Senate confirms Kash Patel as FBI director
Kash Patel, a longtime loyalist to President Donald Trump, was confirmed by the Senate Thursday to serve as the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
WASHINGTON — Kash Patel, a longtime loyalist to President Donald Trump, was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation — an agency he has talked about drastically restructuring while echoing Trump’s claims of the “weaponization” of the bureau’s powers in its Capitol riot investigations and other recent cases.
Patel was opposed by a pair of Republican senators: Alaska's Lisa Murkowski and Maine's Susan Collins. But he won support from every other Republican, including Sen. Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, who had opposed some of Trump's other nominees. The final vote was 51-49, with all Senate Democrats opposing Patel.
Patel's confirmation comes at time of significant turmoil and turnover at the FBI. Since Trump took office a month ago, an Elon Musk affiliate was among those brought into the bureau, sparking worries about partisan political figures taking the reins of the powerful law enforcement agency. The head of the Washington Field Office — which oversaw the sprawling Jan. 6 probe — was forced out, as were six of the FBI’s most senior executives and multiple heads of FBI field offices around the country.
Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll sparred with Trump-appointed Justice Department superiors over an order that he said would ultimately help them fire FBI agents involved in Jan. 6 cases. The FBI ultimately handed over the names of FBI employees who worked on Jan. 6 cases as requested, and Trump has said he will fire “some” FBI personnel who worked on Capitol riot cases.
Altogether, it adds up to what many within the FBI see as the largest crisis facing the organization since the Watergate era. It stems in large part from FBI investigations into Trump himself, including two separate felony cases that were dropped when Trump was re-elected: one involving Trump's handling of classified documents, and the other his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
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