WASHINGTON (AP) — FBI Director Kash Patel defended Tuesday a recent policy change to allow some applicants who have engaged in prostitution and bestiality to be considered for employment, insisting that the move was made to enable victims of those acts to apply for a job without fear of automatic disqualification.
The subject arose during a fiery Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which Patel clashed with Democrats over his firing of agents who
participated in investigations of President Donald Trump and suggested that agents might be dispatched to the polls on Election Day amid Justice Department and White House concerns about voter fraud.
The hours-long hearing featured the name-calling and bitingly personal exchanges that have come to define Patel's appearances on Capitol Hill, with Democrats characterizing the Trump appointee as unqualified, criticizing him for politically charged investigations into Trump's enemies and highlighting travel that has included a trip to the Winter Olympics in Italy in which he partied with U.S. hockey players and a snorkeling excursion at the Pearl Harbor memorial in Hawaii.
“He’s an incompetent lackey. He's like an 18-year old-kid who wants to join a fraternity that he could never be a member of, doing keg stands and chugging with friends. He’s an embarrassment to the agency and wouldn’t qualify even to be an FBI agent,” said an exasperated Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, his voice rising in anger.
“What a mockery you are,” he added.
Patel shot back, “You are the biggest mockery in the United States Senate, and you're sitting next to Schiff.” That was a reference to Sen. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and outspoken Patel critic.
The FBI quietly issued guidance this past spring lifting a categorical hiring restriction on applicants who had previously participated in prostitution. The bureau made a similar change with regard to childhood experience in bestiality.
Under questioning, Patel denied that the changes reflected a lowering of employment standards and insisted they were designed to prevent victims who'd been forced to engage in that conduct from being automatically disqualified.
“We did not want to punish victims of bestiality, victims who were trafficked. We did not want to make it an automatic disqualification for the FBI to consider you if were a victim of these awful, heinous acts,” Patel said. “We are not going to target victims and prevent them from serving in their capacity to serve this country.”
The questioning spanned partisan lines, with Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana grilling Patel about the rationale for a change that the FBI director said was proposed to him by subordinates.
“When you saw bestiality, I say this with respect: The person who recommended it, why didn’t you just say what planet did you parachute in from?” Kennedy asked.
Patel conceded that was his initial response, but “they then explained to me and showed me cases in which people were forced into it and applied to the FBI and so I thought they should be considered. It's not an automatic disqualification.”
The Associated Press reported last month that the FBI still intends to bar some applicants who are revealed to have previously engaged in prostitution, including if they've done so within the last 10 years.
The hearing took place two months before the midterm elections in November and at a time when the FBI has opened investigations related to the 2020 contest, including by seizing voter data in Fulton County, Georgia.
Trump regularly makes false claims that elections are rigged and riddled with fraud, especially in the months before an election. But there is no widespread fraud in American elections. Local election officials have detailed processes for auditing the accuracy of the vote after ballots are tallied. Even as he disputed his loss in 2020, audits, reviews and recounts in the battleground states where he challenged the outcome all affirmed Democrat Joe Biden’s win.
Those voter fraud claims, and the FBI's efforts to investigate the 2020 race, has spurred Democratic concerns that Patel could plunge the bureau into the upcoming election.
Asked whether the FBI has the general authority to monitor elections, Patel replied that responsibility rests with the Department of Homeland Security. He said the FBI's presence on Election Day will be “housed” with election crimes coordinators at each of the bureau's 56 field offices, but under questioning, he declined to rule out that agents would be dispatched to the polls in the event of problems or reports of interference.
“Do you pledge that you will not in any way interfere in the will of the America people when they go to the polls in November?” asked Democratic Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont in one of the hearing's more combative exchanges.
“I pledge unequivocally that I will not participate in your charade of lies,” Patel said, later calling Welch a “total fraud.”
Patel repeatedly touted what he asserted was his record-breaking success at the FBI, proclaiming the “most prolific reduction in crime in U.S. history” even though violent crime rates in American cities had begun dropping well before Trump took office last year for reasons that are difficult to pinpoint.
Even as the Republican-led panel tried through its questioning to keep the focus on Patel's crime-fighting efforts from his perch at the nation's premier federal law enforcement agency, Democrats seized on the tumult inside the FBI over the last year — including sweeping firings of agents who participated in investigations of Trump, the bureau's aggressive efforts to investigate media leaks by serving subpoenas at reporters' home and Patel's travel schedule that has blended private leisure with professional responsibilities.
Democrat Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut pressed Patel on the firing of national security agents with expertise in Iran shortly before the U.S. launched attacks on the country last February. He noted that the agents had participated in an FBI investigation into Trump over his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
“Do you think firing the president’s political opponents is more important than retaining the decades of experience and expertise monitoring intelligence threats from Iran?” Blumenthal asked.
“I think what’s most important is to not have a weaponized FBI, and I will endeavor every single day to make sure we have no one there that is doing that,” Patel responded. He did not say why their participation in the Mar-a-Lago investigation represented “weaponized” law enforcement.
Patel later suggested that the scope of firings had been overblown, saying many agents had retired on their own. And he defended his personal travels by pointing to numbers that he said showed that two recent predecessors, Chris Wray and James Comey, had traveled more.
