Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley is pushing for a Feb. 13 confirmation vote on Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee for director of the FBI, despite evidence that Patel may have lied to the committee during his confirmation hearing. Grassley has rejected Democratic senators’ call for Patel to be brought back for additional questioning.
FBI Purge and Potential Perjury
During his confirmation hearing, Patel assured senators that he did not know what was going on at the FBI, where senior officials were already being purged, and pledged to honor the agency’s internal review process. Since then, multiple FBI whistleblowers have reported that Patel has actually been orchestrating and accelerating an ideological purge of FBI agents. If those reports are true, Patel lied under oath to the committee, which is a criminal offense.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have called for Patel to be brought back for more questioning to address the perjury allegations and to call on Patel to address how the firing of officials overseeing efforts to fight international and domestic terrorism, cybersecurity threats, human and drug trafficking, and violent crime have, in Sen. Dick Durbin’s words, “greatly weakened the FBI’s ability to protect the country from national security threats and made America less safe.”
The Not Above the Law Coalition also urged committee chair Sen. Chuck Grassley to investigate the claims and bring Patel back for more questioning. “The Senate must get to the bottom of these claims and ensure that the FBI can still guarantee the safety of the American people. If Congress does not assert its oversight prerogatives now, it will have forever conceded its vital role as a check on executive power and overreach.”
Payment for Putin Propaganda?
Since his hearing, the Washington Post has reported that Patel “was paid $25,000 last year by a film company owned by a Russian national who also holds U.S. citizenship and has produced programs promoting ‘deep state’ conspiracy theories and anti-Western views advanced by the Kremlin.” Patel appeared in a pro-Trump film promoted by Tucker Carlson. As the Washington Post reported, Patel vowed to “shut down the FBI headquarters building and open it up as a museum to the ‘deep state.’”
Cashing in and Conflicts of Interest
The seeming unlikeliness that Patel would be willing to stand up to an illegal order from Trump is amplified by reports that Patel was recently given a stock award from Trump’s media company worth more than $800,000, which Bloomberg reported “didn’t appear on Patel’s financial disclosure or ethics agreement, which detail how federal appointees will handle potential conflicts of interest.”
Patel’s financial disclosures did reveal that he’s planning to keep at least between $1 million and $5 million in stock he got for eight months of work as a consultant to the parent corporation of a Chinese fast-fashion company that has been accused of committing human right abuses and violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
What Are Patel's Evasions Hiding?
Patel was evasive at best in dealing with questions about his frequent appearances with bigoted far-right broadcast Stew Peters and his own extreme statements. Peters was unequivocal in his response: “Clearly, Kash Patel is lying.”
Under oath at his confirmation hearings and in response to written questions, Patel repeatedly employed some form of this evasive statement: “This language is taken out of context and does not accurately or fully represent my prior statements or positions on these issues.” But he does not explain how his own words supposedly do not represent his positions. As Right Wing Watch has noted:
Patel represents a clear threat to freedom of the press. He has called “government gangsters” and the media “pure evil.” He has pledged to “come after” the mainstream media, which he called in his 2024 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference “the most powerful enemy that the United States has ever seen.”
In what context could those quotes be anything other than deeply disturbing for a potential FBI Director in an administration that is already aggressively attacking freedom of the press?
Demand Another Hearing
Add your voice to calls for Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley to hold another hearing so Kash Patel can be held accountable and answer these crucial questions under oath. http://peoplefor.org/PatelHearing
