Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted on Thursday morning to approve the nomination of Kash Patel to be FBI director, despite a host of issues that once would have sunk any nominee for this critical national security and law enforcement post. These include Patel’s reported role in a planned political purge of FBI agents and his apparent lies to the committee regarding that and other matters. And there’s much more. Patel has received payments from sources linked to Russia, China, Qatar, and other foreign interests that he has not explained, or, in one case, divested from. He has embraced false and dangerous conspiracy theories, including falsehoods about the 2020 election. He has endorsed using government power to seek revenge against his and Donald Trump’s political enemies. He has even seemingly encouraged violence against Trump critics.
Republicans don’t seem to care about any of this. In fact, they appear eager to confirm Patel before more damaging information about him emerges. Here is a rundown of some of the matters these Republicans are ignoring.
The purge
On January 30, the same day Patel appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing, news broke that Trump administration officials had ordered the firing of multiple senior FBI executives. The next day, reports emerged that Trump appointees were compiling a list of thousands of FBI agents who had worked on January 6 cases, with the possible aim of firing them.
Patel told the Judiciary Committee—under oath—that he was not involved in personnel issues nor in touch with the White House about any such decisions. He further claimed he would protect FBI officials from political retribution for past work.
But on Tuesday, Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.), the Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, accused Patel of lying about this. In a letter to the Justice Department’s inspector general, Durbin said he had learned from “multiple sources that Kash Patel has been personally directing the ongoing purge of career civil servants” at the FBI. In that letter and during a Senate floor speech, Durbin said whistleblowers told him that Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, a former personal lawyer for Trump, told top FBI officials in a January 29 meeting that Patel wanted the bureau to remove targeted employees quickly. “KP wants movement at FBI,” a person at the meeting wrote in notes that Durbin said he reviewed.
Durbin also said his sources reported that Patel, as he has awaited confirmation, has been receiving information from an advisory team at the FBI and then passing on instructions to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, “who relays it to” Bove.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chair of the Judiciary Committee, dismissed Durbin’s new charges as “hearsay.” He expressed no interest in gathering more information and rejected Democrats’ call for a second confirmation hearing where they could ask Patel directly about the firings of FBI officials.
Responding to Durbin’s letter and floor speech, a Patel spokesperson said, “The media is relying on anonymous sources and secondhand gossip to push a false narrative.” That was not a clear denial. When Mother Jones asked if Patel communicated with Miller about firing FBI personnel, neither Patel nor his spokesperson responded.
Possible perjury
During Patel’s confirmation hearing, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) asked, “Are you aware of any plans or discussions to punish in any way, including termination, FBI agents or personnel associated with Trump investigations?” Patel said he was “not aware of that” and added: “I don’t know what’s going on right now over there.”
Patel made similar claims in written responses to questions that six Democratic senators sent to him after the hearing. Each of these senators submitted queries regarding whether Patel knew of plans to oust senior FBI officials and whether he was involved in that effort. He repeatedly answered that he could not recall any such conversations and claimed he was not involved in these decisions.
“Did you approve or have any role in the decision to terminate these senior FBI employees?” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) asked. “No,” Patel responded.
Those replies, if Durbin is correct, were lies. But Grassley and other Republicans are unwilling to confront Patel about this possible perjury.
Other possible lies
Asked during his testimony about his promotion of a recording of a song performed by the so-called J6 Prison Choir, which was comprised of inmates at a DC jail who faced assorted charges for their participation in the January 6 insurrection, Patel said he was “not aware” that this group was composed of imprisoned rioters. He also testified that he “didn’t have anything to do with the recording.” In fact, Patel personally released the song on Steve Bannon’s War Room show, and told Bannon that he had overseen the song’s recording and mastering. And he hailed the J6 rioters as “political prisoners.”
Patel has insisted that the money he raised from the recording went to the families of January 6 prisoners who were not convicted of any violent offenses. In his written responses, he claimed “the financial details” on his use of the funds were in his organization’s public disclosures. That’s not true. Patel’s nonprofit, the Kash Foundation, says in an IRS filing that it gave “direct cash assistance” totaling $167,821 to 50 people, but it does not identify them. That leaves Patel’s claim that he did not support families of violent attackers impossible to verify.
Patel also said under oath that he was not familiar with Stew Peters, a far-right and antisemitic podcaster known for spreading false claims about Covid. Patel, however, has appeared at least eight times on Peters’ podcast. Following the hearing, Peters declared: “Clearly Kash Patel is lying.”
Ties to Russian propagandist
As Mother Jones first reported, Patel last year was paid $25,000 to appear in an anti-FBI documentary produced by a Ukrainian-American-Russian filmmaker with Kremlin ties. That filmmaker, Igor Lopatonok, worked on an overt Russian propaganda campaign funded by Vladimir Putin’s office, and in 2019 he produced a pro-Putin film partly financed by an Ukrainian oligarch and pro-Kremlin politician who had been sanctioned by the United States since 2014. Lopatonok also worked with an American who obtained political asylum in Russia and who has mounted extensive disinformation operations against the United States.
Patel declared in the documentary that the Russians had not intervened in the 2016 election—despite multiple investigations confirming they did so to assist Trump—and Patel said that he hoped to “shut down the FBI headquarters building and open it up as a museum of the “Deep State.” Patel later said that remark was “hyperbole.” He has not explained whether he knew of the filmmaker’s background as a Russian propagandist.
Foreign ties
In the financial disclosure form Patel submitted to the Senate, he revealed that he was paid an unspecified amount in 2024 for “consulting services” for Qatar. That raised the question of why Patel did not register with the Justice Department as a foreign agent. Patel has not addressed that subject. But a “source close to Patel’s confirmation” told the far-right Federalist that “his work for Qatar was limited to securing the 2022 FIFA World Cup and other security measures” and that this did not require him to register as foreign agent.
The problem with that explanation is that Patel reported working for Qatar until November 2024. That was two years after the World Cup took place there. And it includes the time Patel spent working as a surrogate for Trump’s most recent presidential campaign. Patel’s disclosure form notes that he was paid by the Qatari embassy in Washington, which runs the Gulf state’s US lobbying efforts, not Qatar’s Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy, which organized the nation’s World Cup effort and related programs. Spokespersons for Patel, the Supreme Committee, and the Qatari embassy did not answer questions regarding the details of Patel’s work for Qatar.
Patel’s financial disclosure report also revealed he worked for the Czechoslovak Group, a Prague-based arms company, as it was buying Vista Outdoor, a US company that owns assorted ammunition brands, including Remington. Senate Republicans previously argued that the Vista Outdoor purchase was a threat to national security. But none have publicly asked Patel to explain what he did for the Czechoslovak firm.
Patel also disclosed that he was given between $1 million and $5 million worth of unvested stock in Elite Depot Ltd. for consulting work he did not explain. Elite Deport is the Cayman Islands-based parent company of Shein, a Chinese fashion company. Patel has declined to divest his stake in the company—even as he prepares to oversee FBI counterintelligence operations against China. After Trump slapped a 10 percent tariff on Chinese imports, including Shein’s, Patel’s stake in the company means he has a personal interest aligned with Chinese business interests.
In a letter sent to Patel on Wednesday, five Democrats on the committee noted Shein has faced “criticism for its use of forced labor in China, including persecuted ethnic minorities and children.”
“Continuing to profit from forced labor by refusing to divest your financial interest in this company,” they wrote, “demonstrates a callous disregard for forced labor victims and calls into question your judgment and ability to impartially lead the FBI’s efforts to combat the scourge of human trafficking and the PRC’s foreign influence activities.”
A few years ago GOP senators aggressively opposed some Biden administration nominees for perceived links to, or past work for, Chinese businesses. But no Republicans have publicly pressed Patel about his plan to retain an interest in a Chinese manufacturer.
QAnon
Patel has pushed far-right conspiracy theories, including the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump; the baseless claim that the January 6 riot was instigated by the FBI; and the false notion that there was no Russian effort to help Trump win the 2016 election. But perhaps his looniest far-right flirtation has been his past support for QAnon, the movement that holds that a cabal of global, Satanic, cannibalistic elitists and pedophiles—which includes Democratic politicians, Hollywood celebrities, and business tycoons—has been operating a child sex trafficking operation as it vies for world domination, with Trump secretly battling against them. And QAnon is not just a kooky theory; it has sparked multiple acts of violence.
Patel repeatedly has hailed QAnoners and promoted their unhinged narrative. On social media, he amplified QAnon messaging. He has been a guest on numerous QAnon-supporting shows to promote Trump’s Truth Social platform. On one show, Patel declared, “Whether it’s the Qs of the world, who I agree with some of what he does and I disagree with some of what he does, if it allows people to gather and focus on the truth and the facts, I’m all for it.” On another occasion, he agreed with a host who said Q had “been so right on so many things.” Patel chimed in: “There’s a lot of good to a lot of it.”
When Democratic senators inquired about those comments, Patel insisted his remarks were “taken out of context.” He asserted, “I do not support or promote QAnon.” His past comments show he did precisely that.
Retribution and violence
Patel has long portrayed himself as an avenging angel for Trump who has battled the supposed Deep State on Trump’s behalf. Appearing on Bannon’s podcast in 2023, he proclaimed, “We will go and find the conspirators—not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens to help Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you, whether its criminally or civilly.”
In his 2023 book Government Gangsters, Patel called for mounting “investigations” to “take on the Deep State.” In an appendix, Patel presented a list of 60 supposed members of the Deep State who were current or former executive branch officials and who presumably would be targeted. Patel listed names that would be the obvious purported cabalists for a MAGA activist, including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Merrick Garland, Hillary Clinton, former CIA chief John Brennan, and former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley. This line-up also included a number of Republicans and onetime Trump appointees: Bill Barr, who served as attorney general for Trump; John Bolton, one of Trump’s national security advisers during his first White House stint; and Mark Esper, a secretary of defense under Trump.
This roster has been characterized as Patel’s “enemies list” of people he might target for investigation or prosecution should he become FBI chief. During his confirmation hearing, Patel denied he had any intention of seeking revenge against Trump’s political foes. He referred to this list as merely a “glossary.”
When Senate Democrats challenged him on this characterization in written questions—noting he had told Bannon that “Deep Staters” would “be held accountable and prosecuted, criminal prosecutions” during a second Trump presidency—Patel sidestepped. “This language is taken out of context and does not accurately or fully represent my prior statements or positions,” he wrote. No Republican Senator has publicly expressed concern over Patel’s demonstrated desire to use government power to extract revenge.
One of the most absurd moments of the hearing came when Patel was questioned about a 2022 social media post he had amplified that showed an AI-generated video of him using a chainsaw to attack various Trump critics, including former Rep. Liz Cheney, Sen. Adam Schiff, and Anthony Fauci. He claimed this meme had been taken out of context—it hadn’t—and pointed out that he had not created it, as if that were mitigating. Asked about this meme in the written questions, Patel replied that he had reposted the “meme in question as a private citizen.” He added, “It was clearly intended as humor. A chainsaw as a symbol of government reform is not unusual.” He also stated that “reposting an individual’s perspective on a specific issue does not constitute my endorsement of how their views or other positions may be interpreted.”
Here was a nominee to be FBI director both justifying and downplaying his dissemination of a meme that could be read as encouraging violence against his political enemies, including Schiff, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee overseeing his nomination. It was just one more troubling thing for Senate Republicans to ignore.