[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 32 (Tuesday, February 18, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1002-S1005]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      NOMINATION OF KASHYAP PATEL

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, on a separate topic, later this week, 
Senate Republicans have scheduled a vote on the confirmation of Kash 
Patel, President Trump's nominee for FBI Director. It is a 10-year 
appointment, unusual by Senate standards, but it was designed to be 10 
years so it would be depoliticized.
  It is unfortunate that the Republicans are moving ahead despite the 
many problems with Mr. Patel's record. Mr. Patel has no experience--
none--in administration and management, particularly of an organization 
like the FBI that has 38,000 agents in place--38,000. It is the premier 
criminal investigative Agency in our country, perhaps the world.
  After meeting with Mr. Patel and reviewing his record and questioning 
him under oath at his hearing, I am deeply concerned about his fitness 
to serve as FBI Director. He has neither the experience, the judgment, 
nor the temperament to lead the FBI.
  My Senate Republican colleagues, sadly, are willfully ignoring myriad 
red flags about Mr. Patel, especially his recurring instinct to 
threaten retribution against his political enemies and President 
Trump's perceived enemies. This is an extremely dangerous 
characteristic for someone who seeks to

[[Page S1003]]

lead the Nation's most powerful domestic investigative Agency for the 
next 10 years.
  Mr. Patel, on day one, plans to--I quote him directly. He said this, 
now. On day one, as Director of the FBI, he plans to ``shut down the 
FBI Hoover Building and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep 
State.''
  He even wrote a book on the subject that I punished myself by 
requiring that I read it from cover to cover to understand exactly what 
this man believed. He has peddled outrageous conspiracy theories that 
benefit President Trump, claiming that January 6, the assault on the 
Capitol, the insurrectionist assault, was ``never an insurrection'' and 
that the FBI--get this; this is Kash Patel--the FBI was ``planning 
January 6 for a year.''
  Where is this man coming up with these wild theories? And, 
incidentally, he compiled an enemies list and published it in the back 
of his book--60 names--``members of the . . . deep State,'' which 
includes distinguished public servants from both political parties. 
Patel named former Attorneys General Bill Barr and Merrick Garland, 
former FBI Directors Robert Mueller and Chris Wray as the so-called 
members of the deep State, whatever that may be.
  And he has even produced and sold recordings of a song--understand 
this for a moment: 1,600 people prosecuted for assaulting law 
enforcement officials here in this Capitol Building, who were working, 
as they are at this very moment, to keep us safe and our visitors safe.
  What did Patel decide to do? He decided to assemble a choir of the 
January 6 individuals who were prosecuted. Then he was involved in 
making a recording of a patriotic song that these prisoners were 
singing, and then he was selling this recording and playing it at the 
rallies for President Trump.
  I am not making this up, ladies and gentlemen. This is exactly what 
this man, who wants to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was 
doing and which he denied before our hearing under oath.
  He has even produced these recordings and called the choir, the 
January 6 prisoners, political prisoners.
  Let me take one example of a so-called political prisoner. Guy 
Reffitt was sentenced to 87 months in prison for his role in the 
January 6 assault on the Capitol. His 19-year-old son Jackson turned 
him in to law enforcement after the attack on the Capitol, despite 
Reffitt's threats to shoot his son and his son's sister if they 
reported him to authorities--a father threatening to kill his son and 
daughter if they turned him in.
  After being pardoned, Guy Reffitt decided to come back to the Capitol 
and attend Kash Patel's confirmation hearing. He posted on social media 
afterward:
       Present and in support of @Kash__Patel as the leftist 
     commies continue to spew lies, misinformation and 
     disinformation. My man Klean House Kash.

  This man, who brought a weapon into the Capitol, was prosecuted for 
that, serving time, given a complete pardon by President Trump, then 
comes back to the Capitol to attend the hearings and cheer on Kash 
Patel's nomination for Director of the FBI.
  Before even being confirmed as FBI Director, Mr. Patel is already 
seeking retribution on behalf of President Trump, despite Patel's 
status as a private citizen. Multiple whistleblowers have disclosed 
highly credible information to my staff indicating that Mr. Patel has 
personally directed the ongoing purge of senior law enforcement 
officials at the FBI. Senior leaders with, collectively, hundreds of 
years of experience have been forced out at the FBI, creating a 
leadership vacuum.
  Mr. President, this has never happened in the history of the United 
States and the history of the FBI, that a new President would come into 
office and decide to clean the ranks of the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation. This has been an apolitical Agency. There is only one 
political appointee to the FBI: the Director. All the others are 
professionals who have been dedicating their lives to law enforcement 
for years.
  Senior leaders who have shown their dedication to the United States 
are now being accused of suspect. Suspect for what? They were engaged 
in the investigation of the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, an 
assault which I witnessed at this desk as I watched the Secret Service 
agents pull the Vice President from that chair and take him out of the 
Chamber as this mob assaulted the Capitol. It was real. In the FBI's 
long history, this has never happened before. Never.
  Keep in mind: The Director, the only appointee of the FBI, and the 
leaders have been forced out despite their career commitment to law 
enforcement. This purge has dramatically weakened the FBI's ability to 
protect the country from national security threats, and it has made 
America less safe.
  If these whistleblower allegations are true, that Kash Patel, as a 
private citizen, has been orchestrating the purging of the ranks at the 
FBI because of political loyalty questions, I will tell you that he 
came dangerously close to perjuring himself during his nomination 
hearing when asked about the possible firings of the FBI officials and 
he answered under oath ``I don't know what's going on right now'' at 
the FBI.
  Mr. President, we are told that is not true; he was personally 
involved in it, despite the fact that he said the opposite under oath 
before our committee.
  Mr. Patel has been open about his plans to dismantle the FBI and seek 
retribution against his and President Trump's enemies. His directives 
as a private citizen have already thrown the Bureau into absolute 
chaos.
  Mr. Patel's recent actions and testimony before the Senate Judiciary 
Committee confirm my belief that he is dangerous, inexperienced, and he 
has been dishonest in portraying his role in what is happening at the 
FBI. It will be a political and national security disaster if he is 
confirmed.
  And let me take it to a personal level. The FBI Agents Association 
came to me with this and talked about the very real personal and family 
concerns of dedicated FBI agents. They are fearful that an environment 
and climate has been created which puts their own safety in question.
  Let me give you an example of another one of these 1,600 people who 
were prosecuted for the assault on the Capitol: Edward Kelley, 
convicted of assaulting law enforcement and other felony and 
misdemeanor offenses related to his conduct on January 6. The men and 
women who came in and were beating on the law enforcement officials who 
protect this Capitol, Kelley was one of them.
  As I said, he was convicted, scheduled to be sentenced this April, 
until he was pardoned by President Trump last month. While awaiting 
trial on his January 6-related charges, Kelley was separately charged 
and convicted in his home State of Tennessee of conspiracy to murder 
law enforcement, including FBI agents and employees who participated in 
the investigation of his insurrectionist conduct.
  Kelley's Tennessee murder conspiracy case remains pending sentencing, 
but Kelley argues that the case is related to his Washington, DC, 
charges and thus covered by President Trump's blanket pardon.
  Kelley is a perfect example of the danger of publicly releasing the 
names of FBI agents who worked on January 6 cases, and there were some 
5,000 employees of the FBI and the Department of Justice who were 
engaged in that. If we value these men and women who risk their lives 
every day for the safety of the United States, we cannot allow Kash 
Patel to become Director of that Agency, and we cannot run the risk 
that he will use their names publicly, as he has in his book, 
identifying his enemies list to the detriment of these agents and their 
families. We owe it to them to stand by them, as they have stood by us.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about 
the nomination of the President's nominee to run the Department of 
Commerce, an Agency that is charged with a broad mission and a lot of 
complex issues that affect many sectors of our economy.
  The next Secretary of Commerce will have to deal with a wide-ranging, 
growing list of issues, from trade and export controls, expanding 
broadband, weather forecasting, patent issues, export controls on AI, 
and figuring out some of the most thorny issues related to how we move 
our country forward, generally, in commerce.

[[Page S1004]]

  So it is fair to say that if the Commerce Secretary doesn't get it 
right, the American people and our American economy pay the price. 
Unfortunately, I believe that Howard Lutnick, the President's nominee, 
isn't the right person for this job at this point in time.
  Now, Mr. Lutnick and the President have made it very clear that one 
of Mr. Lutnick's key responsibilities will be for trade policy and the 
tariff policies that the President supports.
  In my conversations with Mr. Lutnick and before his Commerce 
Committee hearing, he made it very clear that he intends to be very 
enthusiastic about the President's plans for tariffs.
  When he talked about tariffs, I don't know if he knew how much the 
U.S. economy was going to start paying the price. Talking to people 
throughout my State, I can tell you it is not lost on us, being a 
border State with Canada, how much this might affect us in oil and gas, 
in lumber, electric power, and many other issues of economic activity.
  Mr. Lutnick was for, as the President said, the expanded taxes on 
imported steel and aluminum and across the board tariffs on China. As a 
result, China announced retaliatory tariffs, and other countries also 
promised to retaliate, too.
  That is why, when the Seattle Times ran just recently this story 
about the tariffs, I really understood exactly how Washington 
businesses were feeling. That they know that one, this creates 
uncertainty, and they know that it raises costs.
  Now, I come from one of the most trade dependent States in the 
Nation. That is because we grow a lot of agriculture products that go 
to overseas markets, we make airplanes that go to a lot of overseas 
markets, we have a lot of software and software development. So the 
majority of companies and the majority of employees in our State 
basically are involved in things related to making and growing U.S. 
products that are shipped to overseas markets.
  My constituents want to see inflation come down, and they want us to 
lower costs, not increase them. Now that President Trump is teasing out 
even more tariffs in the coming days on autos, pharmaceuticals, and 
semiconductors, it is going to drive up costs for consumers.
  Another newspaper in my State, the Spokesman-Review, hardly a liberal 
bastion in the State of Washington, also did a pretty big story about 
the trade and tariffs, and what they put in a headline: ``Trump and 
Inflation.''
  I can tell you this, we can't afford inflation. We want prices to 
come down. Whether that is on housing or whether that is on 
pharmaceuticals or whether that is on food prices, we know that tariffs 
can increase prices.
  So the Commerce Secretary, who is going to be involved in driving and 
responsible for this tariff impact, is not someone I want to see in 
this job. The Secretary of Commerce's job is to expand exports. I think 
with 95 percent of consumers living outside the United States, it is 
time to try to reach a process where we can get more products into 
those markets.
  I am also very concerned about how America maintains our 
competitiveness in an international marketplace if things are more 
expensive, particularly manufacturing. My State has been a great 
beneficiary of a renaissance in manufacturing for a whole lot of 
reasons, but because of the CHIPS and Science Act, the infrastructure 
bill, and the IRA bill. And all of those gave people a chance to bring 
supply chains back to the United States, start growing middle-class 
jobs in the United States of America again, and lowering costs.
  That is why we worked so hard on the CHIPS and Science Act, something 
that was voted on here in a bipartisan fashion, led by then-Commerce 
Secretary Raimondo, in a process that ultimately awarded billions of 
dollars to advance the domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry 
here--in total, negotiating 32 deals across 22 States.
  So I know that the Presiding Officer knows all about this as a member 
of the Commerce Committee, but there are many States that were the 
beneficiaries of these investments and are helping us bring even more 
of the domestic supply chain back to the United States.
  We learned during the chips crisis that even the cost of a used car 
went up $2,000. That is because chips were at a shortage, car 
industries, trucking industries couldn't even get enough chips to make 
and ship cars, and then the consequence was even used cars went up 
$2,000.
  So we don't want to recreate that again. We want a Commerce Secretary 
who is going to fight for the CHIPS and Science investment that has 
already been made in the electronic manufacturing process in the United 
States and keep the semiconductor industry right here.
  But unfortunately, Mr. Lutnick, before the committee, would not 
commit to standing by the commitments of the term sheets the Department 
of Commerce has already signed.
  In fact, before he has even been confirmed, Reuters last week said 
the administration started telling companies that they might even 
revisit these agreements that have been signed. So let me be clear, 
these are awards to critical States like Texas, New York, Ohio, 
Arizona, and Pennsylvania, and now, the President is saying he is going 
to revisit those signed contracts.
  Delaying these projects also means we are delaying bringing the 
supply chain back to the United States, that we are making it harder 
for the United States to be competitive in an industry that is critical 
for us to lead, not just on the most advanced chips, but continuing in 
the manufacturing of semiconductors overall.
  In his Commerce Committee nomination, Mr. Lutnick also heard from 
members of both sides of the aisle about their support for the science 
part of the CHIPS and Science Act. These are amazing initiatives that 
brought coalitions of people together to catalyze new economic engines, 
in some cases in the most rural parts of the United States. Why? 
Because it is so expensive to do innovation in Silicon Valley, in 
Boston, and even in some parts of my State.
  So the whole point was to continue to make investments in test 
bedding and scaling technology, so the United States would not lose 
out. And these awards have been made, but Mr. Lutnick also refused to 
commit to honoring those agreements and putting many of those issues at 
question.
  I know my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will continue to push 
for these investments. But today's nominee, if he is confirmed, is also 
going to be overseeing the Bureau of Industry and Security, which 
implements export controls and dual-use technology, and have both 
commercial and military proliferation applications.
  That means you couldn't find a person whose day job is going to be 
more serious on export controls than Mr. Lutnick's. And yet, Mr. 
Lutnick, in the conversations that we had before the committee, I don't 
believe gave the committee a full understanding of what he was going to 
do to protect these interests.
  In fact, the administration has already almost abandoned something 
called the AI Safety Institute, which is widely supported, literally by 
practicably everybody in the AI sector, and would help us remain a 
leader. This is the kind of standards that we would expect to be set 
and the kind of controls that we would hope would help the United 
States not have some vital technology exported outside the United 
States.
  But we also questioned Mr. Lutnick on his background with stablecoin. 
Mr. Lutnick and the stablecoin that he has been involved in has been 
considered a very good tool for the cryptocurrency system, but a target 
of very illicit funds. Some estimates are that Tether accounts for as 
much as 60 percent of billions of dollars of illicit activities, by 
people like North Korea, Southeast Asia, Mexican fentanyl pushers, 
cybercriminals--and all because of stablecoin.
  Now, Mr. Lutnick has an incredible personal story, losing his parents 
at a very young age and also the tragedy that befell Cantor Fitzgerald 
when terrorists struck.
  So I know that Mr. Lutnick knows about terrorist organizations and 
has probably been affected for the rest of his life over that tragedy. 
But in the committee, when we were trying to get him to understand why 
we in the Federal Government put on sanctions against countries and we 
want to hear a Commerce Secretary say, ``We agree

[[Page S1005]]

with those sanctions, we are going to fight for those sanctions, we are 
going to fight anybody who tries to get around those sanctions.''
  We asked Mr. Lutnick about ways to address that fact that maybe some 
large amount, $19 billion of Tether's funds, might be illegal, illicit 
transactions, he said he thought that in the future, a software AI 
solution would help stop that.
  Well, I was hoping that Mr. Lutnick would be more aggressive than 
that. I would hope that he would help the United States in moving on 
something today that would help give more transparency in the 
cryptocurrency market. I support, as the Presiding Officer does, moving 
forward on cryptocurrencies. But I also believe that there should be 
some transparency and certainly should be a fight against people who 
use that for illicit activities.
  I also asked Mr. Lutnick something about the U.S. sovereign debt 
futures, something that I know that he was involved in as it related to 
the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and putting up a competitive bid. It 
was a notion of, how do we settle futures? How do we in the United 
States--if Mr. Lutnick's future company was doing business with the 
London Exchange, settle any kind of--let's say we don't raise the debt 
ceiling and we had a crisis here, what would the United States do? Not 
unsimilar to what we did in 2009 after the 2008, basically, recession 
of our economy.
  These similar questions came up in the Finance Committee, and I found 
that the Treasury nominee before the committee answered those questions 
correctly. But Mr. Lutnick said that he still thought that his idea of 
settling with a foreign country, which I think puts the United States 
second, above England, is not something I would be willing to do, but I 
think he was willing to continue to move forward.
  So those things, an answer about how we will catch up with the money 
laundering in the future with an AI solution, and how the settling on 
the foreign exchange, also left me with some concerns. But when we come 
to NOAA, which is 60 percent of the Commerce budget, the National 
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, when asked for the record, 
``Should NOAA be dismantled, as called for in Project 2025?'' Mr. 
Lutnick would only say he will figure it out once he is confirmed.
  We needed a bigger commitment to NOAA. NOAA already supplies a big, 
important aspect of what we deal with, with weather forecasting, 
tracking extreme weather, hurricanes, wildfires, managing our 
fisheries, operating ships that conduct important charting for national 
security. Mr. Lutnick gave very tepid support for NOAA.
  With 60 percent of the budget and so much now at stake, as the White 
House every day says they are going to cut staffing and cut programs, 
Congress wants to be assured that a nominee is going to fight for the 
Agency that he is there to represent, that he is there to fight for 
their core mission that they provide in important services.
  So I am urging my colleagues to not support this nominee and hope 
that we all can work together to continue to say how important NOAA's 
management of our fisheries are, how important it is to protect U.S. 
fishermen from Russian and Chinese illegal fishing and deception and 
trade practices that are hurting our consumers, and protect accurate 
weather forecasting for all Americans.
  Now is our chance to stand up for these essential services; your 
constituents depend on it.
  I thank the President and--oh, I would, just one more thing.
  The aviation news that continues to roll out, I want to give my 
thoughts and prayers to those who have been affected by the Minneapolis 
to Canada flight for Delta Airlines.
  We have now had the DCA incident and this incident and obviously one 
in Philadelphia. I would just say this: Now is not the time to cut FAA 
staffing. Now is the time to ask questions about what can we do to 
further enhance aviation safety. What can we all do, knowing that we 
have suffered from a door plug accident and from two MAX plane crashes.
  And while we passed legislation to address those MAX crashes, we 
still have work to do. And we passed an FAA 5-year reauthorization that 
helped us get more air traffic controllers.
  It is critically clear to me that we need these air traffic 
controllers, and so we have to make these investments. We should be 
working together, right now, on aviation. The most important thing? 
Let's work together for the benefit of the flying public to come up 
with the best solutions that we can implement in aviation safety.
  Taking a broad brush and just cutting people out of the FAA, when 
oftentimes they are the people that are helping you get that safety, is 
not what we should be doing right now.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Lummis). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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