WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats grilled FBI boss Kash Patel on whether the bureau hires people who had sex with animals, blasted him as a “thug,” and accused him of being a drunk during an off-the-rails Judiciary Committee hearing.
Patel had been summoned before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a routine oversight hearing and came prepared to crow about plummeting crime rates, but Democrats derailed that plan by latching onto a litany of scandals during the explosive confrontation instead.
“You have been so drunk that briefings have been rescheduled so you could sleep it off,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) swiped, goading him into taking an alcohol test.
Patel, who showed up to the hearing armed with opposition research notes against his Democratic foes, did a double-take upon hearing that and shook his head, but Hirono didn’t give him a chance to respond.
The premise of Hirono’s claim stems from a bombshell report in The Atlantic about Patel’s alleged drinking habits, which prompted him to slap a $250 million defamation lawsuit against the outlet. Fueling that narrative was footage of Patel chugging beer with the US men’s Olympic hockey champion team.
“The players who are my friends invited me to the locker room,” Patel fired back when asked about the chugging by Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.). “I go where I want to go after delivering the most prolific crime reduction in US history.”
But that did little to mollify the attacks.
“He’s like an 18-year-old kid who wants to join a fraternity that he could never be a member of, doing keg stands and chugging with friends,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) chided. “He’s an embarrassment. He is a disgrace. This is a mockery and a sham. What’s bad are the people enabling him.”
Booker, who ran for president in 2020 and has a knack for impassioned screeds at hearings, raged at Republicans for allowing Patel to lash out at Welch as a “complete and total fraud.” He accused Patel of using the FBI’s resources to intimidate journalists.
“Like a thug, you’re using your agency to go after reporters in a chill to one of the most sacrosanct ideals of the US,” Booker fumed. “Right now you are stonewalling this committee for asking simple questions of accountability on how you’re using government resources to go after reporters.”
The New Jerseyan went minutes over his allotted time but loudly bulldozed his way through attempts to get him to calm down.
“Are you ready to shut up?” an agitated Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) grumbled to Booker after venting that “it takes longer to shut them up than it does to let them talk.”
Patel’s girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, 27, a country music star, sat in the audience as her lover dealt with the political punches. Although mostly calm during the proceedings, the occasional jab at his girlfriend seemingly got under his skin and prompted Patel to lash out.
Perhaps the most bonkers moment of the tumultuous showdown came when ranking member Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) questioned Patel over the FBI’s loosening of standards in background checks for the hiring of agents. This included more leniency on prostitution and bestiality before the age of 18.
“You dropped automatic disqualification for applicants who have engaged in bestiality, not victims of bestiality, applicants who have engaged, do you disagree with that?” Durbin asked.
Patel replied, “Applicants who’ve engaged in bestiality means they were victims of bestiality.”
That response drew some head-scratching from soundbite savant Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), who drilled down on the extent to which people who had sex with animals can become agents.
“A lot of these cases, when human traffickers, who are some of the worst individuals on planet Earth, they don’t just traffic you for prostitution; they traffic you for degrading acts of all kinds,” Patel explained. “And some of these individuals would go on to be law enforcement officers.”
Durbin had also slammed Patel as the “least qualified and most partisan FBI director in our nation’s history.”
Democrats had pressed Patel on an array of other issues as well, including the purge he carried out at the bureau against personnel involved in the Capitol riot and Mar-a-Lago document cases. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) warned him to preserve those files for when Dems take over Congress.
Amid the barrage of tough questions, Patel’s main messaging objective during the proceedings was to highlight the FBI’s various successes in cracking down on crime.
He ticked through data about how criminal arrests were up 80%, violent crime arrests up 90%, criminal enterprise arrests are up 30%, 21% more children who suffered from a crime were identified, and 13% more child predators were arrested over the 18 prior months, compared to the situation beforehand.
“Mr. Chairman, I’m proud to announce today, and I hate to correct you, we haven’t captured nine of the Top 10 Most [Wanted] individuals on our list. We’ve captured ten,” Patel boasted at one point.
“Just this past weekend, this FBI stopped another ISIS-inspired attack in Pittsburgh, arresting an individual before he was able to go out and kill innocent civilians,” he later added.
