Patel Hearing Included Exchange on Bestiality

Kash Patel's latest Capitol Hill appearance managed to hit elections, Russia, and bestiality in a single hearing. The FBI director clashed repeatedly with Senate Democrats on Tuesday as he appeared to shift his stance on putting federal agents near polling sites—a move Democrats say could chill voting and breach federal law barring armed officers from election locations, the New York Times reports. Pressed by Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont, Patel touted "election crisis coordinators" in all 56 field offices and refused to promise he would not interfere in November's vote, instead calling Welch a "complete and total fraud."

• "Do you pledge that you will not in any way interfere in the will of the American people when they go to the polls in November?" Welch asked. Patel replied: "I pledge unequivocally that I will not participate in your charade of lies." CBS News reports that Patel also refused to acknowledge that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing spiraled into personal insults and tangents. Patel brushed off questions about a potential FBI look at a Russian oligarch's role in Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding festivities and defended a policy change that no longer automatically bars applicants with past involvement in bestiality, saying the bureau didn't want to penalize trafficking victims.

• Patel said the previous policy on prostitution and bestiality "automatically disqualified any individual who participated on either side of it," NBC News reports. Republican Sen. John Kennedy asked, "Either side of what? The bestiality? "So you disqualified the animal?" Patel replied, "We have great canines, but we're not going to disqualify them."
• Patel later said traffickers had forced people into many degrading acts, and the agency "did not want to make it an automatic disqualification for the FBI to consider you if you were a victim of these awful, heinous acts."

Patel also defended the firing of FBI agents who had taken part in Trump investigations. He denied targeting reporters after Sen. Cory Booker accused him of acting "like a thug," the Times reports. In another exchange, Booker criticized Patel over his travel, including a trip to the Winter Olympics where he partied with US hockey players, the AP reports. "He's an incompetent lackey. He's like an 18-year old-kid who wants to join a fraternity that he could never be a member of, doing keg stands and chugging with friends," Booker said. "He's an embarrassment to the agency and wouldn't qualify even to be an FBI agent." After Booker called him a "mockery," Patel fired back, "You are the biggest mockery in the United States Senate, and you're sitting next to Schiff."