Senate confirms Kash Patel to lead FBI

The Senate on Thursday narrowly confirmed Kash Patel to lead the FBI in President Donald Trump’s second term.

Unlike past directors, who maintained a degree of separation from the White House to preserve the agency’s historical independence, Patel — approved in a 51-49 vote — has been a major fixture in Trump’s political efforts.

His confirmation reflects a broader effort by Trump to reshape the FBI, which the president has long accused of political bias against him. Patel’s close relationship with the president has led critics to question whether he would run the FBI impartially or use it to advance Trump’s agenda.

In recent weeks, the Justice Department has ousted a number of senior FBI officials and requested the names of agents involved in the January 6 Capitol riot investigations. While Trump has openly suggested that some agents could be dismissed, Patel denied any knowledge of those discussions during his confirmation hearing last month. 

But Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, shared a letter last week claiming that insider sources suggested Patel may have been discreetly engaged in the process.

“After meeting with Mr. Patel, reviewing his record, and questioning him at his hearing, I am convinced that he has neither the experience, the judgment, nor the temperament to lead the FBI. My Senate Republican colleagues are willfully ignoring myriad red flags about Mr. Patel, especially his recurring instinct to threaten retribution against his and President Trump’s perceived enemies — they will soon come to regret this vote,” Durbin said.

On the opposite side of the aisle, some lawmakers have expressed appreciation for Patel’s views on FBI policy.

“Mr. Patel should be our next FBI director because the FBI has been infected by political bias and weaponized against the American people,” Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said last week. “Mr. Patel knows it, Mr. Patel exposed it, and Mr. Patel has been targeted for it.”

Not all Republicans backed him, however. 

“Mr. Patel has made numerous politically charged statements in his book and elsewhere discrediting the work of the FBI, the very institution he has been nominated to lead,” said Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, referring to Patel’s 2023 Government Gangsters book that sharply criticized the FBI and other government agencies, alleging corruption and political bias through a “deep state” conspiracy.

“These statements, in conjunction with the questionnaire sent to thousands of FBI employees, cast doubt on Mr. Patel’s ability to advance the FBI’s law enforcement mission in a way that is free from the appearance of political motivation,” she added.

During his confirmation hearing, Patel told lawmakers that a long-desired reform measure for Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act would be incompatible with the law, reversing course on past views he’s held about reforming the spying ordinance that the FBI and intelligence community have deemed vital for U.S. national security.

The statute authorizes warrantless data collection on foreigners abroad. Civil liberties groups and privacy advocates have called for a key reform to 702 that would tack on a warrant requirement for querying data on U.S. persons. 

The 702 ordinance permits collection of American communications data if a foreign target is incidentally talking to a U.S. person. They argue that, as it stands, the law allows the intelligence community to bypass the Fourth Amendment by accessing Americans’ communications without a warrant.

“The issue, for me, is not with FISA and 702; the issue has been those that have been in government service and abused it in the past,” Patel said during his testimony. “And so we must work with Congress to provide the protections necessary for American citizens dealing with these matters, including hostage rescue operations in real time, which we use FISA collection to find and save American hostages.”

The FBI’s surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page became a political flashpoint after a 2019 Inspector General report found the agency relied on unverified information in obtaining and renewing its surveillance warrant. The 2018 release of the Nunes memo, a Republican House Intelligence Committee report, was co-authored by Patel, and accused the FBI of misusing FISA to target Trump associates. 

Many critics in the GOP cite the case as evidence of FISA abuse, though it notably involved Title I of FISA, which requires a court-approved warrant, rather than Section 702.

Patel noted that “having a warrant requirement to go through that information in real time is just not comported with the requirement to protect American citizenry. I’m all open to working with Congress on finding a better way forward, but right now these improvements that you’ve made go a long way,” he said, referring to when 702 was reauthorized this past April with other reforms codified into it.