What did Kash Patel say at fiery Senate hearing? Here's everything to know

FBI Director Kash Patel testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, September 15, for the bureau’s annual oversight hearing.

While discussing FBI hiring standards, he defended loosening rules that earlier automatically disqualified applicants who had engaged in prostitution or bestiality. Patel said: “We didn’t want to punish victims of bestiality, victims who were trafficked.”

Republican Sen. John Kennedy pushed back: “The person who recommended it, why didn’t you just say, 'What planet did you parachute in from?” Patel replied that was his initial reaction too, but he was persuaded by trafficking cases.

Regarding the 2020 election, Patel repeatedly declined to say whether President Biden won. “There are many ongoing investigations surrounding that matter, so I’m not going to comment,” he told Sen. Peter Welch. He also refused to discuss the FBI’s Georgia election probe.

On the Epstein files, Patel said he was unaware of 37 withheld pages raised by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, insisting the bureau “complied with the statute and court orders.” For the firing of FBI agents, Patel claimed that they were fired due to weaponisation of the bureau and not as political retaliation. On police-related shootings, Patel claimed he did not lie about the number of shootings in Chicago and vowed to investigate the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota.

In terms of crime, Patel mentioned a significant increase of 80% in arrests made, the lowest murder rate in twenty years, and capturing all of the ten FBI Most Wanted fugitives. Democrats, spearheaded by Senator Dick Durbin, described Patel as "the least qualified and most partisan FBI director in the history of our nation."