WASHINGTON (States Newsroom) — All Senate Republicans, except two, voted on Thursday to confirm Kash Patel to a 10-year term as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, an agency in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump.
In a 51-49 vote, the Senate GOP approved the 18th of Trump’s nominees just one month into the president’s second term. All Democrats and independents opposed Patel’s nomination.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, along with Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, broke with the GOP to vote against Patel, citing a “compelling need for an FBI Director who is decidedly apolitical.”
“While Mr. Patel has had 16 years of dedicated public service, his time over the past four years has been characterized by high profile and aggressive political activity. Mr. Patel has made numerous politically charged statements in his book and elsewhere discrediting the work of the FBI, the very institution he has been nominated to lead,” Collins said in a statement ahead of the vote.
Murkowski said her “reservations with Mr. Patel stem from his own prior political activities and how they may influence his leadership.”
“The FBI must be trusted as the federal agency that roots out crime and corruption, not focused on settling political scores,” Murkowski wrote on social media.
Patel, a career Department of Justice prosecutor who also worked for the first Trump administration, will now head up the federal law enforcement agency responsible for stamping out terrorism, white-collar crime, violent crime and public corruption among other criminal activity.
Patel, of Nevada, also has a lengthy resume of media appearances, consulting positions and commercial publications, according to his financial disclosure.
He sits on the board of directors for the Trump Media and Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, but pledged to resign upon confirmation as FBI director.
However, Patel declared on his disclosure that he will not divest from his investments in the Chinese online clothing retailer Shein while he serves as head of the FBI. Patel’s investments in the company are valued between $1 million and $5 million, and are registered in the Cayman Islands, where Shein’s parent company, Elite Depot Ltd., is based.
Patel pulled in between $230,000 and $550,000 in recent years from book sales, including his 2023 title “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth and the Battle for Our Democracy.” Patel is also the author of a children’s series that depicts a cartoon Donald Trump as a king confronting opposition, including battling a fictional stolen election — even though kings are not elected.
Patel, 44, a frequent guest on right-wing media, told podcast host Shawn Ryan last year that he’d “shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state.’”
Patel was also one of the producers on the recorded version of the “Star-Spangled Banner” sung by defendants jailed in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump played the song on the campaign trail.
However during his confirmation hearing, Patel spoke out against Jan. 6 defendants who committed violence against law enforcement.
When asked about his previous comments about shutting down the FBI headquarters, Patel told senators that accusations that he would “put political bias before the Constitution are grotesquely unfair.”
Thune praises Patel
Senate Majority Leader John Thune praised Patel on the Senate floor as the right choice to lead the FBI “at a critical time” and restore trust in an agency suffering from “a perception that politics has infected the FBI’s important work.”
“The next director of the FBI needs to focus on rooting out politics, so the FBI can enforce the law, uphold the Constitution, and keep Americans safe,” Thune said.
“The bureau also needs a renewed focus on empowering the FBI’s field offices to be good partners to local law enforcement. I’m encouraged that Mr. Patel has the support of the National Police Association, the National Sheriffs’ Association, and multiple state attorneys general — all of whom will be his partners in law enforcement should Mr. Patel be confirmed,” the South Dakota Republican continued.
Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri posted his support on social media Thursday morning.
“Kash will reform the agency and not a moment too soon,” Schmitt wrote.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin wrote on social media early Thursday in all caps that within hours he and his colleagues would “CONFIRM KASH PATEL”
“We’re almost there, America,” the Oklahoma Republican posted.
Trump was charged with multiple federal crimes in recent years stemming from classified documents held at his Florida estate after his presidency and his attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential election results.
Both cases were dropped after Trump won his second presidency in November, according to a long-standing policy that the department does not prosecute sitting presidents.
Durbin slams Patel support of Jan. 6 defendants
Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, said Thursday morning that his Republican colleagues are “willfully ignoring myriad red flags about Mr. Patel.”
Durbin, of Illinois, led the morning remarks outside the Washington, D.C., FBI headquarters at the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
The committee’s ranking member criticized Patel’s support for those who broke into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, many of whom violently attacked law enforcement.
“I was there that day on January 6, as many of my colleagues standing here (were) with me. Those insurrectionists are not political prisoners. They were rioters on a mission from Donald Trump,” Durbin said.
Trump granted clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants on his first night in office, with little pushback from Senate Republicans.
The Trump administration has forced out FBI agents and Department of Justice prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Durbin alleged in a Feb. 11 letter that he obtained “highly credible information from multiple sources that Kash Patel has been personally directing the ongoing purge of career civil servants at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who spoke alongside Durbin and five other Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary panel, accused Patel of being a “sycophantic suck-up.”
“Kash Patel, mark my words, will cause evil in this building behind us, and Republicans who vote for him will rue that day,” Whitehouse said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the criticism by Collins, Murkowski and Senate Democrats of Patel.
Patel’s background
During Trump’s first administration, Patel served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council, and as a senior adviser to Trump’s director of national intelligence, Rick Grenell. Patel briefly served as the chief of staff to the acting defense secretary from November 2020 to January 2021.
Prior to joining Trump’s White House, Patel worked as a national security adviser on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from March 2018 to January 2019 and as senior counsel for the committee in the months prior.
Patel was a trial attorney with the Department of Justice National Security Division from 2014 to 2017 during former President Barack Obama’s second term in office.
Patel began his career as a public defender in Miami, Florida.
He received his law degree from Pace University Law School in 2005. He is from Garden City, New York.
