Senators grill Patel in combative hearing: 5 takeaways

FBI Director Kash Patel struck a combative tone in a Tuesday hearing that included multiple shouting matches with Democratic lawmakers and a prediction that President Trump “will cut you loose.”

The appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee was Patel’s first sitting with lawmakers since the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and the Justice Department’s compliance with a House subpoena demanding the Epstein files. 

While he faced some tough questions from the GOP side of the dais on the Epstein files, it was exchanges with Democrats that resulted in two heated outbursts.

In one notable exchange, Patel lit into Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a frequent target of the president, calling him “the biggest fraud to ever sit in the United States Senate” and “a political buffoon at best.”

Before that, tensions flared between Patel and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) when the senator said he expects the director could soon be fired amid conservative backlash to Patel’s handling of the Kirk shooting.

“Mr. Patel, I think you’re not going to be around long. I think this might be your last full oversight hearing,” Booker said. “Because as much as you supplicate yourself to the will of Donald Trump and not the constitution of the United States of America, Donald Trump has shown us in his first term, and in this term, he is not loyal to people like you. He will cut you loose.”

Here are five takeaways from the contentious hearing.

Patel denies Trump role in forcing out top staff

Patel denied the central allegations of a recently filed lawsuit, saying he did not take cues from President Trump in deciding to fire several top agents, including a career agent who led the FBI on an acting basis before he was confirmed.

Patel’s statements contrast with allegations from Brian Driscoll, who says he was told his firing last month was because “the FBI tried to put the president in jail, and he hasn’t forgotten it.” Driscoll indicated he believes Patel’s reference to his superiors meant the Justice Department and the White House, and according to the suit, Patel did not deny it.

But Patel offered a different account when confronted by lawmakers.

“I don’t receive directions to do that,” he said, adding “I make the decisions.

“Any termination at the FBI was a decision that I made based on the evidence that I have as a director of the FBI. That’s my job, and I don’t shy away from it. And as you stated, those were allegations, and that is ongoing litigation. They’ll have their day in court. So will we,” Patel said.

The lawsuit makes several other allegations regarding high level Trump administration officials, including that Stephen Miller called for widespread firings at the FBI and that former No. 3 Justice Department official Emil Bove planned to terminate anyone who clashed with the president’s agenda.

Personnel moves

Patel also faced questions about scores of other firings, including the five career staffers who headed the bureau’s branches, 18 of the 53 leaders running the bureau’s various field offices, and other key staffers throughout the FBI.

Patel refused to answer questions about how many agents have been fired, forced out or left the agency under Trump, nor would he say who has been tapped to replace exiting personnel. At one point he said the FBI has the funding to fill hundreds of vacancies, but Patel also said it would take 14 years “to onboard every vacancy that’s on the books currently.”

“You admitted in this hearing … that it would take 14 years to fill the vacancies at your agency. Many are the result of your purge. Twenty percent of FBI agents are doing low-level immigration enforcement instead of their mission-critical work. You’ve disbanded entire task forces that stop election interference, foreign influence, public corruption,” Booker said.

“Who benefits from this?”

Multiple Democrats questioned Patel about the firings, noting that in his confirmation hearing, he pledged not to terminate employees for political reasons. Schiff at one point held up a quote from the director saying, “All FBI employees will be protected against political retribution.”

“I’m not going to mince words. You lied to us. In the short time that you’ve been FBI director, you’ve presided over a rash of retaliatory firings,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said.

Patel took offense.

“The only way people get terminated at the FBI is if they fail to meet the muster of the job and their duties. And that is where I will leave it. And you accusing me of lying is something I don’t take lightly,” he said.

But that discussion saw greater nuance under questioning from Schiff, when he asked whether any agents have been fired because of assignments they took.

“No one at the FBI is terminated for case assignments alone,” Patel said.

But that caught the ear of Schiff.

“You’re saying ‘alone.’ Does that mean they were terminated in part because they were assigned to a Jan. 6 case [or] were assigned to the Mar-a-Lago case?” he asked.

“I don’t have to answer your question [as a] yes or no, because you’re setting up a trap,” Patel responded.

In the early days of the administration, Bove asked for a list of all FBI agents who worked on the cases of Jan. 6 rioters, a group that numbered in the thousands. And in recent weeks, the bureau fired Walter Giardina, a longtime agent who worked on a number of high-profile cases, including those that involved Trump.

At another point, Patel was asked about an agent who largely serves as a pilot for the FBI but was fired after right-wing podcaster Kyle Seraphin accused him of being central to the Mar-a-Lago investigation.

Durbin called it “disgraceful” that employees are being “terminated apparently because of the rants of a podcaster.”

Polygraphs and politicization 

Patel fielded a number of questions about polygraph tests that have been given to agents, as well as other questions asked seeking the political persuasion of agents.

The New York Times reported in July that the bureau had begun to use polygraphs to ask agents unusual questions, including whether they had spoken negatively about Patel.

Patel defended the use of polygraphs during the Tuesday hearing, casting the report as false and saying they played a role in trying to determine who might be behind media leaks.

“I don’t tell the professionals how to conduct polygraphs or what questions to ask. They make those decisions. And I, as the director of the FBI, never ask anyone who they voted for,” he said.

In the suit from fired FBI agents, Driscoll said the Trump transition team asked him about his prior votes, including his support for Trump, questions he refused to answer.

“It’s not a proper question, and it’s improper to allege that I’m doing that. And also, at the FBI specifically, under my leadership we do not ask who you voted for,” Patel said.

A combative tone

Senate Democrats took to the social platform X to forecast their plans to grill Patel, with Schiff doing a video walking through planned questions and Judiciary Committee ranking member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) tweeting a list of career agents fired by Patel who are “all more competent than him.”

Even before the hearing, Patel shot back.

“If you’re going to come at me, use facts. All you have is disinformation and lies. I’ll see you, prime time in front of the world. America deserves a better brand of justice, and I’m giving it to them,” he wrote Monday on X in response to Durbin. 

“BRING IT.”

Beyond the big blowouts, Patel got in other jabs during the hearing.

“If you’re not going to let me answer, why don’t you just do your soliloquy in the 4.5 minutes you have left?” he said under questioning from Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) about the number of agent firings.

When asked why an unsigned FBI and DOJ memo concluding there was no need to make further disclosures on the Epstein matter did include his signature, Patel got in a barb at former President Biden.

“Would you prefer I’ve used autopen?” Patel quipped, nodding to Biden’s use of an autopen to sign some documents — a White House practice conservatives have argued should invalidate many of the prior administration’s decisions.

The sharpest moments, however, came with Booker and Schiff.

Patel told Booker “your falsehoods are an embarrassment to the division in this country.”

He also told Schiff that he is “a disgrace to this institution and an utter coward.”

Epstein files

Patel on Tuesday blamed past administrations for the “original sin” he argued hamstrung the bureau in its prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein.

He pointed a finger at Alex Acosta, a former U.S. attorney who first prosecuted Epstein’s case and who went on to serve as Labor Secretary during the first Trump administration.

“The original sin in the Epstein case was the way it was initially brought by Mr. Acosta back in 2006. The original case involved a very limited search warrant or set of search warrants, and didn’t take as much investigatory material it should have seized,” Patel said. 

“If I were the FBI director then, it wouldn’t have happened.”

But during the hearing, Patel faced pressure from Democrats and Republicans to reveal more details about the case involving the convicted sex offender who killed himself while in jail when awaiting additional related charges.

“The essential question for the American people is this, they know that Epstein trafficked young women for sex to himself — they want to know who, if anyone else, he trafficked these young women too,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said.

“And that’s a very fair question. I want to know that answer. And I think you’re going to have to do more to satisfy the American people’s understandable curiosity.”

Patel said his answers on the case were “not going to satisfy many, many, many people” and that earlier investigators erred in seeking data during a small window of time.

“If they wanted it done right, then the investigation from its origination should have been done right, and he should not have been given a ‘get out of jail free card’ to do jail on the weekends for 12 hours a day, and he should have been investigated fully for the entirety of his crime and criminal enterprise, not just from 1997 to 2001,” Patel said.