Since our top cops these days seem to be the FBI, Kash Patel has been interesting:
The Atlantic Daily, but David Grahm
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During a Senate subcommittee hearing today, Democrats tried a variety of avenues to pin down FBI Director Kash Patel on reports about the bureau—about politicization of law enforcement as well as his personal conduct—but it was a simple question from Senator Chris Van Hollen at the end that produced the most telling response.
“Do you know that it is a crime to lie to Congress?” the Maryland Democrat asked.
Patel scowled and loudly reshuffled papers at his table. “I have not lied to Congress,” he said. He accused the senator of lying. He refused to look up. But as Van Hollen noted, Patel repeatedly sidestepped the actual question.
“The director of the FBI apparently does not want to answer the question about whether or not it’s a crime to lie to Congress, and I find that extremely troubling,” Van Hollen said. “You are a disgrace, Mr. Director.”
The exchange was a fiery end to a hearing that began with a bizarre exchange between Van Hollen and Patel but drifted into an odd stasis in the middle. The hearing, which also featured the leaders of the Drug Enforcement Agency, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, might otherwise have been a drab budget discussion, except that it was also senators’ first chance to question Patel on a series of recent press reports.
In mid-April, my colleague Sarah Fitzpatrick reported on concerns inside the Trump administration about what FBI sources described as
excessive drinking and unexplained absences. (In a follow-up story, Fitzpatrick also reported on the
personalized bourbon bottles Patel has handed out as gifts.) Patel has denied the allegations in Fitzpatrick’s initial story and sued Fitzpatrick and
The Atlantic for defamation, demanding $250 million; MS NOW also reported last week that Fitzpatrick was the
focus of an FBI criminal-leak investigation, a development the FBI rejects as “completely false.” Earlier this spring,
several outlets also reported that Patel had fired agents from a task force that monitored threats from Iran—just days before the Trump administration launched a war against Iran—because they’d been involved in an investigation into the president’s alleged removal of classified documents to Mar-a-Lago. (Patel has denied these reports, saying that the agents were fired for unspecified violations of “ethical obligations.”)
“Director Patel, I don’t care one bit about your private life, and I don’t give a damn about what you do on your own time and on your own dime unless and until it interferes with your public responsibilities,” Van Hollen said in his opening statement. The allegations, if true, “demonstrate a gross dereliction of your duty,” he said.
The director responded with vitriol and scorn. “The only person that was slinging margaritas in El Salvador on the taxpayer dollar with a convicted gangbanging rapist was you,” Patel said. The director appeared to be referring to a visit that Van Hollen made to El Salvador, where he met with
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an imprisoned immigrant whom the administration acknowledged it had mistakenly deported. (He has since been returned to the United States, though the administration is now trying to deport him to Liberia.) Photos of the meeting released by the Salvadoran government showed glasses on a table with salt rims and cherries, but
Van Hollen has said no one was drinking alcohol. The reference to “a convicted gangbanging rapist” is nonsensical; Abrego Garcia has been indicted for human smuggling (he has pleaded not guilty), but no evidence shows that he has ever been convicted of rape.
Other Democrats followed up with questions of their own. When Senator Chris Coons asked about the cost of Patel’s trip to Milan during the Olympics, when he was taped chugging beer in a locker room with the U.S. hockey team, Patel just didn’t answer. Coons also inquired about the firing of agents, but Patel said he didn’t believe the reporting. “Do you disagree that there were 10 Iran specialists dismissed right before the war began?” a perplexed Coons asked. “Yes,” Patel said. When Senator Patty Murray cited
figures showing that FBI agents had been reassigned to immigration enforcement, Patel categorically denied that, too.
Committee Republicans, meanwhile, mostly opted to ignore the reports altogether, although Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana plied Patel with softballs such as “Is it important that you go out there and travel and talk to our line agents and try to maintain morale?”
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