Senate Narrowly Confirms Kash Patel as FBI Director

The Senate narrowly voted to confirm Kash Patel as director of the FBI on Thursday, moving to place him atop the nation's premier federal law enforcement agency despite doubts from Democrats about his qualifications and concerns he will do President Trump's bidding and go after the president's adversaries, the AP reports.

• "I cannot imagine a worse choice," Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin colleagues before the 51-49 vote by the GOP-controlled Senate. Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski were the lone Republican holdouts.

• A Trump loyalist who has fiercely criticized the agency, Patel will inherit an FBI gripped by turmoil as the Justice Department over the past month has forced out a group of senior bureau officials and made a highly unusual demand for the names of thousands of agents who participated in investigations related to the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
• Patel has spoken of his desire to implement major changes at the FBI, including a reduced footprint at headquarters in Washington and a renewed emphasis on the bureau's traditional crime-fighting duties rather than the intelligence-gathering and national security work that has come to define its mandate over the past two decades.
• But he also echoed Trump's desire for retribution. Patel, a former Justice Department counterterrorism prosecutor, raised alarm among Democrats for saying before he was nominated that he would "come after" anti-Trump "conspirators" in the federal government and the media.

• Republicans angry over what they see as law enforcement bias against conservatives during the Democratic Biden administration, as well as criminal investigations into Trump, have rallied behind Patel as the right person for the job. "Mr. Patel wants to make the FBI accountable once again-–get back the reputation that the FBI has had historically for law enforcement," Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said before Patel was confirmed.
• Democrats complained about Patel's lack of management experience compared with previous FBI directors and they highlighted incendiary past statements, including calling officials who investigated Trump "criminal gangsters," that they said called his judgment into question.

(More Kash Patel stories.)