The Senate on Thursday voted 51-49 to confirm Kash Patel as FBI director.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., voted ‘yes’ on the conservative firebrand’s confirmation, even while moderates Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, voted ‘no.’
A vote to invoke cloture and begin two hours of debate on the nominee passed 51 to 47 earlier Thursday.
Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee voted earlier this month, 12 to 10, to advance Patel to the full floor for a vote.
Still, Patel faced a rockier path to confirmation, even in the Republican-majority chamber, after Democrats on the panel used their political weight to delay Patel’s confirmation vote earlier this month.
Top Judiciary Democrat Dick Durbin claimed on the Senate floor that Patel had been behind recent mass firings at the FBI, citing what he described as ‘highly credible’ whistleblower reports indicating Patel had personally directed the ongoing purge of FBI employees prior to his confirmation.
But that was sharply refuted by Senate Republicans, who described the allegation as a baseless and politically motivated attempt to delay Patel’s confirmation, and by a Patel aide, who described Durbin’s claim as categorically false.
This person told Fox News Digital that Patel flew home to Las Vegas after his confirmation hearing and had ‘been sitting there waiting for the process to play out.’
Patel, a vociferous opponent to the investigations into President Donald Trump and one who served at the forefront of Trump’s 2020 election fraud claims, vowed during his confirmation hearing last month that he would not engage in political retribution against agents who worked on the classified documents case against Trump and other politically sensitive matters.
But his confirmation comes at a time when the FBI’s activities, leadership, and personnel decisions are being closely scrutinized for signs of politicization or retaliation.
Thousands of FBI agents and their superiors were ordered to fill out a questionnaire detailing their roles in the Jan. 6 investigation, prompting concerns of retaliation or retribution.
A group of FBI agents filed an emergency lawsuit this month seeking to block the public identification of any agents who worked on the Jan. 6 investigations, in an attempt to head off what they described as potentially retaliatory efforts against personnel involved.
‘There will be no politicization at the FBI,’ Patel told lawmakers during his confirmation hearing. ‘There will be no retributive action.’
But making good on that promise could prove to be complicated.
Trump told reporters this month that he intends to fire ‘some’ of the FBI personnel involved in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riots, characterizing the agents’ actions as ‘corrupt,’ even as he stopped short of providing any additional details as to how he reached that conclusion.
‘We had some corrupt agents,’ Trump told reporters, adding that ‘those people are gone, or they will be gone— and it will be done quickly, and very surgically.’
The White House has not responded to questions over how it reached that conclusion, or how many personnel could be impacted, though a federal judge in D.C. agreed to consider the lawsuit.
And in another message meant to assuage senators, Patel said he didn’t find it feasible to require a warrant for intelligence agencies to surveil U.S. citizens suspected to be involved in national security matters, referring to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
‘Having a warrant requirement to go through that information in real time is just not comported with the requirement to protect American citizens,’ Patel said. ‘It’s almost impossible to make that function and serve the national, no-fail mission.’
‘Get a warrant’ had become a rallying cry of right-wing conservatives worried about the privacy of U.S. citizens, and almost derailed the reauthorization of the surveillance program entirely. Patel said the program has been misused, but he does not support making investigators go to court and plea their case before being able to wiretap any U.S. citizen.
Patel held a number of national security roles during Trump’s first administration – chief of staff to acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, senior advisor to the acting director of national intelligence, and National Security Council official.
He worked as a senior aide on counterterrorism for former House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, where he fought to declassify records he alleged would show the FBI’s application for a surveillance warrant for 2016 Trump campaign aide Carter Page was illegitimate, and served as a national security prosecutor in the Justice Department.
In public comments, Patel has suggested he would refocus the FBI on law enforcement and away from involvement in any prosecutorial decisions.
In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, he suggested his top two priorities are to ‘let good cops be cops’ and transparency, which he described as ‘essential.’
‘If confirmed, I will focus on streamlining operations at headquarters while bolstering the presence of field agents across the nation,’ he wrote. ‘Collaboration with local law enforcement is crucial to fulfilling the FBI’s mission.’
Patel went on: ‘Members of Congress have hundreds of unanswered requests to the FBI. If confirmed, I will be a strong advocate for congressional oversight, ensuring that the FBI operates with the openness necessary to rebuild trust by simply replying to lawmakers.’