President Donald Trump’s FBI director nominee Kash Patel sparred with Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday in his lengthy confirmation hearing, where he faced off with lawmakers on issues ranging from Trump’s pardoning of Jan. 6 rioters, his role in elevating a song released by the Jan. 6 inmate choir, and his previous call to shut down the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.
He also answered questions about his views on QAnon and on his book, ‘Government Gangsters.’
Here were the four biggest clashes of the day.
Blumenthal: Patel’s actions giving ‘the appearance’ he has something to hide
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., blasted Patel for refusing to share his grand jury testimony from the probe into Trump’s handling of classified documents after leaving the White House.
The charges against Trump were dropped in Florida and New York after he won the presidential election, in keeping with a long-standing DOJ policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
Blumenthal told Patel on Thursday that refusing to share his remarks with the panel gave ‘the appearance’ that he is being less than transparent.
‘The appearance here is that you have something to hide,’ Blumenthal told him. ‘I submit to my colleagues on the committee, we need to know what the grand jury testimony is … and you have no objection to our seeking it, but you won’t tell us.’
‘Even in a classified, confidential setting, I think that position is disqualifying,’ he said, before adding, ‘What are you hiding?’ ‘Why won’t you tell us?’
Patel declined to give a satisfactory answer.
‘The appearance here is that you have something to hide,’ Blumenthal said.
Jan. 6 pardons
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., also traded barbs with Patel on Thursday over the president’s sweeping pardon and sentence commutations to the more than 1,500 defendants charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots.
Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the panel, asked whether Patel believed the U.S. is ‘safer’ after the mass pardons were granted, to which Patel attempted to equivocate the action to pardons issued by former President Joe Biden.
He told Durbin that he has ‘not looked at all 1,600 individual cases’ before adding, ‘I also believe America is not safer because of President Biden’s commutation of a man who murdered two FBI agents,’ Patel said, referencing Biden’s decision to commute the sentence of Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist convicted of murdering two FBI agents on a South Dakota reservation.
The agents’ families, he said, ‘[D]eserve better than to have the man that point-blank range fired a shotgun into their heads and murdered them released from prison.’
‘So it goes both ways.’
The January 6 rioters, and their pardons, were a frequent topic of the hearing.
J6 inmate choir, ‘Justice for All’
Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., hit Patel with rapid-fire questions regarding his involvement in and promotion of a song recorded by the ‘J6 Prison Choir,’ a group of Capitol rioters, during their incarceration.
Patel shared the song, ‘Justice for All,’ on social media. He said that at the time he ‘did not know about the violent offenders,’ noting that he ‘did not participate in any of the violence in and around Jan. 6.’
In response, Schiff gave Patel a harsh public dressing-down over the violence and assault endured by the Capitol Police on Jan. 6, 2021.
‘Turn around and look at them,’ Schiff told Patel before motioning to the officers lined up for protection along the back of the room.
Patel declined to do so.
‘I want you to look at them if you can, if you have the courage to look them in the eye, Mr. Patel. Tell them you’re proud of what you did,’ Schiff said.
‘Tell them you’re proud that you raised money off of people that assaulted their colleagues, that pepper sprayed them, that beat them with poles. Tell them you’re proud of what you did,’ Schiff said, adding, ‘They’re right there. They are guarding you today.’
Booker doubles down on classified documents
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker’s questions to Patel regarding any efforts by Trump to declassify documents after leaving the White House were among the most heated moments of the hearing.
Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, asked Patel repeatedly whether he witnessed Trump handling documents marked as classified or moving to declassify them after leaving the Oval Office.
‘In the name of all the values you have said today, did you or did you not testify to witnessing the president of the United States declassify documents?’ Booker asked, his voice rising several octaves.
Patel told Booker he did not know if the documents he saw being declassified at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida were seized by FBI agents in the special counsel probe, and he urged Booker to obtain them legally.
‘The question is: Will you lie for the president of the United States?’ Booker said. ‘Would you lie for Donald Trump?’
‘No,’ Patel said.
Booker urged Patel to testify to the Senate over what he said to the grand jury.
It ‘would be utterly irresponsible for this committee to move forward with his nomination … if we do not know that the future head of the FBI would break the law and lie for the president of the United States,’ Booker said.
‘He’s refusing the transparency that he claims to adhere to. He is refusing to be direct with the United States Senate,’ he continued.
‘Did he or did he not lie for the president? That is the question.’