Kash Patel sought to allay concerns about his fitness to serve as the FBI director at his senate confirmation hearing on Thursday but declined to engage with questioning that explicitly asked whether he would use his position to investigate some of Donald Trump’s top political opponents.
The hearing revolved around Patel’s provocative public remarks attacking the FBI and his ability to resist political pressure from the White House, a topic that has come to the fore with the justice department rocked by the ouster of prosecutors who worked on cases against Trump.
Patel, a longtime Trump adviser who served in his first term, distanced himself from statements he made on podcasts and in the appendix of his book Government Gangsters, which included a list of people he believed were Trump’s adversaries in government, including former attorney generals and FBI directors.
He indignantly insisted it was not an enemies list, the driving concern among Democratic lawmakers that he could use the far-reaching power of the FBI to punish people who worked against Trump. “It’s not an enemies list,” Patel said. “It’s a total mischaracterization.”
But, when pressed in other exchanges, Patel refused to say explicitly that he would not use his position to investigate the former FBI director James Comey or others on the list, and said only that he would not investigate anyone unless they had broken the law.
He also effectively said the FBI was answerable to the justice department and, ultimately, the White House. That response was notably different from the reply given by Trump’s attorney general nominee Pam Bondi, who said the justice department was answerable to the constitution.
Patel’s testimony is unlikely to convince Democrats to support him – the top Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, Dick Durbin, said in his opening remarks that Patel “did not meet the standard” to lead the FBI – but he is likely to get enough Republican votes to secure confirmation.
When Trump tapped Patel to serve as FBI director last year, Democrats had largely thought his inflammatory statements attacking the FBI and his close relationship with the president would lead to a backlash that would sink his nomination.
That backlash never really materialized, in large part because Patel ended up as less controversial than some of Trump’s other nominees like Pete Hegseth, who was narrowly confirmed as defense secretary.
Still, Patel attempted to distance himself from his most problematic comments even as senator Amy Klobuchar read back verbatim quotes that portrayed him as harboring personal animus towards Trump’s opponents and determined to shutter FBI headquarters to turn it into a museum of the so-called “deep state”.
Patel said her quotations were “grotesque” mischaracterizations and at other times claimed not to remember the remarks being read back to him. “I am quoting his own words,” Klobuchar said.
The hearing also brought up the January 6 Capitol riot after Trump issued pardons to 1,600 people charged in connection to the attack, many of whom were convicted for assaulting police officers – to which Patel, a former prosecutor and public defender, offered a lawyer’s answer.
Patel said he has always rejected violence against law enforcement and did not agree with Trump’s commutations, without addressing the pardons. Trump’s only commutations were for leaders of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys groups convicted of seditious conspiracy.
Patel was formerly a public defender in Florida before joining the justice department in 2014 as a line prosecutor in the national security division.
In 2017, Patel became a top Republican aide on the House intelligence committee, where he authored a politically-charged memo accusing the FBI and the justice department of abusing surveillance powers to spy on a Trump adviser. The memo was criticized as misleading, though an inspector general later found errors with aspects of the surveillance.
His efforts impressed Trump, who brought him into the administration and quickly elevated him to national security and defence roles. By the end of Trump’s first term, he was the chief of staff to defense secretary Chris Miller and briefly considered for CIA director.
Trump ultimately nominated Patel to be FBI director last year, rewarding his deep loyalty. During the investigation into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents, Patel invoked his fifth amendment right to refuse to testify before the grand jury, until he was forced to by the chief judge in Washington.
