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Floor Speech

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise to strongly oppose the confirmation of Kash Patel to serve as the next Director of the FBI.

The FBI Director leads our Nation's most important law enforcement Agency. It is made up of more than 38,000 nonpartisan public servants who work every day to take on violent crime, get fentanyl off of our streets, investigate cyber crimes, protect our national security, and so much more.

The Bureau's motto is ``fidelity, bravery, integrity,'' and its Director must be someone who embodies those core values above all else. That is not Kash Patel.

Let's start with fidelity. The FBI Director's loyalty is not to the President; it is to the truth, the Constitution, and the American people. But Mr. Patel has made it clear that his only loyalty is to the President.

Mr. Patel has threatened to come after the President's critics. On one podcast in December of 2023--by the way, that is 2023, just a few years ago, not two decades ago, not when he is in high school--in 2023, he said, ``We're going to come after you, whether it's criminally or civilly. We'll figure that out. But yeah, we're putting you . . . on notice.''

On another podcast last August, he said, ``When Trump wins in 2024, and is in power in 2025, we can prosecute them,'' referring to Justice Department officials. That was just last August.

At his hearing before the Judiciary Committee, we gave Mr. Patel numerous opportunities to explain, to walk back his threats. He chose not to, nor did he try to explain his so-called ``deep state'' list of former government officials, including many Republicans who served under the President's first term. This list of his deep state government gangsters, as he called them, included former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, former CIA Director Gina Haspel, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, and former Attorney General Bill Barr-- Bill Barr, who received so many compliments from people in this body, from so many Republicans, including the chair of the Judiciary Committee.

I remind our colleagues on the other side of the aisle that Bill Barr wrote that putting Patel in charge of the FBI, promoting him in any way, would only happen ``over [his] dead body.'' Gina Haspel threatened to resign to stop Patel from becoming her Deputy. John Bolton said that Patel ``demonstrated no policy aptitude at all.'' These are staunch, lifelong Republicans. They are experienced and respected people. I may not agree in any way with everything they have said or done, nor does everyone here, but we do agree that they are people of integrity. If these people can end up on Kash Patel's deep state list, we can only imagine what that would mean for anyone who might not be deemed sufficiently loyal to the President.

We know what Mr. Patel wants to do with the people on his list because he already told us. In one interview, he said the people on the list ``need to go to prison.'' And his comments about his so-called enemies are not empty threats. His desire to punish all but the President's most zealous loyalists is far too real.

At his hearing, Mr. Patel said that ``all FBI employees will be protected against political retribution.'' Yet, mere hours later, the administration forced out eight of the Bureau's most senior, nonpartisan public servants who oversaw national security, criminal, and cyber matters.

One day later, an email was sent to FBI employees requesting a list of everyone who had worked on January 6 cases ``to determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.'' It wouldn't matter if it is just a brandnew person who gets assigned to a case or a senior person; didn't matter if these people were prosecuting people and investigating people that actually tried to do us harm in this Chamber, chased down former Senator Romney in the hall--that all happened-- destroyed offices of the Parliamentarian and others, cut police officers' faces and injured them.

Then, when in any crime scene, you would have it investigated, this guy Kash Patel is questioning those FBI employees that were simply assigned to the cases to work on them.

This is not the person we should be putting in charge of the FBI. And I know my colleagues know this. So many of them that were there at the time supported Christopher Wray. I voted for Christopher Wray. He was Donald Trump's choice to run the FBI, but I thought that he would be a man of integrity, and he was. I will also note that applications to the FBI have tripled since he has been in office, during that time period, because he has improved morale. They have been doing their job, and people want to go work there.

Mr. Patel's supposed enemies are not only government officials he disagrees with; he has threatened the press as well. No one agrees with every story the press writes. I certainly don't, and I am sure many of my colleagues have read stories about them that they don't like, but we believe in this country in the First Amendment. Mr. Patel, however, has referred to the media as--again, a recent quote--``the most powerful enemy the United States has ever seen.'' He said that not even on a podcast. He said that in a speech. Think about that. The media is ``the most powerful enemy the United States has ever seen,'' in the words of Kash Patel, nominated to be the Director of the FBI, to oversee tens of thousands of agents across the country--not China, not Russia, not Iran, not terrorists, but the press.

And Mr. Patel has already publicly threatened journalists, saying:

We're going to come after the people in the media. . . . We're going to come after you, whether it's criminally or civilly. We'll figure it out. But yeah, we're putting you all on notice.

This isn't someone with any business running the world's premier law enforcement Agency. This isn't someone whom we can trust to be faithful to our Constitution. This isn't fidelity to the rule of law and impartial law enforcement; it is a direct threat to it.

Bravery. Fidelity, bravery, integrity--so let's talk about bravery. We all know that the Capitol Police showed bravery far and above the call of duty on January 6, 2021. We know that. We know that many of them--their gear was stuck on a bus, their riot gear. They weren't even able to access it, and so many of them were protecting us, people who worked in this Capitol when the people that were storming into this Capitol had better gear than the police had--and, of course, we made tons of changes since then, changes to the leadership of the Capitol Police with a new Chief, changes to the Sergeant at Arms, changes to our security profile. We have made those changes. Of course, we should have done that.

But what we do know is they showed bravery. But rather than recognize the officers' bravery, Mr. Patel accused those who testified in the January 6 hearings of lying. When asked on a podcast whether Capitol Police officers told the truth in the House of Representatives January 6 Committee hearings when they were under oath, Mr. Patel said:

No . . . And lying under oath is a federal offense and they should be investigated for it.

Once again, our colleagues on the Judiciary Committee gave him the chance to walk back these comments during his hearings, and, once again, he chose not to. In fact, he claimed this ``wasn't accurate.''

It was exactly what he said. We have the evidence. We have the facts. We have the proof right there, his words. I would think facts and truth and the proof should matter to someone who is asking to be head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but it doesn't. Literally, this is on YouTube. Anyone listening today could look it up.

The men and women of the Capitol Police aren't criminals; they are heroes. And so are the men and women at the FBI who every day put their lives on the line to keep us safe, but Kash Patel disagrees. He wrote in his book, again recently, that ``the FBI has become so thoroughly compromised that it will remain a threat to the people unless drastic measures are taken.'' And he called the men and women of the FBI ``utterly corrupt.''

How do you think that makes people feel, people out in Minnesota who are going after bank robbers or gangs or drug rings, because Kash Patel didn't like one investigation of a bunch of mobsters that came into this Capitol and beat up police. And then he said he wanted the list of everyone that was involved in that. I don't think the FBI is a threat to the people like Mr. Patel. I don't think it is ``utterly corrupt.'' And I don't think my Republican colleagues believe that either. I think that they admire the people that work at the FBI.

In fact, under Mr. Wray's leadership, as I noted, the morale of agents and personnel at the FBI has improved significantly, three times as many people, as I noted, applying as agents. These agents deserve a Director who will have their back and continue building the morale at the Bureau, not someone who denigrates their service and, as Kash Patel has done--again, we have got it, his voice saying it--called for their headquarters to be shut down and turned into a museum. That was one of his later comments.

The men and women of the FBI show us every day what it means to embody bravery, and now we need to show them that we, too, can be brave and tell the President on this one: No, this is not the right person. We know he is your friend. We know you have hung out with him a lot, but this is not the person for this job.

I ask my colleagues to vote no on just one of these nominees. I voted yes on some of them. I looked at their credentials. I made a decision. Maybe wouldn't have been the first person I picked, but I voted yes on some of them. I ask them to vote no on Kash Patel.

Integrity, FBI, integrity, ``I''--the FBI runs on facts. It runs on truth. Without truth, the whole system breaks down. And in his hearing, Mr. Patel made clear why Americans should be so concerned about putting someone in charge of the FBI who clearly does not have the integrity the job demands. Mr. Patel did not even have the integrity to stand by his own words that we had on YouTube. Instead of disavowing or providing explanations for his past statements, he repeatedly misled the committee, dodged questions, and claimed ignorance, claimed he didn't remember things he had said just a few months before. Why would you want someone in the FBI that doesn't remember things they said only a few months before?

This is irresponsible at best and deceitful at worst.

The Director of our Nation's most powerful law enforcement Agency must be forthright and trustworthy. He must follow the facts and carefully analyze evidence before drawing conclusions. Unfortunately, Mr. Patel has proven that his allegiance is to the President, not to the truth.

Independence of the FBI from the White House is critical. We recently saw courageous prosecutors stand up for an independent justice system. They resigned instead of carrying out politicized orders from the administration. These were not liberal lawyers. These were not members of the resistance. The Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, was a Federalist Society member and a clerk to Justice Scalia. She is a rising star. She is so respected, she has taken on major, major cases and won against criminals time and time again, and she gave up the position of the acting head of one of the most incredible prosecutor's offices in the country, the Southern District of New York.

And the lead prosecutor of the case, Hagan Scotten, was a decorated Iraq war veteran. He clerked for Justice Roberts and Justice Cavanaugh, when Justice Cavanaugh was on the Court of Appeals. In his resignation letter, he wrote:

I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.

I think we should think about those words when we take our vote.

I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.

My Republican colleagues need to show some of the same courage as these public servants. They need to stop acquiescing and stand up to this assault on our justice system, and a good place to start is by voting against Patel.

The fact is, Federal law enforcement and the American people deserve a Director who embodies the Bureau's motto: ``Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity.''

I will be voting no on his confirmation, and I ask our Republican colleagues to join me in standing up for justice, in standing for the rule of law.

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