FBI Director Kash Patel sat silently as the Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat called him the “least qualified and most partisan” director in the bureau’s history.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the committee’s ranking member, delivered the assessment Tuesday in his opening statement at the panel’s oversight hearing, with Patel seated at the witness table. Patel is in his second year running the bureau, and Tuesday was his second annual oversight hearing, according to Chairman Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) prepared remarks.
“Sadly for the American people, the current director does not meet these standards,” Durbin said. “Mr. Patel is the least qualified and most partisan FBI director in our nation’s history.”
Durbin measured Patel against former FBI Director Robert Mueller, saying Patel lacks Mueller’s judgment, experience and temperament. Much of Durbin’s case reached back to what Patel said before he took the job, when he was promoting a book that named federal officials he believed had wronged President Donald Trump.
“Mr. Patel falsely claimed in public that the FBI ‘was planning January 6 for a year,’” Durbin said. “He compiled an enemies list of public servants he called ‘government gangsters,’ who he promised to target if he was confirmed as head of the FBI.”
Senate Democrats raised those statements at Patel’s confirmation hearing and opposed him as a bloc, but the Senate confirmed him in a 51-49 vote in February 2025.
Durbin then turned to what he said Patel has done with the job since.
“Director Patel has been the central figure pushing the so-called grand conspiracy, diverting FBI resources to inane, debunked conspiracy theories that the ‘deep state’ has been targeting President Trump since his first campaign,” Durbin said.
“Director Patel is also wasting FBI resources to relitigate the 2020 presidential election,” the senator added.
“President Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden by 7 million votes,” Durbin said. “That’s simple. It’s obvious. It’s a matter of fact.”
“Director Patel has installed MAGA loyalists as political appointees in key career positions, and he even imposed loyalty tests requiring FBI officials to undergo polygraphs to say whether they ever criticized him,” the Illinois Democrat noted.
Grassley had opened the hearing by predicting the attack, and by telling Patel that violent crime arrests were up 90% over 18 months.
“I assume the other side, despite many of their own shortcomings, will personally attack you, questioning your ethics, your truthfulness and your abilities,” Grassley said. “Don’t let that affect you.”
“I look forward to a day where this committee will fulfill its duty to hold Director Patel accountable for his leadership,” Durbin said.
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