[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 33 (Wednesday, February 19, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1028-S1029]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                      Nomination of Kashyap Patel

  Mr. President, that brings us to the pending nominee to lead the FBI, 
Kash Patel. If your plan is to destroy the rule of law and turn the 
Department of Justice into a political weapon that rewards loyalty and 
punishes dissent, then Kash Patel is the perfect person to lead the 
FBI, and that is likely exactly why he was chosen.
  Listen. Kash Patel is a joke. Many of my Republican colleagues know 
this. He has spent the last 4 years taking the most extreme positions 
inside the world of MAGA in order to make money for himself.
  For instance, he says that he can provide proof beyond a reasonable 
doubt that the FBI was behind the January 6 invasion of this building. 
Let me say that again. The man that my Republican colleagues are about 
to vote to lead the FBI believes that there is irrefutable proof that 
the Agency he is about to lead secretly organized the violent assault 
on the Capitol. That is bananas. My Republican colleagues know that. 
That is a lie. And we are about to put this guy in charge of the

[[Page S1029]]

FBI, an Agency that he claims organized a secret plot to invade the 
Capitol?
  He wrote a book called ``Government Gangsters,'' and at the end, he 
added an appendix entitled ``Enemies List''--like straight out of the 
McCarthy era. He has a list--he wrote it down--of people he believes 
are enemies of America, and--shocker--they are all Democrats or 
Republicans who dared speak out and criticize Donald Trump.
  You are going to put at the head of the FBI--the Agency that can 
arrest anyone they want, put people in jail--a man who thinks that 
anyone who disagrees with Donald Trump politically is an enemy of the 
United States?
  Patel has further suggested that anybody who administered the 2020 
election could be subject to arrest. Why? Because he believes in his 
heart that the election was rigged, despite the fact that Joe Biden won 
by 7 million votes--far, far more than Trump won by in 2024. So anybody 
that helped ``rig'' the 2020 election is, in his mind, a potential 
criminal.
  This is off-the-wall stuff. Of course it is. Because while he 
believes this, he also knows that there is a money-making opportunity 
in all of this. This is his logo: ``K$H.'' He is a brand. He says all 
of these things because he believes them but also because it makes him 
a hero to the gullible conspiracy theorists inside MAGA. He uses them. 
He sells stuff to them--sweatshirts, T-shirts, lapel pins. K$H.
  Now, if you buy this sweatshirt for $55, it says: ``All net profits 
go to the Kash Foundation.'' But you know what we found out, 
unsurprisingly, is that in 2023, by selling all these sweatshirts and 
merch, the K$H foundation had $1.3 million in revenues. Now, it 
purports to support heroic conservative whistleblowers with legal 
services and other support services. Do you know what percentage of 
that $1.3 million went to actual services? Less than 15 percent. Kash 
Patel pocketed almost all the money he made from selling these T-
shirts.
  He even hocks a COVID vaccine-reversal pill. Let me say that again. 
The incoming Director of the FBI, in addition to selling T-shirts and 
pocketing most of the proceeds, also sells a vaccine-reversal pill that 
is just, like, pure snake oil. But if there are enough people loyal to 
Donald Trump to buy anything Trump's lieutenants sell on the internet, 
then fair game.
  To top it all off, just recently, after his confirmation hearing, we 
also found out that Kash Patel has been a fashion consultant to a 
shadowy holding company controlled, it seems, by members of the Chinese 
Communist Party--like, honestly. Honestly. How on Earth are we going to 
let someone lead the world's most important, most revered law 
enforcement Agency who is secretly in business with the Chinese 
Communist Party, who believes that the FBI organized the invasion of 
the Capitol, who runs a fake charity, and who has a brand in order to 
make money off of his affiliation with Donald Trump? He has an enemies 
list. He thinks that people who helped elect Joe Biden are criminals.
  This is a really dangerous moment. It is a really dangerous moment. 
This deal that Donald Trump just cut with the mayor of New York--it is 
a big deal. It is a big deal.
  I admit that prior Presidents have made decisions that compromise the 
rule of law, but we have never seen anything like this so brazen and 
out in the open, that the mayor of New York and a Trump official would 
go on national TV to announce that they had made an arrangement in 
which Mayor Adams could continue his corruption as long as he was 
politically loyal to Donald Trump. They did that out in the open on TV 
because it is a signal to everybody else out there that the law will be 
applied differently to you if you are loyal to the President and that 
the law will be zealously applied to you, maybe in excess of the letter 
of the law, if you are a critic of the President. That is why they went 
on TV, to show the world the corruption as a signal that things are 
different now, that the law is not the law; the law is what President 
Trump decides the law is.
  The law loses all meaning when it becomes simply what the President, 
what the leader on any given day decides.
  This is the worst possible moment to put a person like Kash Patel in 
charge of the FBI. It is heartbreaking to see so many of my Republican 
colleagues--many of whom I admire--put loyalty to Donald Trump ahead of 
loyalty to this country and, more specifically, loyalty to that sacred 
principle, the rule of law.
  My prediction is that if you vote for Kash Patel, more than any other 
confirmation vote you make, you will come to regret this one to your 
grave.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.