Senate to vote on Kash Patel’s nomination to lead the FBI

The Senate on Thursday will vote on Kash Patel’s controversial nomination to lead the FBI.

If confirmed, Patel will be the 18th Cabinet official approved by lawmakers since President Donald Trump’s inauguration one month ago.

Republicans have rallied around Patel, arguing he would bring reform to the nation’s top law enforcement agency they allege has been corrupted.

“Mr. Patel should be our next FBI director because the FBI has been infected by political bias and weaponized against the American people. Mr. Patel knows it, Mr. Patel exposed it, and Mr. Patel has been targeted for it,” Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said last week as the committee met to consider his nomination. The panel advanced Patel in a party-line vote.

Democrats, meanwhile, have objected to Patel up until the last minute. Sen. Dick Durbin, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, held a press conference outside FBI headquarters on Thursday morning railing against Patel’s “bizarre political statements” on Jan. 6 to retribution.

He accused Republicans of “willfully ignoring red flags on Mr. Patel,” who he argued has “neither the experience, the judgment or the temperament” to be FBI chief for the next 10 years.

“Mr. Patel will be a political and national security disaster,” Durbin said.

Patel, 44, is a loyalist to the president and worked in a number of roles during Trump’s first administration, including acting deputy director of national intelligence.

Shortly after the November election, Trump indicated he would fire then-FBI Director Christopher Wray and tap Patel to take his place. Wray, first appointed by Trump in 2017, stepped down at the end of the Biden administration.

Patel has been a vocal critic of the FBI for years, and previously said he wanted to clean out the bureau’s headquarters in Washington as part of a mission to dismantle the so-called “deep state.”

He faced pointed questions from Democrats on those comments and more — including support for Jan. 6 rioters and quotes that appeared favorable to the “QAnon” conspiracy movement — during his confirmation hearings last month.

Patel sought to distance from some of his past rhetoric, and told lawmakers he would take “no retributive actions” despite his history of comments about targeting journalists and government employees.

Patel, if confirmed, will take over an agency facing uncertainty and turmoil amid firings and other key changes.

The Justice Department’s sought a list of potentially thousands of FBI employees who worked on Jan. 6 cases, ABC News previously reported, prompting agents to file a lawsuit to block the effort.