Nomination of Kashyap Patel

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, on a separate topic, later this week, Senate Republicans have scheduled a vote on the confirmation of Kash Patel, President Trump's nominee for FBI Director. It is a 10-year appointment, unusual by Senate standards, but it was designed to be 10 years so it would be depoliticized.

It is unfortunate that the Republicans are moving ahead despite the many problems with Mr. Patel's record. Mr. Patel has no experience-- none--in administration and management, particularly of an organization like the FBI that has 38,000 agents in place--38,000. It is the premier criminal investigative Agency in our country, perhaps the world.

After meeting with Mr. Patel and reviewing his record and questioning him under oath at his hearing, I am deeply concerned about his fitness to serve as FBI Director. He has neither the experience, the judgment, nor the temperament to lead the FBI.

My Senate Republican colleagues, sadly, are willfully ignoring myriad red flags about Mr. Patel, especially his recurring instinct to threaten retribution against his political enemies and President Trump's perceived enemies. This is an extremely dangerous characteristic for someone who seeks to lead the Nation's most powerful domestic investigative Agency for the next 10 years.

Mr. Patel, on day one, plans to--I quote him directly. He said this, now. On day one, as Director of the FBI, he plans to ``shut down the FBI Hoover Building and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep State.''

He even wrote a book on the subject that I punished myself by requiring that I read it from cover to cover to understand exactly what this man believed. He has peddled outrageous conspiracy theories that benefit President Trump, claiming that January 6, the assault on the Capitol, the insurrectionist assault, was ``never an insurrection'' and that the FBI--get this; this is Kash Patel--the FBI was ``planning January 6 for a year.''

Where is this man coming up with these wild theories? And, incidentally, he compiled an enemies list and published it in the back of his book--60 names--``members of the . . . deep State,'' which includes distinguished public servants from both political parties. Patel named former Attorneys General Bill Barr and Merrick Garland, former FBI Directors Robert Mueller and Chris Wray as the so-called members of the deep State, whatever that may be.

And he has even produced and sold recordings of a song--understand this for a moment: 1,600 people prosecuted for assaulting law enforcement officials here in this Capitol Building, who were working, as they are at this very moment, to keep us safe and our visitors safe.

What did Patel decide to do? He decided to assemble a choir of the January 6 individuals who were prosecuted. Then he was involved in making a recording of a patriotic song that these prisoners were singing, and then he was selling this recording and playing it at the rallies for President Trump.

I am not making this up, ladies and gentlemen. This is exactly what this man, who wants to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was doing and which he denied before our hearing under oath.

He has even produced these recordings and called the choir, the January 6 prisoners, political prisoners.

Let me take one example of a so-called political prisoner. Guy Reffitt was sentenced to 87 months in prison for his role in the January 6 assault on the Capitol. His 19-year-old son Jackson turned him in to law enforcement after the attack on the Capitol, despite Reffitt's threats to shoot his son and his son's sister if they reported him to authorities--a father threatening to kill his son and daughter if they turned him in.

After being pardoned, Guy Reffitt decided to come back to the Capitol and attend Kash Patel's confirmation hearing. He posted on social media afterward:

Present and in support of @Kash__Patel as the leftist commies continue to spew lies, misinformation and disinformation. My man Klean House Kash.

This man, who brought a weapon into the Capitol, was prosecuted for that, serving time, given a complete pardon by President Trump, then comes back to the Capitol to attend the hearings and cheer on Kash Patel's nomination for Director of the FBI.

Before even being confirmed as FBI Director, Mr. Patel is already seeking retribution on behalf of President Trump, despite Patel's status as a private citizen. Multiple whistleblowers have disclosed highly credible information to my staff indicating that Mr. Patel has personally directed the ongoing purge of senior law enforcement officials at the FBI. Senior leaders with, collectively, hundreds of years of experience have been forced out at the FBI, creating a leadership vacuum.

Mr. President, this has never happened in the history of the United States and the history of the FBI, that a new President would come into office and decide to clean the ranks of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This has been an apolitical Agency. There is only one political appointee to the FBI: the Director. All the others are professionals who have been dedicating their lives to law enforcement for years.

Senior leaders who have shown their dedication to the United States are now being accused of suspect. Suspect for what? They were engaged in the investigation of the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, an assault which I witnessed at this desk as I watched the Secret Service agents pull the Vice President from that chair and take him out of the Chamber as this mob assaulted the Capitol. It was real. In the FBI's long history, this has never happened before. Never.

Keep in mind: The Director, the only appointee of the FBI, and the leaders have been forced out despite their career commitment to law enforcement. This purge has dramatically weakened the FBI's ability to protect the country from national security threats, and it has made America less safe.

If these whistleblower allegations are true, that Kash Patel, as a private citizen, has been orchestrating the purging of the ranks at the FBI because of political loyalty questions, I will tell you that he came dangerously close to perjuring himself during his nomination hearing when asked about the possible firings of the FBI officials and he answered under oath ``I don't know what's going on right now'' at the FBI.

Mr. President, we are told that is not true; he was personally involved in it, despite the fact that he said the opposite under oath before our committee.

Mr. Patel has been open about his plans to dismantle the FBI and seek retribution against his and President Trump's enemies. His directives as a private citizen have already thrown the Bureau into absolute chaos.

Mr. Patel's recent actions and testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee confirm my belief that he is dangerous, inexperienced, and he has been dishonest in portraying his role in what is happening at the FBI. It will be a political and national security disaster if he is confirmed.

And let me take it to a personal level. The FBI Agents Association came to me with this and talked about the very real personal and family concerns of dedicated FBI agents. They are fearful that an environment and climate has been created which puts their own safety in question.

Let me give you an example of another one of these 1,600 people who were prosecuted for the assault on the Capitol: Edward Kelley, convicted of assaulting law enforcement and other felony and misdemeanor offenses related to his conduct on January 6. The men and women who came in and were beating on the law enforcement officials who protect this Capitol, Kelley was one of them.

As I said, he was convicted, scheduled to be sentenced this April, until he was pardoned by President Trump last month. While awaiting trial on his January 6-related charges, Kelley was separately charged and convicted in his home State of Tennessee of conspiracy to murder law enforcement, including FBI agents and employees who participated in the investigation of his insurrectionist conduct.

Kelley's Tennessee murder conspiracy case remains pending sentencing, but Kelley argues that the case is related to his Washington, DC, charges and thus covered by President Trump's blanket pardon.

Kelley is a perfect example of the danger of publicly releasing the names of FBI agents who worked on January 6 cases, and there were some 5,000 employees of the FBI and the Department of Justice who were engaged in that. If we value these men and women who risk their lives every day for the safety of the United States, we cannot allow Kash Patel to become Director of that Agency, and we cannot run the risk that he will use their names publicly, as he has in his book, identifying his enemies list to the detriment of these agents and their families. We owe it to them to stand by them, as they have stood by us.

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