Kash Patel has been hounded in recent days by questions about his capacity to run the F.B.I. amid an exodus of top agents, allegations he oversaw political firings ordered by the White House and his face-plant social media post during the hunt for the killer of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Yet on Tuesday, Mr. Patel appeared to find his happy place: the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Mr. Patel, who has embraced President Trump’s attack-the-attacker style with bellowing brio, had no intention of being lured into traps set by Democrats, or conceding major error, or sometimes even furnishing answers to their informational queries.
He was there to brawl, perhaps to convince Mr. Trump he still had the attributes that endeared him to the president’s inner circle in the first place — that unique hybrid of public defiance and personal compliance demanded of those placed in positions of power.
“I’m not going anywhere!” Mr. Patel declared near the start of the periodic F.B.I. oversight hearing before the committee, presaging more than four hours of attack and counterattack in a half-full marble-lined committee room.
The Republicans on the panel rallied to his side, offering at most only faint chiding that masked the serious grievances against Mr. Patel of some Trump allies since Mr. Kirk’s death. They defused questions for now over whether a larger rebellion against Mr. Patel might be brewing, allowing the proceedings to fall into a familiar partisan groove that played to the F.B.I. director’s pugilistic instincts.
As much as Democratic senators like Cory Booker of New Jersey and Adam B. Schiff of California tried to match his tone and volume, Mr. Patel refused to cede much ground. He has never been a decorous congressional guest, but on Tuesday, he abandoned any pretense of courtesy beyond calling his targets “senator.”
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The post Patel Plays the Familiar Role of Pugilist at a Senate Hearing appeared first on New York Times.
