The United States Senate judiciary committee has concluded its confirmation hearings with President Donald Trump’s FBI pick, Kash Patel.
Patel insisted to Democrats he did not have an “enemies list” and that under his leadership the bureau would not seek retribution against Trump’s adversaries.
“There will be no politicisation at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken by the FBI,” Patel said at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
Trump has picked Patel to replace the previous FBI director Chris Wray, who served for more than seven years, but was forced out of the job after Trump saw him as insufficently loyal.
This is just one of the issues Patel was grilled on by Democrats as confronted him with a catalogue of prior incendiary statements on topics they said made him unfit for the job.
This includes Senator Adam Schiff calling out Patel’s vocal support for the 6 January agitators on Steve Bannon’s podcast.
Democrat Senator Dick Durbin also said he believed Patel wasn not fit for the job.
“Mr. Patel has neither the experience, the temperament, nor the judgment to lead an agency of 38,000 [people] and 400 field offices around the globe,” Durbin said.
Other Trump picks that were scrutinised at their hearings included Tulsi Gabbard, the pick for director of national intelligence and Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who was the pick for the Department of Health.
Gabbard faced criticism from both Democrats and Republicans alike for her past comments sympathetic to Russia, meeting with Syria’s now deposed leader and her past support for government leaker Edward Snowden.
During Kennedy’s hearing, he doubled down on his anti-vax rhetoric, refusing to answer questions about whether he still believed they cause autism, despite scientific evidence to the contrary. When pressed about whether the COVID-19 vaccine saved millions of lives, Kennedy said “I don’t think anybody can say that”.
