FBI director nominee Kash Patel heads to confirmation vote despite Democrats' perjury claims

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to advance President Donald Trump’s nominee to head up the FBI while Democrats accused him of lying to lawmakers during his hearing before the panel.

Kash Patel, whom Trump tapped for the job late last year, cleared the upper chamber’s legal affairs committee on a 12-10 party line vote. But lawmakers didn’t cast ballots for more than an hour after the panel gaveled in: Democrats seized the opportunity to offer one final rebuke of a nominee they said was unfit and unqualified to lead the country’s premier law enforcement agency.

“What it boils down to is that this agency should be above politics,” Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said Thursday. He added that Republican support for Patel’s nomination amounted to “an invitation for a political free-for-all” at the FBI.

Democrats have argued for monthsthat Patel, who worked at the Justice Department and the Pentagon under the first Trump administration, is nakedly partisan and would use his position as head of the FBI to target the president’s political rivals. They point to his past statements and a list of so-called “deep state” officials he published in a 2023 book — calling the latter little more than an “enemies list” for future investigations.

Those worries were supercharged this week Judiciary Committee Democrats revealed what they said were “highly credible” whistleblower reports that Patel personally directed the Trump administration’s recent spate of firings and reassignments of FBI officials who were involved in investigations of the president.

In a Tuesday letter to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Durbin suggested that, if true, the nominee’s role in the firings could amount to perjury; Patel told lawmakers during his January nomination hearing that he was “not aware” of any plans to punish FBI agent who had worked on the Trump cases.

Democrats aired those accusations and others during Thursday’s meeting, a marathon session in which every lawmaker on the Democratic side spoke out against Patel’s nomination.

“He is not to be trusted with the nation’s most important secrets or the most important law enforcement agency of our nation,” Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal said.

Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar concurred, arguing that Patel has made it “abundantly clear” that his loyalties lay with Trump. She said that the nominee had been given multiple chances during his January hearing to establish himself as independent to the president and address accusations of partisanship, but that he refused to do so.

New Jersey Senator Cory Booker called attention to Patel’s financial disclosures, which revealed that he was paid tens of thousands of dollars by a film company with ties to Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The nominee also reported more than $1 million in stock in Chinese fashion company Shein, as well as income from the embassy of Qatar.

“I can’t believe I need to say this … but at a bare minimum, our FBI director should not have conflicts of interest with the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin — and we should have had a chance to ask him about that in open committee,” Booker said. “That is the most basic due diligence.”

After the vote, Vermont Senator Peter Welch said Patel was emblematic of a “slow-moving, but rapidly accelerating, constitutional crisis” spurred by the Trump administration. He said the White House had shown contempt for the Constitution and a willingness to ignore federal law that was dangerous for the country.

“I can’t vote for a person who signed onto that agenda,” Welch said.

Republicans meanwhile framed Democratic opposition as a smear campaign. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, chair of the Judiciary Committee, argued that his colleagues were attempting to “throw everything at the wall and hope something sticks.”

“These attacks are unfair, and this harassment is unwarranted,” Grassley said. “They show that Mr. Patel won’t receive fair consideration from Democrats, and they are directed at a nominee who served his country during both Democratic and Republican administrations.”

Last week Grassley rejected Democrats’ demands for a second hearing with Patel amid new revelations about the nominee.

With his nomination through the Judiciary Committee, Patel is set for a final confirmation vote in the full Senate. As of Thursday afternoon, the schedule for such a vote had yet to be set, but the nominee appears to have enough Republican support to be confirmed.

Follow @BenjaminSWeiss