    [Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 33 (Wednesday, February 19, 2025)]
    [Senate]
    [Pages S1019-S1020]
    From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                          Nomination of Kashyap Patel

      Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, soon, we will be voting on the
    nomination of Kash Patel to serve as Director of the FBI. I have spoken
    with my colleagues on this nomination within the last couple of days,
    but I want to spend a few more minutes urging my colleagues to vote for
    Mr. Patel's confirmation.
      Mr. Patel's career shows that he is a man who will fight to defend
    the Constitution and fight to expose corruption. This is exactly the
    kind of experience the FBI Director needs.
      For almost a decade now, Mr. Patel served as a public defender,
    defending the constitutional rights of some of the least popular people
    in America. After serving as public defender, Mr. Patel joined the
    Department of Justice under Democrat President Obama as a
    counterterrorism prosecutor in the National Security Division.
      In this role, he investigated and he prosecuted many important cases,
    including the World Cup bombing in Uganda in 2010 for which he received
    the Award of Excellence.
      In 2017, Representative Devin Nunes asked Mr. Patel to join the House
    Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to uncover the truth about
    Russiagate, and Mr. Patel did uncover the truth. Through tireless work,
    in regard to that investigation, Mr. Patel showed that Crossfire
    Hurricane was based on fraudulent, even discredited information,
    actually paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton
    campaign.
      After exposing the Russiagate scandal in Congress, Mr. Patel then
    went on to serve in senior national security positions in the National
    Security Council, then as a Deputy Director of National Intelligence
    and as Chief of Staff to the Acting Secretary of Defense.
      Mr. Patel managed large intelligence and defense bureaucracies,
    identified and countered national security threats, and prosecuted and
    defended the accused.
      He has done this while fighting for transparency and accountability
    in government. We all know that if things are transparent, the people
    connected with them are going to be more accountable, and we also know
    that the

    [[Page S1020]]

    public's business in this great democracy of ours ought to be public.
      Mr. Patel's experience and Mr. Patel's vision is why he has been
    endorsed by organizations representing more than 680,000 law
    enforcement officers and by dozens of former and current FBI agents,
    State attorneys general, and U.S. attorneys.
      These people understand law enforcement. These people understand the
    rule of law, and these people who have endorsed Mr. Patel trust that he
    will do the right thing, and we should as well today by voting for Mr.
    Patel.
      I want to speak now to those who have viciously opposed Mr. Patel's
    nomination. At the heart of their opposition is the fear that he will
    act like Democrats did when Democrats were in power. So these Democrats
    are afraid that the FBI, under Mr. Patel's leadership, will use lawfare
    against political opponents like the FBI used lawfare against President
    Trump and others.
      These Democrats are afraid he will use subpoena power and coordinate
    with the media to target those seeking accountability just like
    Democrats did against Mr. Patel and, also, against my own investigative
    staff.
      These Democrats are afraid that he will deploy the FBI to conduct
    investigations and engage in surveillance against those who disagree
    like they did with Catholic families and parents expressing concern at
    school board meetings.
      These Democrats are afraid that he will retaliate against
    whistleblowers like the Biden administration did against FBI and IRS
    agents who blew the whistle.
      After reviewing Mr. Patel's record and listening to his testimony at
    his hearing, I am convinced that these fears that the Democrats have
    are unfounded. Mr. Patel's leadership will not be business as usual in
    the FBI as it has been in previous administrations when the FBI, the
    people on the 7th floor--not the local agents--were used for political
    weaponization.
      Mr. Patel told us at our hearing he wants to reduce FBI involvement
    in politics and domestic surveillance. Mr. Patel wants to end political
    investigations and strengthen protections for whistleblowers. Mr. Patel
    wants to make the FBI accountable once again, get back the reputation
    that the FBI has had historically for law enforcement, and he wants to
    hold the FBI accountable to Congress, to the President, and most
    importantly, to the people they serve, the American taxpayer.
      My Democratic colleagues often lament that Mr. Patel won't protect
    the independence of the FBI, but there is a fine line between
    independent judgment and being unaccountable. The FBI has been
    unaccountable all too long.
      My Democratic colleagues decry the recent firing of FBI agents and
    somehow want to blame Mr. Patel for those personal decisions. That
    isn't fair, obviously, because he is not running the FBI. As my
    oversight has shown, many of those fired agents were behind the
    retaliation against multiple FBI whistleblowers. They ruined lives and
    careers for their own political hands. They should be held accountable,
    and, yes, they should have been and have been fired.
      The FBI has also kept too many secrets. It has hid from the duly
    elected Members of Congress the origins of the lawfare against
    President Trump, which we all know and which I have shown in my
    exposure of a lot of emails, was in large part from the anti-Trump
    agent, Timothy Thibault.
      Now based on testimony from soon-to-be Deputy Attorney General Todd
    Blanche, we know that the Biden DOJ and FBI violated process by not
    sharing evidence with Trump's defense team that could have helped
    Trump's case against the government.
      If that happened--now, just think, if that happened on the Democrat
    side, you wouldn't hear the end of it. Yet, you can't hear a peep today
    from my Democratic colleagues. The government hid its investigations
    into those who dared to question the Democratic Party line.
      But then, when it is convenient for political reasons, the FBI would
    leak or coordinate with the media to hide the truth and to smear
    people.
      We need to restore transparency; we need to restore oversight; we
    need to restore accountability at the FBI, particularly on that top
    floor of the Hoover Building. Mr. Patel is exactly the man that can do
    that, and it is why those who benefit from the status quo have come so
    forcefully against him with a relentless smear campaign.
      Mr. Patel is a reformer, and we need a reformer in the FBI. We need
    to restore the public trust, and we need to return the FBI to its core
    mission, which is to keep people on our streets safe.
      The bottom line: It is the people doing the everyday work at the FBI,
    enforcing the law, solving crimes that the people on the 7th floor of
    the Hoover Building should be doing, instead of thinking about how we
    can get at our political enemies.
      I will be voting to confirm Mr. Patel. I will urge my colleagues to
    do the same thing.
      I yield the floor.
      The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
      Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, as I hear the senior Senator from Iowa, it
    is like I am living in another world. I am not alleging that Mr. Patel
    has an enemies list. He is the one that has said that. I am not
    alleging that he would use law enforcement against Donald Trump's
    political enemies, he is the one that has said that.
      And so I will be voting no, and I hope I am wrong.