Key Trump ally strives to extricate himself from statements he had made earlier, claiming ‘mischaracterization’
Kash Patel sought to allay concerns about his fitness to serve as the FBI director at his Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday but declined to engage with questioning that explicitly asked whether he would use his position to investigate some of Donald Trump’s top political opponents.
The hearing revolved around Patel’s provocative public remarks attacking the FBI and his ability to resist political pressure from the White House, a topic that has come to the fore with the justice department rocked by the ouster of prosecutors who worked on cases against Trump.
Patel, a longtime Trump adviser who served in his first term, distanced himself from statements he made on podcasts and in the appendix of his book Government Gangsters, which included a list of people he believed were Trump’s adversaries in government, including former attorneys general and FBI directors.
He insisted, indignantly, it was not a list of enemies, the driving concern among Democratic lawmakers that he could use the far-reaching power of the FBI to punish people who worked against Trump. “It’s not an enemies list,” Patel said. “It’s a total mischaracterization.”
But, when pressed in other exchanges, Patel refused to say explicitly that he would not use his position to investigate the former FBI director James Comey or others on the list, and said only that he would not investigate anyone unless they had broken the law.
He also effectively said the FBI was answerable to the justice department and, ultimately, the White House. That response was notably different from the reply given by Trump’s attorney general nominee Pam Bondi, who said the justice department was answerable to the constitution.
In the afternoon session of the hearing, Democrats caught Patel in an awkward moment as they unexpectedly pivoted to his role as a witness in the criminal investigation into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents.
During the investigation, Patel was subpoenaed to testify about whether the documents the FBI seized at Mar-a-Lago had been declassified under a “standing declassification order”, as he had represented in various public comments at the time.
The Guardian reported at the time that Patel initially declined to appear, citing his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. He later testified after the chief US district judge in Washington authorized Patel to have limited immunity from prosecution, which forced his testimony.
Under oath and under close questioning from Senator Cory Booker, Patel clarified that although he witnessed Trump issue a declassification order for some documents, he did not actually know whether they applied to the documents found at Mar-a-Lago.
Booker seized on this to say Patel is happy to “lie” on behalf of Trump in public to support him, which he said was disqualifying. “He is refusing the transparency he claims to adhere to,” Booker added.
Patel’s testimony is unlikely to convince Democrats to support him – the top Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, Dick Durbin, said in his opening remarks that Patel “did not meet the standard” to lead the FBI – but he is likely to receive enough Republican votes to secure confirmation.
When Trump tapped Patel to serve as FBI director last year, Democrats had largely believed his inflammatory statements attacking the FBI and his close relationship with the president would lead to a backlash that would sink his nomination.
That backlash never really materialized, in large part because Patel ended up as less controversial than some of Trump’s other nominees such as Pete Hegseth, who was narrowly confirmed as defense secretary.
Still, Patel attempted to distance himself from his most problematic comments even as Senator Amy Klobuchar read back verbatim quotes that portrayed him as harboring personal animus towards Trump’s opponents and determined to shutter FBI headquarters to turn it into a museum of the so-called “deep state”.
Patel said her quotations were “grotesque” mischaracterizations and at other times claimed not to remember the remarks being read back to him. “I am quoting his own words,” Klobuchar said.
The hearing also brought up the January 6 Capitol riot after Trump issued pardons to 1,600 people charged in connection to the attack, many of whom were convicted for assaulting police officers – to which Patel, a former prosecutor and public defender, offered a lawyer’s answer.
Patel said he has always rejected violence against law enforcement and did not agree with Trump’s commutations, without addressing the pardons. Trump’s only commutations were for leaders of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys groups convicted of seditious conspiracy.
Patel was formerly a public defender in Florida before joining the justice department in 2014 as a line prosecutor in the national security division.
In 2017, Patel became a top Republican aide on the House intelligence committee, where he authored a politically charged memo accusing the FBI and the justice department of abusing surveillance powers to spy on a Trump adviser. The memo was criticized as misleading, though an inspector general later found errors with aspects of the surveillance.
His efforts impressed Trump, who brought him into the administration and quickly elevated him to national security and defence roles. By the end of Trump’s first term, he was the chief of staff to defense secretary Chris Miller and briefly considered for CIA director.
Source: The Guardian
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