence. | ||
| So my first question is on the assault weapon ban. | ||
| Do you think that would be helpful in reducing gun deaths, Director? | ||
| Senator, if I may, I want to answer the question, but thank you for your remarks, especially it relates to my friend Charlie. | ||
| And I share and relay my remarks, my sentiments to you. | ||
| Minnesota has suffered untold tragedy in these last few months. | ||
| And whatever creativity we can use to eliminate even just one shooting, one horrific death, I am in favor of engaging with Congress fully to do. | ||
| I don't have the answers. | ||
| I don't know what will eliminate it in its entirety, but I'm willing to engage and explore new ways with you, Senator. | ||
| Okay, thank you. | ||
| And so assault weapon ban. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
| Senator, I think there are instances on this legislation that could prevent future attacks. | ||
| But I'm not gonna weigh into the creation of legislation. | ||
| Could you also look at, and I've I favor just assault weapon ban not getting the hands in the these guns in the hands of people that shouldn't have could you look at the numbers on the ages? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Because from 18, even going from 18 to 21, which wouldn't have prevented the shooter in Annunciation Church from purchasing that gun. | ||
| He purchased several the same day, over 100 Browns were fired from the assault weapon through the uh stained glass windows. | ||
| So if you got one up to 25, it would have stopped that immediate purchase and probably saved the uh the lives of these kids. | ||
| But if you go to 21, that is the same age that already applies to purchasing handguns from federally licensed dealers. | ||
| So I prefer another approach, but I was hoping that our Republican colleagues would at least look at that, given Uvaldi, Buffalo, and some of these other mass shootings, trying to be practical, but thinking that it could make a major difference. | ||
| Strengthening background checks, could you also look at that? | ||
| Um and then banning ghost guns and bump stocks. | ||
| What do you think of that? | ||
| So uh Senator, you're you're you're talking um to my heart here on one of the core missions at the FBI, which is our Sieges facility in Winchester, Virginia, which is uh there are hub for our NICS checks, our NCICs, our capabilities on when we have I think it's 19,000 state and local community law enforcement come to us for these background checks. | ||
| We're trying to make that processing as fast as we can so we can get them real-time information. | ||
| Um I think we have a 93% clearance rate in 15 minutes as it relates to ghost guns, but we can do better. | ||
| All right. | ||
| If you could get back to me on all those and talk to the White House. | ||
| You can't propose legislation. | ||
| Threats against elected officials have increased exponentially. | ||
| Members of Congress received more than 9,000 threats last year, up from 1,600 in 2016. | ||
| There's been a lot of talk about other rhetoric and the like. | ||
| And if we want to move forward on things like uh Section 230, or even look if we can do anything on guns. | ||
| I do think we're gonna have to be honest about this all-purpose hater issue, and that, and it has bothered me this thing. | ||
| You know, we're gonna go after this group, we're gonna have to go after this group. | ||
| I just want to, for the record, show that the murder of Speaker Hortman and her husband. | ||
| Uh, you know, he had it was Democratic lawmakers on his list. | ||
| Um he went to the ones whose addresses he had, by the way. | ||
| Um Planned Parenthood was on the list, as were businesses and law firms. | ||
| Um doctors. | ||
| I already mentioned the ones uh with the Catholic church shooting. | ||
| Um so it is not just as the radicals on the left. | ||
| What's a quote from the president are the problems or destructive movement of left-wing extremism that Vice President Vannes said. | ||
| Um according to the Anti-Defamation League last year, all the murders were committed. | ||
| And I'm I'm not actually gonna say this because I don't even want to. | ||
| Because she's lying because they're lying about this, but you can imagine it wasn't from the left. | ||
| Cato Institute, conservative think tank, published a study just last week uh that found from terrorists from the right were responsible for six times more deaths than people from the left. | ||
| I actually don't want to go tit for tat on this, but what I am asking for is that this rhetoric of blaming one side or the other stop if you could convey that to the president and that we actually work on things uh that are solutions. | ||
| So could you commit to me, Mr. Patel, Director Patel, that you will do that? | ||
| Absolutely, Senator. | ||
| Okay, thank you. | ||
| Last, um, you were asked about social media, and I will put some more questions on the record about that. | ||
| I think we could make mave major movement on that. | ||
| Um the local FBI hoped when the city of St. Paul was a victim of a cyber attack. | ||
| Um, and I'm concerned about some of the cyber attack cuts. | ||
| I'll ask you that on the record. | ||
| Um uh AI, I'm glad you raised that. | ||
| Um, I think we have to do more, but also including election interference because they're using AI videos. | ||
| I just had one happen in this very committee on me, and I just think they're gonna start using it in um democracy election. | ||
| They could be foreign. | ||
| Do you think some of this is foreign entities, Mr. Patel? | ||
| Generally speaking, we have traced a lot of this to loose groups overseas that don't have any sort of central cluster. | ||
| There's gonna be a lot on you then. | ||
| And then last, I'll put on the record just my concern about protecting journalists. | ||
| Uh, the new guidance that came out of the department. | ||
| Um, have you deployed any FBI resources to investigate members of the media for activities related to news gathering reporting or reporting on government whistleblowers, something near and dear to the chairman's heart? | ||
| The only time we would involve um an investigation of a journalist if they have conducted or committed an allegation of separate criminal activity, um, most prominently leaks of classified information. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Senator Hawley, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Uh Director Patel, good to see you. | ||
| Thank you for being here. | ||
| You're leading the FBI at a very critical time for that agency, and also a critical time for our country. | ||
| And I want to start by talking to you about the tide of violence that we have seen, ideological violence against people of faith, particularly Christians. | ||
| You just think here, take a rough catalog. | ||
| Just in the last couple of years, we've seen school shooting at the Covenant School, Christian School in Nashville. | ||
| We've seen school shooting at the Annunciation School, we've seen church shootings multiply, we've seen acts of crimes, crime and violence, vandalism, arson against churches and parishes all across the country. | ||
| And then, of course, last week, Charlie Kirk, who said, I want to be remembered for my courage for my faith, was shot on a college campus. | ||
| Let me just start with the assassination of Charlie Kirk. | ||
| Is the FBI, and I appreciate the tremendous work the FBI's done in this investigation? | ||
| Is the FBI investigating the Kirk assassination as part of this broader pattern of anti-religious anti-Christian violence? | ||
| We are investigating Charlie's assassination fully and completely and running out every lead related to any allegation of broader violence, and we're producing uh results on that that will disclose when appropriate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good. | |
| I'm I'm glad to hear that. | ||
| Let me just ask you a few questions about that if I could. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Reports have suggested that the FBI is investigating a broader network of groups that may have had some knowledge of the shooter's plans. | ||
| Can you give us any details on that, following up what you've already said in public? | ||
| How's the FBI working to find other potential accomplices, folks who may have known about the shooter's plans, folks who may have encouraged him? | ||
| Any any update on any of that? | ||
| So, in terms of what we do for an interrogation um perspective, we go and reach out to the family and community immediately. | ||
| And we've conducted those investigations and interrogations with local law enforcement, and we're continuing to do that because those closest to the suspect are going to hopefully know the most about the suspect and his beliefs and his ideology. | ||
| On top of that, um, unfortunately, it has been leaked that there was a uh uh a Discord chat, and for those unfamiliar with it, it's a gaming chat room online that the suspect participated in. | ||
| So what we're doing, we've already done is sort of legal process, not just on Discord, so that the information we gathered is sustained and held in an evidentary posture that we could use in prosecution should it be decided to do so. | ||
| And we're also going to be investigating anyone and everyone involved in that Discord chat. | ||
| Okay, very good. | ||
| I see the public reports that the Discord thread had as many as 20 additional users. | ||
| It sounds like you're you're trying to run down all of that to see if that's accurate, who else may have been on that thread, what they may have known. | ||
| Is that fair to say? | ||
| It's a lot more than that, and we're running them all down. | ||
| It's a lot more than 20. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| And you're running all of that too. | ||
| Every single one. | ||
| Yeah, fantastic. | ||
| Um let me just turn to the to the broader question here of anti-religious anti-Christian violence. | ||
| Let me just give you a few stats that I'm sure that you're all too familiar with. | ||
| Every person of faith in America certainly is. | ||
| Major report this past year found that there have been over 400 instances of hostility against churches in the United States in the year 2024. | ||
| Those included arsons, bomb threats, shootings, and firearm incidents. | ||
| One other organizational report found that there were 500 attacks on Catholic parishes alone. | ||
| So that number 415, that's that's all Christian churches in 2024. | ||
| Another organization found 500 separate attacks on just Catholic parishes since May of 2020. | ||
| Of course, we have the Covenant School shooting, the Annunciation School shooting in Minnesota, where two children were shot dead as they were praying in a in a pew. | ||
| Here's my question. | ||
| What is the FBI doing to take on this rising tide of violence that seems to be motivated by anti-religious hatred? | ||
| Specifically, sir, we've have um 60 anti-Catholic hate crime incidences reported to us that are being investigated publicly. | ||
| I can tell you we have five hate crime investigations with anti-Catholic bias ongoing currently in the states and excuse me, in the cities of Kansas City, Louisville, Houston, uh, Nashville, and Richmond. | ||
| Um, that's what I can say publicly, but any ideologically based attack against any faith, as a man of faith myself, will not be tolerated, and the full resource of the FBI are committed to all of it. | ||
| Are you investigating any domestic cells that instigate or encourage or fund or in any way support attacks on churches or other houses of worship? | ||
| Senator, you raise incredibly important point that most people don't look at. | ||
| I've always said we follow the money. | ||
| And whether it's terrorism or attacks based on ideology or attacks on institutions of faith or people of faith, someone's paying for it, and we are reverse tracing those steps. | ||
| We are not stopping at the perpetrator themselves. | ||
| We are reverse engineering to hold those accountable in our investigations to who funded them and knowingly funded them, and we will bring the appropriate steps against them with our partners at DOJ. | ||
| Good. | ||
| I'm I'm glad to hear that. | ||
| We look forward to hearing reports on that progress. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'd like some of the questions. | |
| Let me just uh interesting ask you this in the same vein, Director. | ||
| Since the Dobbs decision, the FBI has advertised $25,000 rewards for information on attacks on abortion clinics. | ||
| Will the FBI similarly offer rewards for information on attacks of houses of worship? | ||
| Yes, when it is uh appropriate, the rewards are um any reward, whether it's an attack on a house of faith or on a homicide or whatever, is determined by a group within the FBI, but we will work with them to make sure that rewards of monetary value are put out for all ideologically based attacks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good. | |
| Um you just rattled off some some statistics, which I was glad to hear about the number of investigations you have opened, the incidents you're tracking against Christians against houses of worship. | ||
| Let me just ask you if you consider designating a senior official as a liaison to houses of worship, to uh Christian other religious organizations to publish metrics on investigations and arrests related to church attacks, church threats, vandalism, arson, et cetera. | ||
| Will you set up a system for liaising and then reporting so that the everybody can see this committee and the public can see just how many attacks we're talking about, just with the level of threat and violence is and what the FBI is doing to combat it. | ||
| Senator, you're speaking my language. | ||
| The private public sector partnership on this specific issue, just like the other ones we've talked about, is is equally transformative to finding those involved in these criminal activities. | ||
| And with your assistance, and I would ask you if you're able to identify someone who's an expert in that area, we will work with them. | ||
| We will take their information because as great as the FBI is, we're only as good as the information we can get, and we don't have the reach that the private sector does in some of these areas. | ||
| Very good. | ||
| Happy to help on that. | ||
| Let me ask you about something specific to the FBI, because sadly, as you know, the FBI when it comes to anti-religious animus has been part of the problem before you got to this agency. | ||
| And I know that you remember the infamous memo generated by the FBI that attempted to recruit informants in houses of worship, in particular in Catholic parishes. | ||
| Your predecessor testified when this information, I just want to reiterate, this memo became public because of a whistleblower. | ||
| It was not turned over to this committee. | ||
| It was not disclosed to this committee. | ||
| In fact, we were told it didn't exist, and then a whistleblower published it, showing that indeed the FBI had recruited informants, attempted to, into Catholic parishes. | ||
| Your predecessor then testified sitting right where you are today. | ||
| He testified that this I'm gonna quote was a single product by a single field office, and quote, that was a lie. | ||
| Because we then had additional whistleblowers come forward and say, no, actually, multiple field offices contributed to the drafting of the report. | ||
| And indeed, there was a second anti-Catholic memo that the FBI generated, and indeed those memos were distributed to over 1,000 FBI agents across the country. | ||
| You know all of this. | ||
| You and I talked about it when you were here for your confirmation hearing back in January. | ||
| I just want to follow up and see. | ||
| Have you been able to determine how this memo got written and distributed? | ||
| How is it that the Federal Bureau of Investigation came to be recruiting informants in Christian churches in this country? | ||
| Senator, we did dig in. | ||
| And we are doing our investigation simultaneously with Congress. | ||
| And just to put it in perspective, we've provided 700 documents on the Richmond Catholic memo specifically to this committee, uh, whereas my predecessor provided 19 pages. | ||
| And not only that, but we looked into how the source recruitment structure at the FBI was conducted during this time. | ||
| And we made adjustments and permanent fixes to ensure that sources are not put into houses of worship unless there is an actual ongoing criminal or international terrorism threat. | ||
| We will not use sources at this FBI to investigate and cull information just for the sake of culling information in houses of worship. | ||
| Has anybody been fired for this? | ||
| There have been terminations related to this and resignations. | ||
| Good. | ||
| Because if if this is if this is going to be standard at the FBI, nobody can trust the FBI. | ||
| You want to talk about violating the First Amendment? | ||
| This has got First Amendment violation written all over it. | ||
| It's one of the most revolting chapters in the FBI's history. | ||
| And considering what we're seeing more broadly in terms of the acts of violence against people of faith, this is absolutely got the end of the FBI has to lead the way. | ||
| So I count on you to do that, Director. | ||
| Let me just in the minute or so that I have remaining, let me just shift gears and ask you about something else you said earlier. | ||
| You said that protecting our youth is maybe the FBI's top priority. | ||
| It's great to hear. | ||
| Let me ask you about the role of AI chatbots in that, which you've talked about a little bit already today. | ||
| Are you investigating any cases of AI-generated child sex abuse material? | ||
| You issued a PSA earlier this year warning that synthetic child sex abuse material, that's where the AI generates it using maybe a real kid's image, but then generates sex material, sex abuse material. | ||
| You warned that that was illegal under federal law. | ||
| Is the FBI investigating any instances of this synthetic CSAM material generated by AI that you can speak to? | ||
| We are investigating dozens of those matters because uh let me just say this. | ||
| As far as the FBI is concerned, generative AI that produces CSAM child sexual abuse material under our investigative authorities is treated as equally as if it were actual child sexual abuse material. | ||
| There's no difference for me in the FBI on this. | ||
| Let me just ask you one other thing in this vein. | ||
| I'm sure you've seen the reporting that Meta's AI rules, their own internal guidelines allowed their chat bots to have sensual, that's their word, sensual conversations with children. | ||
| We've had instances, multiple instances of children, minors taking their own lives at the behest of chatbots that instructed them with specificity on how to do it. | ||
| What's the FBI's role here in investigating what is going on with these chatbots with these AI companies encouraging? | ||
| I mean, listen, if it if an actual person did that, we would say that's grooming, we would say that's child abuse. | ||
| These companies are doing it, their own guidelines allow it. | ||
| What can we do about that? | ||
| Uh, you're referring to NVE nihistic violent extremism and the 764. | ||
| It has been made a priority to the FBI because they are targeting children and these chat box and these generative AI are getting coupled with actual humans who are using them and releasing them because they can do the work faster and quicker than humans can and get into spaces like social media where humans have a difficulty in engaging. | ||
| And what we're doing is treating any extension of generative AI as the criminal themselves. | ||
| And we have, I think, I've got to get the number back to you, but uh over a thousand investigations related to NVE. | ||
| We've had numerous takedowns and arrests of seven, six, four individuals, and we are educating this may be the most important part. | ||
| I'm directly engaging with the social media and media companies, uh the Internet service providers, to find a way to shut down. | ||
| There's nothing I can do at the FBI to force them to shut it down, but work with you in Congress to find a way to work with our partners to get that shut down permanently. | ||
| Thank you, Chairman Grassley. | ||
| Thank you, Chairman, for calling this hearing. | ||
| I am grateful we're continuing this committee's long tradition of oversight and in particular today oversight of the FBI. | ||
| Director Patel, thank you for being here. | ||
| There's a number of issues I hope that we can speak to. | ||
| I want to start by reading something you said to me during your confirmation hearing under oath. | ||
| I have no interest, no desire, and will not, if confirmed, go backwards. | ||
| There will be no politicization at the FBI. | ||
| Then you looked me in the eyes and said there will be no retribution actions taken by the FBI. | ||
| Should I be confirmed as director? | ||
| I told you that in your office. | ||
| I tell you that again today. | ||
| I'm concerned that that's not what's happened. | ||
| That since you took over as director, um you've cleaned house or forced out senior leaders across the Bureau, in particular targeting those that worked on investigations of President Trump. | ||
| The former acting director has just sued you for firing him for political reasons. | ||
| So did a leader in the D.C. field office. | ||
| And the well-respected leader of the Salt Lake City office was pushed out last month, leaving that office shorthanded at a particularly difficult time. | ||
| I'm worried that these actions compromise the Bureau's ability to keep Americans safe. | ||
| Hundreds of agents have resigned. | ||
| You are lowering application standards to fill vacancies. | ||
| You have reassigned large numbers of agents to work on immigration and street crime, issues other law enforcement agencies can handle, perhaps more effectively with the FBI, but I'm concerned that this compromises the Bureau's ability to address national security risks, uniquely its capability. | ||
| In fact, you've shut down the Office of Integrity and Compliance, which make sure that agents act in a lawful and ethical way and reassign staff away from domestic terrorism investigations exactly at a moment. | ||
| I think we are all concerned about it. | ||
| I also have to ask, you came before the appropriations committee in May and told us you wanted a half a billion dollar budget cut for the FBI, literally an effort to defund the police. | ||
| I am grateful for the work of the men and women of the FBI. | ||
| They've done great work this year in Delaware, partnering with the Dover Police Department to support human trafficking victims, partnering with the Middletown Police Department on armed robbery and carjacking. | ||
| And it's urgent, I think, that we fix the direction and the prioritization within the FBI. | ||
| And I wish we could focus on those efforts today. | ||
| But I'm seeing an FBI leadership more focused on social media clout and on political revenge than on fighting crime. | ||
| Director, have you ever ordered that an FBI employee be terminated because he or she worked on an investigation into President Trump? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Senator, thank you. | ||
| One quick correction for the record. | ||
| There's 280 NVE investigations. | ||
| I give the incorrect number to Senator Hawley. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Understood. | ||
| As far as a lot of your statement, I disagree with it, and I'm happy to address it. | ||
| But the only way, generally speaking, an individual is terminated at the FBI is if they have violated their oath of office, violated the law, or failed to uphold the standards that we need them to have at the FBI. | ||
| So those who say that they've been fired because of working on investigations into President Trump are lying or misrepresented. | ||
| Well, those matters are alleged in litigation, which is ongoing, so I can't comment on those specifically. | ||
| Could you comment on why you fired former acting FBI Director Driscoll? | ||
| I can't, because it's ongoing litigation. | ||
| Could you say now definitively under oath that the rank and file agents who were assigned to work January 6 cases will not be terminated because that's what they were assigned to do? | ||
| I have said it before and I've said again, your case assignment, as I was given case assignments when I was a young prosecutor, does not dictate your career or your termination. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Then let me go to the appropriations question. | ||
| In May, you testified before the subcommittee on Which I serve defending the President's request that we slash the FBI's budget by about $500 million. | ||
| The day before you testified the opposite in front of the House. | ||
| Where are we in terms of the budget request? | ||
| Senator Graham earlier said if you're requesting more funding for more agents, let us know. | ||
| We're nearing the end of the fiscal year in front of the committee on which I serve here in the Senate. | ||
| Your request was for a reduction of hundreds of millions of dollars. | ||
| Where are we? | ||
| Where we are on the budget cycle is we at the FBI are in support of the President's budget and we are in support of eliminating waste fraud and abuse. | ||
| We've already identified tens of millions of dollars of duplicative contracts that the FBI was spending on software and private sector engagements. | ||
| We've also identified duplicative workloads. | ||
| So we are transitioning those folks out of doing the same thing twice over and into the field. | ||
| And that's my focus right now. | ||
| And the move of the FBI headquarters is also going to save the FBI three and a half billion dollars in the American taxpayers. | ||
| So we're focused on eliminating waste fraud and abuse. | ||
| And as I told Senator Graham, um, if we're uh I'll go back and talk to my team and if we need more, we'll let you know. | ||
| Are you planning any additional reductions in force, Director? | ||
| No. | ||
| Um, how many vacancies are you currently trying to fill within the agency? | ||
| Um in terms of the 1811 ranks, there's a few hundred open vacancies that we have funded, and so we're filling all of those with our hybrid 1811 program and our new recruitment program, and I think a lesser amount of IAs and SOS. | ||
| So uh if hundreds of agents have retired or taken the fork in the road offer um and you have vacancies, but you're requesting 500 million less. | ||
| How does having fewer FBI agents help you tackle violent crime and address our national security issues? | ||
| Just to put it in perspective, Senator issues. | ||
| Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. | ||
| If we had this 500 million, we've done the math. | ||
| It would take us 14 years to onboard every vacancy that's on the books currently at the FBI, because we can't hire these folks and train them overnight. | ||
| It's a years-long process. | ||
| So we are currently focused on recruiting the best and filling the positions to the best of our needs. | ||
| And we, even if we had this extra money, wouldn't be able to hire them overnight. | ||
| We're looking for where the need is greatest, where in the country we need to send them, and how we can change the training requirements, which is why I'm thrilled to have police officers. | ||
| They might not have a college degree, but they got the street smarts and the cop smarts to become FBI agents, and that's what we want. | ||
| Let me turn to Section 702. | ||
| Um when you testified in front of the CJS subcommittee, uh we talked about this issue. | ||
| Uh you told me you were in favor of reauthorizing FISA Section 702 when it expires next year. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So long as the reforms um implemented last year, reforms like better training for agents and real consequences for inappropriate searches of Americans' communications were maintained. | ||
| Um you also said uh that you had some ideas about how to make Section 702 better going forward. | ||
| Can you give me an update on the FBI's implementation of these reforms and the direction you think it should go? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I think you're referring to the query process, and if you're not, let me know. | ||
| But any instance of abuse or mistakes that were made in the query process have now been changed. | ||
| It used to be you can make multiple mistakes and continue to access the query database system. | ||
| I've changed that. | ||
| If you make a mistake, you're immediately sidelined or review is conducted. | ||
| And if it was an actual mistake, i.e., there should have been S on the end of that name and there wasn't, then we put you back in. | ||
| But we have to review those matters. | ||
| So that's happening. | ||
| And um if there was an intentional mistake, you have no more access to the 702 query system and its database. | ||
| So we've also done an audit of the entire 702 system and the query databases, and now we are nearly a hundred years. | ||
| All right, we've been going for about two hours. | ||
| I'm gonna wrap up this stream. | ||
| The raw stream is available from the Associated Press if you want to keep watching this hearing. | ||
| It's been very interesting. | ||
| You had told me that it's a good idea. | ||
| It'll be updated. | ||
| Pretty obvious goes uh obviously goes back and forth with Republicans agreeing with cash and Democrats then challenging him. | ||
| So it's about every ten minutes. | ||
| You'll get that contentious uh back and forth. | ||
| So I do appreciate all of you guys uh tuning in for the first two hours. | ||
| This is expected to go on for another two hours. | ||
| I have uh there's a bunch of breaking news, big stories. | ||
| Luigi Mangeone having two counts dropped. | ||
| Elon Musk saying that uh should destiny speak things that are illegal, you should be prosecuted. | ||
| There's a lot to to to break down, as well as the uh at Tim Poole showed. | ||
| Where I've got uh I want to talk about the Spanish Civil War, I suppose, and history and other civil wars and things like that. | ||
| So I've got to record about two hours after this. | ||
| Uh but this will wrap up the uh the live stream working on this for today. | ||
| And uh I'm a fan of cash. | ||
| I think Cash is doing a great job. | ||
| So smash the like button subscribe to this channel share the show with everyone you know really do appreciate everybody hanging out for these past couple of hours. | ||
| Haven't really had a chance to to chime in on much of the testimony up to this point. | ||
| Obviously I didn't want to interrupt when uh when this is happening but I do think it is fantastic. | ||
| We had over 40,000 concurrents at one point you guys tuning in to pay attention to things that are really important is uh is inspiring. |
Export Selection