Kash Patel confirmation hearing for FBI Director role begins today

The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to move forward with Patel’s confirmation hearing despite the deadly plane crash near Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, on Wednesday night. 

Washington, D.C., Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly told reporters during a briefing Thursday morning that at least 28 bodies have been recovered. He said officials don’t believe there are survivors.

The Federal Aviation Administration said a plane operated by American Airlines flight from Wichita, Kansas, collided in midair with an Army Black Hawk Helicopter, Officials said there were 60 people and four crew on board the aircraft, and the helicopter was carrying three soldiers. 

In order to win confirmation, Patel will need to secure support from all 53 Senate Republicans, assuming all Democrats oppose his nomination.

But he is likely to face sharp questions from the Judiciary Committee about his fealty to Mr. Trump and his distrust of the Justice Department and FBI, the nation’s premier law enforcement agency. 

In his book “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” Patel said the FBI has become “compropised” and has claimed there is a so-called deep state of career government officials who attempted to “take down” Mr. Trump.

He also suggested in a September radio interview that the FBI’s Washington, D.C., headquarters should be shuttered and reopened as a “museum of the ‘deep state.'”

Patel told conservative commentator Steve Bannon in December 2023 that a second Trump administration would prosecute the president’s perceived enemies.

“We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we are going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” he said. “We are going to come after you. Whether it’s criminal or civilly, we will figure that out. But yeah, we are putting you all on notice.”

Days before this week’s high-stakes confirmation hearing of Kash Patel to be FBI director, a bureau insider has come forward with new information questioning Patel’s judgment during sensitive hostage rescue missions, CBS News has learned. 

The whistleblower, whose identity is being withheld by Senate Democrats for fear of retaliation, worked with the FBI’s Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell, which leads the government’s missions to rescue hostages overseas. The whistleblower alleges that Patel violated firmly entrenched protocols to keep such operations under wraps until the captives are safely in U.S. hands and their families have been notified.  

In a letter obtained by CBS News, Sen. Dick Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote that Patel, while serving on the National Security Council during the first Trump term, “broke protocol regarding hostage rescues by publicly commenting without authorization on the then-in-progress retrieval of two Americans held captive by Iranian-backed militants in Yemen in October 2020.” 

Read more here.

Patel was born on Long Island, New York, and attended the University of Richmond. He received his law degree from Pace University, and has a certificate in international law from the University College London.

He began his career as a public defender in South Florida, and worked as a trial attorney in the Justice Department’s National Security Division. He also was a legal liaison to Joint Special Operations Command.

In 2017, Patel was special counsel on counterterrorism at the House Intelligence Committee, and then worked as a senior committee aide to its then-chairman, former Rep. Devin Nunes, and as senior counsel at the House Reform and Oversight Committee.

During the first Trump administration, he worked for the National Security Council, as principal deputy at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and chief of staff to acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller.

Patel joined the board of directors for the Trump Media and Technology Group, which owns the social media platform Truth Social, in April 2022 and served as a national security adviser to the president during the campaign.