WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate on Thursday narrowly voted to confirm Kash Patel as director of the FBI, 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 Donald Trump’s bidding and go after the Republican president’s adversaries.
“I cannot imagine a worse choice,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told colleagues before the 51-49 vote by the GOP-controlled Senate. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska were the lone Republican holdouts.
A Trump loyalist who has fiercely criticized the agency he will now lead, 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, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Patel has spoken of his desire to implement major changes at the FBI, including a reduced footprint in Washington and a renewed emphasis on the bureau’s traditional crime-fighting duties rather than the intelligence-gathering work that has come to define its mandate over the past two decades as national security threats have proliferated.
But he’s also echoed Trump’s stated desire for reprisal, raising alarm among Democrats for saying before he was nominated that he would “come after” anti-Trump “conspirators” in the federal government and the media.
In a statement posted after the vote on the social media platform X, Patel wrote that he was honored to be confirmed as the ninth director of the FBI, an institution he said had a “storied legacy.”
“The American people deserve an FBI that is transparent, accountable, and committed to justice. The politicalization of our justice system has eroded public trust — but that ends today,” he wrote. He said his mission as director was to “let good cops be cops — and rebuild trust in the FBI.”
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,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa,…