The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the pick of President Donald Trump ally Kash Patel to lead the FBI on a party-line vote Thursday, setting up a final confirmation vote on the Senate floor as early as next week.
Patel, who served in the first Trump administration and had branded himself a crusader against the “Deep State” and Trump’s enemies in the media, would lead the federal law enforcement agency.
The committee voted 12-10 to advance Patel’s nomination to the Senate floor. Democrats remain powerless to block his confirmation without help from Republicans, who have a 53-seat majority.
Republicans at the committee meeting defended Patel’s record and approach to making changes at the agency, and downplayed Democratic criticism of Patel’s partisanship.
Chairman Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, characterized his vote for Patel as countering “weaponization” of the FBI, and stopping retaliation against whistleblowers.
“The FBI has fallen into really old habits and is long overdue for massive reform,” Grassley said. “Mr. Patel is the man to do it and that is why he is being attacked so viciously right now.”
Since taking office, President Donald Trump has fired more than a dozen inspectors general and the government special counsel who regularly work with government worker whistleblowers.
Grassley and other Republicans said he did not believe Patel had an “enemies list” or would target Trump’s political enemies.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said the American people who voted for Trump wanted to end “two tiers of access, two tiers of treatment and two tiers of justice,” and renew the FBI’s focus on violent crime.
Democrats have long criticized Patel as too partisan to lead the nation’s premier law enforcement agency. Ranking member Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., said Patel is a partisan actor who does have an enemies list.
The disputed list appeared in an appendix of Patel’s book “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy.” The list includes former FBI Director Christopher Wray, former Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and former President Joe Biden.
In the book, Patel fumed about the “deep state” as a pejorative for government workers and called the “most dangerous threat to our democracy.”
Durbin said confirming Patel to the agency would be an “invitation for a political free-for-all if Kash Patel is chosen as the head of the FBI.”
In the last week, Durbin said whistleblowers have come forward to say that Patel personally directed purges of employees at the FBI even though he has not received Senate confirmation.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., argued that Patel has positioned himself to enact years of retribution for Trump’s grievances against Democrats and Republicans alike.
Whitehouse also criticized Republicans for downplaying Patel’s “enemies list,” saying that Patel himself has called them “criminals” and decapitated effigies of them.
“If you’re chainsawing the heads off of people, are they not your enemies?” Whitehouse said.
Whitehouse and other Democrats criticized Republicans for moving forward on Patel’s nomination despite lingering questions about his role in the firings, his testimony to a grand jury, and Patel’s holdings in Chinese companies that would vest while he is in office.
On Thursday, Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., posted on social media that “Dems will stomp their feet because they’re scared of him, but Kash has the @SenateGOP votes. Stay tuned.”
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