WASHINGTON — FBI Director-designate Kash Patel advanced Tuesday in a first procedural vote on the Senate floor Tuesday, with Republicans cheering that President Trump’s pick “has the votes” and will be confirmed later this week.
The Senate voted 48-45 along party lines to open debate on the nominee, starting the countdown for 30 hours of discussion before Patel is expected to receive final approval Thursday, sources close to the confirmation process tell The Post.
GOP senators have praised Long Island native Patel, 44, for his experience as a prosecutor and former national security aide in the first Trump administration — as well as his firm commitment to rooting out political “weaponization” at the FBI and getting back to the basics of the bureau’s law enforcement duties.
In his confirmation hearing, Patel pledged to “cut in half” the number of offenses committed across broad categories of crimes, including the “100,000 rapes … 100,000 drug overdoses from Chinese fentanyl and Mexican heroin, and … 17,000 homicides.”
The nominee, who has celebrated rank-and-file FBI agents for being “courageous, apolitical warriors of justice,” will serve a 10-year term if confirmed as one of the nation’s chief law enforcement officers.
“Mr. Patel has undergone a rigorous vetting,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a hearing last week. “He produced more than a thousand pages of records and disclosed over a thousand interviews. He underwent an FBI background investigation, produced a financial disclosure, and worked with ethics officials to identify and resolve potential conflicts of interest.”
“At his hearing, he answered questions for more than five hours and provided 147 pages of responses to written questions,” Grassley added. “We’ve examined every detail of his life, and he’s been subjected to relentless attack on his character the whole time.”
Democrats on the Judiciary panel opposed Patel by delaying the initial approval vote by a week, accusing the nominee of perjuring himself in his confirmation hearing and unanimously voting him down when the committee vote came.
Patel began his career as a public defender in Florida, served as a federal prosecutor in the Obama Justice Department, a congressional aide to former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and a national security official in the first Trump administration.
“Mr. Patel was instrumental in exposing Crossfire Hurricane,” Grassley said last week. “He showed that the Democratic National Committee funded false allegations against President Trump, that the DOJ and FBI hid information from the FISA court to wiretap a presidential campaign and that an FBI lawyer lied in the process.”
The top Democrat on the Judiciary panel, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and others have alleged Patel misled the committee about influencing the recent dismissal of senior FBI officials after Trump took office and producing a song sung by federal prisoners convicted of crimes during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Patel has broken somewhat with Trump, however, on the mass pardoning of Jan. 6 rioters — including those who assaulted Capitol Police while stalling Congress’ certification of Joe Biden’s victory in January 2021.
“I do not agree with the commutation of any sentence of any individual who committed violence against law enforcement,” he told Judiciary panel members in his confirmation hearing.
Trump, 78, announced in November that he chose his nominee to “end the growing crime epidemic in America, dismantle the migrant criminal gangs, and stop the evil scourge of human and drug trafficking across the Border.
“Kash will work under our great Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to bring back Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity to the FBI.”
