Senate confirms Kash Patel for FBI director despite appeal from Democrats

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Senate on Thursday voted to confirm Kash Patel as President Donald Trump’s next FBI director, even as Democrats warned their Republican colleagues would regret appointing a person who critics have decried as partisan and unqualified to lead the country’s premier law enforcement agency.

Despite pleas from Democrats earlier in the day, all but two GOP lawmakers backed Patel, a former federal prosecutor and Trump administration official, in a 51-49 vote.

The pair of defections came from Maine Senator Susan Collins and Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski — both of whom have earned a reputation as Trump skeptics. Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, who has voted against several of the president’s cabinet nominees, cast his vote in favor of Patel.

Democrats for months have sounded the alarm about the now-confirmed FBI director, arguing that he would wield his new position to investigate Trump’s political opponents. They pointed to Patel’s long history of criticism of the FBI and his so-called “enemies list” of former government officials as signals of such malfeasance.

And in a statement issued just after her vote, Murkowski appeared to acknowledge those concerns, writing that her reservations with Patel “stem from his own prior political activities.”

“The FBI must be trusted as the federal agency that roots out crime and corruption, not focused on settling political scores,” she wrote.

Collins echoed her colleague’s arguments in her own statement Thursday.

“[T]here is a compelling need for an FBI director who is decidedly apolitical,” Collins wrote. “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. These statements … 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.”

Democrats, meanwhile, slammed Patel’s confirmation.

“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,” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin.

Ahead of Thursday’s vote, Democratic lawmakers spent the morning offering their closing arguments against Patel, rallying outside the FBI’s Washington headquarters in the biting cold to protest his ascent.

“Kash Patel, mark my words, will cause evil in this building behind us,” Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said.

With the odds of Patel’s confirmation increasing, Democrats shifted their rhetoric onto Republicans, arguing that lawmakers who vote to put him in charge of federal law enforcement would live to regret it.

“Republicans who vote for him will rue that day,” said Whitehouse.

Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal urged his GOP colleagues to “do the right thing” and oppose Patel’s nomination.

“To Republicans who may vote for Kash Patel: This vote will haunt you,” he said.

Democrats also rehashed months of grievances against Trump’s FBI nominee. Lawmakers again pointed to Patel’s “enemies list,” a group of former government officials published in the appendix of his 2023 book “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth and the Battle for our Democracy.” Critics have said the list could be a blueprint for future FBI investigations, but Patel has called that framing a “total mischaracterization.”

In recent weeks, the nominee has come under further scrutiny after Democrats revealed a whistleblower report which they said shows Patel had a hand in the Trump administration’s recent move to fire and reassign FBI agents who were assigned to cases investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

“Mr. Patel has been open about his plans to dismantle the FBI and seek retribution,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin said outside the FBI headquarters. “His directives as a private citizen have already thrown the bureau into chaos before the actual vote. Mr. Patel will be a political and national security disaster if confirmed.”

Democrats have used the whistleblower report to suggest that Patel may have perjured himself during a January confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The nominee at the time told lawmakers that he was not aware of plans to punish or fire FBI agents.

Lawmakers on Thursday further slammed Patel for refusing to divulge the details of his testimony to a grand jury in the Justice Department’s 2022 case investigating Trump’s handling of classified documents after his first term. The nominee had initially pleaded the Fifth but later received testimonial immunity in exchange for his appearance.

Whitehouse pointed out that Patel would be the first senior U.S. law enforcement official in history to have invoked the Fifth Amendment — which allows a witness to refuse to answer questions they believe could incriminate them.

“He has been unwilling to even explain to the Judiciary Committee what crimes it was that he was concerned about that caused him to plead the Fifth,” the Rhode Island senator said.

Republicans, though, have accused Democrats of smearing Patel. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, said last week that the nominee had not received “fair consideration” from Democratic lawmakers who he argued were trying to “throw everything at the wall and hope something sticks.”

Patel, tapped late last year by the White House to lead federal law enforcement under the second Trump administration, worked for the president during his first term as a senior official in both the Pentagon and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

In the years after the 2020 election, the nominee fashioned himself as a staunch Trump ally, claiming that people convicted following the Capitol riot were “political prisoners” and pledging to shutter the FBI headquarters in retribution for the agency’s investigations into the president, among other things.

Patel has said many of those comments were taken out of context.

Patel replaces former FBI Director Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee who resigned from his post ahead of the president’s second inauguration. Wray was one of the individuals on the new FBI nominee’s “enemies list.”

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