Jeff had the meat and potatoes of Kash Patel’s hearing yesterday, along with Democrats beclowning themselves trying to attack the man President Donald Trump wants to helm the Federal Bureau of Investigation. His opening remarks alone are worthy of total confirmation. It was a lengthy statement about restoring the FBI to what it was good at and abiding by the rule of law. The days of weaponization at the behest of Democrats are over (via RealClearPolitics):
KASH PATEL: Chairman Grassley, Ranking Member Durbin, and members of the Judiciary Committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear today. I must start with a word of prayer for the tragic accident that befell our nation last night where we lost civilians and service members. I pray for their families, I pray for law enforcement and military personnel, and I pray for their souls, and hopefully God will find them peace in the near future.
I'd like to welcome my father, Pramod, and my mother, Anjana, who are sitting here today. They traveled here to get here from India. My sister's also here, Nisha, she also traversed the oceans just to be with me here today.
It means the world that you guys are here, Jessie Gresham. I wouldn't be here today without their guidance, their unwavering support, and their relentless love. When President Trump informed me of his intention to nominate me as the Director of the FBI, I was deeply honored.
Sitting here today, I carry not only the dreams of my parents, but also the hopes of millions of Americans who stand for justice, fairness, and the rule of law. My commitment to these principles is deeply rooted in my family's history, which has profoundly shaped my worldview. My father fled Idi Amin's genocidal dictatorship in Uganda where 300,000 men, women, and children were killed based on their ethnicity just because they happened to look like me.
My mother is originally from Tanzania. She studied in India, as did my dad, and they were married there. They would later emigrate to New York, as the Senator pointed out, where I was born, and we were raised in a household of my father's seven siblings, their spouses, and at least half a dozen children.
That's the only way we knew how to do things at the time in the 70s and 80s, the Indian way, but we would soon learn the American way. These values have shaped and been the driving force of my career in 16 years of government service. Protecting the rights of the Constitution is of the utmost importance to me and has been every single time I have taken that oath of office.
The recent terrorist attacks in New Orleans tragically claimed the lives of 14 innocent Americans and serve as a stark reminder that our national security is at threat, both internally and externally. The FBI, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice, where I served, play a pivotal role in securing our freedoms and our safeties for American citizens. If confirmed as the next FBI director, I will remain focused on the FBI's core mission, that is, to investigate fully wherever there is a constitutional factual basis to do so and to never make a prosecutorial decision that is solely the providence of the Department of Justice and the Attorney General.
For the first eight years after law school, I served as a public defender, first for Miami Dade County and later for the Southern District of Florida. During that time, I represented some pretty awful human beings charged with some pretty heinous crimes, but what I learned there was the core value that has been enshrined in me since. That due process must be provided without bias to all Americans, and if we cannot provide due process to the worst, then there can be no due process for anyone, and our constitutional republic fails.
But I battled on that hill for that due process. I would later serve in the Obama Justice Department as a terrorism prosecutor in the National Security Division, where we successfully contributed to the prosecutions of terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab, and others. I was honored to receive the 2017 Assistant Attorney General's Award from Loretta Lynch for my work in helping the Ugandans bring members of Al-Shabaab to justice for murdering 74 innocent people, including an American.
I would also receive the Human Intelligence Award from the intelligence community for related work on that mission. My experiences at the National Security Division would later be followed by my experiences on the National Security Council as Senior Director for Counterterrorism, and later as a Deputy Director of National Intelligence responsible for the production, creation, and promulgation of the Presidential Daily Briefing, our nation's most sensitive classified information and secrets to protect our country.
My time in the White House was preceded by my time right here in Congress as a staffer on the House Intelligence Committee, where I spearheaded the investigation that exposed serious FISA, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, abuses by members of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That misconduct eroded the public trust in our FBI. The erosion of trust, as Chairman Grassley pointed out, is all too low today.
Forty percent of Americans have trust in the FBI. In order to get it back, there's a two-fold track, Senator. One, violent crime is exploding in this country, and we cannot afford to them to allow it to run away.
We must tackle violent crime. Just in 2023 alone, there was 100,000 rapes, 100,000 drug overdoses, and 17,000 homicides. The priority of the FBI, if I'm confirmed, will be to ensure that our communities are protected and safeguarded and our children have parts to play in and not needles to walk over.
The way we do this? We let good cops be cops. We let law enforcement, and we provide them with the tools necessary and resources they need to get after violent crime.
The second way we do this on equal track is aggressive constitutional oversight from Congress. The public trust can only be restored if there is full transparency, and I am committed to that full transparency. Members of Congress have unfortunately submitted hundreds of questions that have been unanswered by the FBI in recent times.
That will not occur if I am confirmed. All appropriate requests for information will be responded to expeditiously and fully. I'm committed to working alongside the dedicated men and women of the FBI.
They are our warriors of justice, and I will always have their backs because they have the backs of the American people. I look forward to answering your questions, and I want to take a moment to thank my family, my friends, people who traveled here, and my entire team that has made this day possible. God bless America, and I look forward to your questions.
The moment Trump FBI Director nominee Kash Patel touched his parents’ feet ahead of his senate confirmation hearing as a mark of respect and seek their blessings. This is what we call Indian and Hindu culture and values.pic.twitter.com/22r7IymWWU
— Aditya Raj Kaul (@AdityaRajKaul) January 30, 2025
The FBI has gone off the reservation under Joe Biden. It was weaponized to go after Donald Trump, it went to absurd lengths to snatch January 6 defendants at the expense of child sex abuse cases. They manufactured or suppressed evidence to secure spy warrants against Trump campaign officials, pushed Russian collusion nonsense despite knowing the source material was subsidized by the Hillary Clinton campaign, and interfered in the IRS’ investigation into Hunter Biden. The bureau needs a total housecleaning, and Trump has started that. Several FBI officials have been told to pack their boxes and get the hell out of the J. Edgar Hoover Building (via WaPo):
Multiple senior FBI officials have been ordered to leave the bureau within days or be fired, according to three people familiar with the matter, a sign that President Donald Trump’s administration is purging leadership at an agency that has been a frequent target of his ire.
The ultimatums came as Trump’s nominee to lead the bureau, Kash Patel, vowed during his confirmation hearing Thursday that he would not take action against perceived enemies should he be confirmed as FBI director.
“All FBI employees will be protected against political retribution,” Patel told lawmakers.
While the Senate considers Patel’s nomination, the massive law enforcement bureau is being run by an acting director and an acting deputy director, both veteran agents appointed by the White House.
It is highly unusual for senior staffing changes to be made under such circumstances at the FBI, a law enforcement agency that is supposed to be insulated from politics.
The key word there, WaPo, is “supposed.” Yes, the FBI is supposed to be apolitical. That’s no longer the case. Confirm Patel. Clean up this mess.