Kash Patel to face Senate confirmation hearing for FBI director
Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, faces what could be a contentious confirmation hearing before the Senate judiciary committee on Thursday.
Patel is expected to face scrutiny over his close relationship with Trump, which allowed him to become the frontrunner for the position, and his overall competence to lead the FBI at a time when it has weathered sustained attacks not just from Trump but Patel himself.
The Senate confirmation hearing is scheduled to begin at 9.30am ET.
Key events
Richard Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, said he does not believe that Kash Patel has the “experience”, “temperament” or “judgment” to lead the FBI.
“After meeting with Mr Patel and reviewing his record, I do not believe you meet the standard,” Durbin said.
Durbin described Patel as “someone who’s left behind a trail of grievances throughout his life, lashing out at anyone who disrespects him or doesn’t agree with him.”
He noted that Donald Trump had fired his first FBI director, James Comey, and forced out his second FBI director, Christopher Wray.
“With Mr Patel, however, obviously, the president has found a loyalist,” Durbin said.
Donald Trump will appear in the White House briefing room at 11am ET to speak about Wednesday’s deadly midair collision of near Washington DC.
The bodies of 28 people have been retrieved from the Potomac River and no survivors are expected to be found following a midair collision of an American Airlines jet and a military Black Hawk helicopter at Reagan National airport.
You can follow our updates on the plane crash on our live blog.
Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump’s choice to be director of national intelligence, will begin her confirmation hearing with the Senate intelligence committee at 10am ET.
Senator Tom Cotton, the Republican chair of the Senate intelligence committee, said he supported Gabbard’s nomination even before his committee began the hearing.
“I support Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination,” Cotton told Fox News.
I’ve been working with her to move towards confirmation, and I look forward to working with her for four years.
Chuck Grassley, the Senate judiciary committee chair, began the confirmation hearing for Kash Patel by recognizing the victims of Wednesday night’s plane crash in Washington DC.
Grassley then said that the FBI has the “lowest rating in a century”.
“There’s no surprise that public trust has declined in an institution that has been plagued by abuse, lack of transparency and weaponization of law enforcement,” he said.
Nevertheless, the FBI remains an “important, even indispensable” institution for law and order in the country, he said.
Addressing Patel, he said the job of FBI director is to restore the public trust and return the institution to its core mission of “fighting crime”.
Kash Patel, nominated by Donald Trump to be the next FBI director, has entered the Senate judiciary room to begin his confirmation hearing.
Jessica Glenza
Robert F Kennedy Jr’s testimony was a “through the looking glass” moment for some senators, as lawmakers questioned one of the nation’s most influential vaccine critics for a job as the top US health official.
The hearing was a testament to how quickly Republicans have integrated “Make America Healthy Again” rhetoric into their own, lauding Kennedy, who was called a “predator” only hours earlier in a letter by his own cousin, as the correct man to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
That letter alone, which described how Kennedy put baby chicks and mice into a blender for the birds of prey he keeps as pets, might have been disqualifying in earlier political eras.
But as the Trump administration dominates headlines with nominees, executive orders and new laws, Kennedy’s hearing on Wednesday was one more spectacle where thunderous Democrats attempted to hold a mirror to the nominee, only for him to step right through.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services, will face the Senate health committee from 10am ET.
Kennedy’s appearance in front of the health committee comes a day after a bruising performance in a heated three-and-a-half-hour hearing before the finance committee.
During the combative confirming hearing on Wednesday, Democrats confronted one of the US’s most prominent vaccine skeptics, who will possibly be handed the reins of America’s public health system.
The Senate finance committee’s ranking member, Ron Wyden, challenged the 71-year-old Kennedy over seemingly contradictory statements, reading quotes from podcasts in which Kennedy had claimed “no vaccine is safe and effective” while testifying under oath that he supports vaccines. He read another quote from 2020 how Kennedy claimed he regretted vaccinating his children.
“All of these things cannot be true,” Wyden said. “So are you lying to Congress today when you say you are pro-vaccine, or did you lie on all those podcasts?”
The Colorado senator Michael Bennet accused Kennedy of “peddling half-truths” throughout his career, demanding yes or no answers about past controversial statements. When asked if he had called Lyme disease a “highly likely” military bioweapon, Kennedy said, “I probably did say that,” although he disputed other claims.
David Smith
“A lot of people say he’s crazy,” Donald Trump is reported to have once said of his pick to be the next FBI director, Kash Patel. “I think he’s kind of crazy. But sometimes you need a little crazy.”
If Trump gets his way, crazy will now be coming to the FBI, the 116-year-old national security and law enforcement agency charged with protecting the US from terrorism, cybercrime and other threats.
Kashyap “Kash” Patel is the son of Indian immigrants. His parents, of Gujarati ancestry, moved to the US in the 1970s after his father, Pramod, fled the oppressive regime of Idi Amin in Uganda. Pramod became a financial officer for an aviation company.
Patel was born and raised in Garden City, a well-to-do village on Long Island, New York, living in a home that included his father’s eight siblings. In his memoir, he writes of an extended family setting off for Disney World every year in a 15-car convoy and watching the New York Islanders play ice hockey. His official biography on the Pentagon website notes: “Kash is a life-long ice hockey player, coach, and fan.”
Raised Hindu, he was one of the few students of colour at Garden City high school. His senior yearbook quotation, taken from the Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, was: “Racism is man’s gravest threat – the maximum of hatred for a minimum reason.”
Hugo Lowell
Kash Patel, nominated by Donald Trump to be the next FBI director, is expected to face scrutiny on Thursday about whether his loyalty to the president would end the independence of the nation’s premier law-enforcement agency from White House political pressure.
The Senate confirmation hearing comes at a fraught moment for the FBI as its parent agency, the justice department, has been roiled by the demotion of scores of top officials and prosecutors deemed to be insufficiently trustworthy to carry out Trump’s agenda.
The greatest challenge for FBI directors in the Trump era has been the delicate balance of retaining the confidence of Trump while resisting overtures to make public proclamations that are untrue or to open politically motivated lines of inquiry that personally benefit the president.
Patel is unlikely to have such difficulties, such is his ideological alignment with Trump on a range of issues including the need to pursue retribution against any perceived enemies like special counsel Jack Smith and others who investigated him during his first term.
That so-called list of enemies also stretches to senior FBI officials in Washington, whom Trump has criticized for allowing agents to obtain a search warrant to search his Mar-a-Lago club for classified documents after he left office and Trump ignored a grand-jury subpoena for their return.
Patel’s dramatic views to reshape the FBI added to broader concerns about his fitness for the role after he was accused of lying about obtaining proper clearances that nearly botched a high-stakes hostage rescue operation by Seal Team Six during the first Trump administration in 2020.
Kash Patel to face Senate confirmation hearing for FBI director
Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, faces what could be a contentious confirmation hearing before the Senate judiciary committee on Thursday.
Patel is expected to face scrutiny over his close relationship with Trump, which allowed him to become the frontrunner for the position, and his overall competence to lead the FBI at a time when it has weathered sustained attacks not just from Trump but Patel himself.
The Senate confirmation hearing is scheduled to begin at 9.30am ET.
