FBI Director Patel Confronted With Bestiality Question

FBI Director Kash Patel clashed with senators Tuesday over recent changes to the bureau’s hiring rules, including revised guidance involving applicants who may have participated in bestiality.

The discussion began with Senator Dick Durbin, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat.

“Thank you for bringing this up, so we can get to the truth of the matter,” Patel told Durbin. “What we did was, we did not want to punish victims of bestiality, victims who were trafficked.”

Patel said the FBI did not want such experiences to serve as an automatic barrier to employment. “We did not want to make it an automatic disqualification for the FBI to consider you if you are a victim of these awful, heinous acts,” he said. “They still have to go to the same rigorous standards and application process.”

The FBI revised its screening policies in June, removing an admission of bestiality as an automatic disqualification for applicants.

Patel’s explanation led to a follow-up from Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana.

“Either side of bestiality?” Kennedy asked. He then added, “So you disqualified the animal?”

“Well, we have great canines, but we’re not going to disqualify them,” Patel replied.

“I’m trying to understand why you did this. Why did you get into bestiality?” Kennedy pressed.

The striking exchange opened an hours-long and highly charged FBI oversight hearing Tuesday.

The hearing unfolded along sharply divided lines. Patel and Republican lawmakers highlighted the bureau’s recent successes against violent crime and drug trafficking, while Democrats accused him of reversing “decades” of efforts to modernize and reform the FBI.

Durbin also denounced Patel as the “least qualified and most partisan FBI director in US history.”

Now, Durbin said, the FBI ‘has been reshaped as a political weapon against President Trump’s political enemies.’ 

Patel, for his part, sought to play up the bureau’s achievements under Trump’s second term –  including its crackdown on violent crime, fraud, drug trafficking, and cybercrime.

The FBI ‘has been rebuilt to combat violent crime,’ he said Tuesday, noting that in the last year, the FBI ‘prepared for the largest influx of tourists between the Club World Cup, two F1 races, [and] protected 300,000 Americans in the Olympics.’

‘Not one single security incident occurred at any single one of these events,’ Patel said. 

‘No major security incidents. With our partners, this is how we keep America safe.

Republicans on the panel, including Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, attempted to keep the focus of Patel’s remarks on playing up recent FBI wins.

Total criminal arrests are up 80 percent from 18 months ago, Grassley said in his opening remarks, while violent crime arrests are up 90 percent. ‘The numbers show that you’ve gotten the job done,’ he told Patel. 

But Democrats used their time to paint a very different picture of the FBI under Trump – one they’ve argued has been ‘weaponized’ by Patel and other top brass at the bureau to purge many FBI agents who investigated Trump or the January 6, 2021 US Capitol riot.

The last time Patel appeared before the panel for an oversight hearing, 12 months prior, Patel accused Democrats of ‘grandstanding’ and attempting to score political points in their questions – while they, in turn, leveled barbs of their own.

‘You lied to us,’ Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, told Patel last year, citing Patel’s previous assurances during his Senate confirmation hearing that he would not move to summarily fire FBI agents involved in the January 6 investigation and other investigations blasted by Trump.

‘You are the biggest fraud to ever sit in the United States Senate,’ Senator Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, told Patel then, as the two sparred in a near-shouting match.

‘You are a disgrace to this institution, and you are an utter coward,’ he said. 

This is a developing news story. Stay tuned for updates.