Kash Patel’s bizarre Senate hearing went from an argument about bestiality to outright insults

FBI director Kash Patel testified to the Senate today in a hearing that almost immediately descended into discussions about bestiality. Because that’s the world we live in now.

If you’re one of the fortunate souls who remains unfamiliar with Patel, let me fill you in: Trump’s FBI guy has, in the past, floated the idea that Jan. 6 was a Deep State setup, purged thousands of FBI workers after taking up the job, used polygraphs to test the loyalty of officials to the Trump administration, and overseen the detainment and deportation of thousands, the majority of whom have no criminal record. He believes that no media can be trusted, and is currently suing The Atlantic for publishing a highly critical article about him.

Oh, and he removed the requirement for FBI recruits that they had never had sex with animals.

As with most people connected to this hall-of-mirrors version of an administration, Patel is a mixture of scary, sarcastic and bizarre. He opened today with the usual MAGA stuff about how he’s changed the FBI to “let cops be cops” and how he’s been busy “capturing literally the worst of the worst.” He listed off a few data points about child abusers and “gangbangers” who have been imprisoned under his watch.

You’ve removed the requirement for people joining the FBI not to have criminal convictions for stealing, soliciting sex, or engaging in bestiality, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Ohio noted to Patel. Does that make your standards higher? (Patel had recently monologued about how historically high the FBI’s standards are now, because of changes like asking potential recruits to do a single pull-up.)

“Our standards have never been higher,” Patel replied. Pushed on that, he added that he wouldn’t have wanted to exclude “victims of bestiality” from applying for FBI jobs. Which all sounds very woke and lovely, until you consider that the victims of bestiality are animals.

“You’ve turned that upside-down,” said Durbin, dismissively, as he wrapped up his time.

Another senator wasn’t going to let it go so easily — and this was, in fact, a Republican: Sen. John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana. Kennedy began by demanding that Patel “pull that mic closer to you,” before diving into why anyone would remove the three requirements for anyone applying to the FBI.

It’s to protect victims, Patel responded; to which Kennedy clarified, “So it’s not if you frequented a prostitute, it’s because you were a prostitute?” Patel nodded. Kennedy paused, considered, seemed to find that reasonable, then leaned forward again and asked, slowly, “What about the bestiality?”

This is where things began to descend again. Patel again said he was protecting victims, to which Kennedy asked the obvious question: “So you don’t disqualify the animal?” At this point, Patel should probably have launched into some pre-prepared spiel about abuse, but instead he let out a nervous laugh and said, “We have great canines but we’re not going to disqualify animals.”

Kennedy didn’t find this acceptable. Do you realize, he asked Patel, that removing requirements like this makes everybody here look bad? This has hurt the FBI, having people hear that they seemingly don’t think bestiality is a big deal. With a perplexed look on his face, he finished with: “Why would you even get into bestiality?”

Again, this is where Patel probably should have had a spiel prepared, or perhaps even have taken a breath. But instead he immediately retorted: “We are not into bestiality.” Which just isn’t a sentence you should ever have to say in politics.

“I know you’re not,” said Kennedy, “but you changed the qualifications and you brought in bestiality.” Patel responded that someone might have “involuntarily” got involved with animals. Kennedy, remaining perplexed, asked, “How do you involuntarily do it?”

Patel finally clicked into gear here, and described how a recruiting officer had supposedly told him it can happen that a person who has been trafficked can be forced to do all manner of sexual acts on camera as part of their abuse, including with animals. It’s a fair, if extremely niche, point. One cannot imagine that it’s a problem they come up against regularly in FBI recruitment, and also one can imagine that in the right circumstances it could probably be dealt with.

When people came to you with a list of things to remove, Kennedy pressed, “and you saw bestiality — I say this with respect — to the person who recommended it, why didn’t you say: What planet did you parachute in from?”

Patel, who can’t even stick by his own absurd metrics and clearly was at this point worried he was going to start being known in public as ‘The Bestiality Guy,’ then quickly claimed, “That was my initial response, Senator!”

Needless to say, this continued, and it was never entirely resolved. At the end of the back-and-forth, Kennedy then asked if Patel could guarantee that someone who had sex with animals wouldn’t be able to become an FBI agent, and Patel agreed that they couldn’t, even though he’d just spent 15 minutes arguing the contrary.

It might seem strange to focus so much of an FBI hearing on human-to-animal sex, considering that there’s a lot that should be on the agenda here: ICE tactics, the possibility of federal agents turning up to the polls during the midterm elections, the Epstein files. But the problem is that Kash Patel rarely answers questions; he instead deploys the same answers, which are either that he can’t say anything because of an ongoing investigation, or that “public reporting is generally wrong,” or that he doesn’t know anything about that.

Asked specifically about whether the papers in the Epstein files that haven’t yet been released will be released, for example, Patel responded that he “will always investigate” child abuse, “so if you want to keep asking about the Epstein files, go ahead.”

Asked about whether Corey Lewandowski was selling political access for personal gain or whether the FBI was looking into it, he said, “I’m not going to comment.” Asked about why four countries publicly stated to the media that they haven’t been able to get a whole of files related to Epstein so they can prosecute people, the answer came that “public reporting generally is inaccurate.”

Asked about the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, two American citizens shot dead by ICE agents in Minnesota after peacefully protesting, he responded vaguely that, “We’ll fully support all investigations” while declining to get into details. Asked about how many agents are now working on the Epstein case, he said that, “We always have a number of agents who are looking at information that sprouts from previous cases,” which is less than clear as mud and certainly makes it sound like the Epstein case is considered closed.

In fact, one of the only times during this hearing when Patel committed himself to anything or took a question seriously was when Marsha Blackburn, the Republican senator from Tennessee, asked what he was doing to end the supposedly “heinous practice” of “birthright tourism.” To that, Patel was confident in saying that he was working with the president, helping to draft new laws, and seeking more resources and funding to prevent certain immigrants from having American citizen babies.

When Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, asked Patel for a commitment that FBI agents would not be deployed to the polls on Election Day, Patel equivocated. He is not good at equivocating, and Blumenthal wouldn’t let it go. “Do you agree with me that deploying FBI agents would be contrary to the law?” the senator asked, to which Patel then answered, “I don’t know if we can’t legally do it…” An uninspiring answer, to say the least.

By far the most heated exchange at the hearing was Patel’s with Sen. Peter Welch, a Democrat from Vermont. This was where Patel’s calm, sardonic mask slipped and he became the attack dog most Trump administration officials do when they’re really on the ropes.

Do you believe the 2020 election was rigged, Welch asked? Patel was silent. “There are many ongoing investigations,” he eventually settled on. But Trump said that “the only way the Democrats can win the midterms is to cheat,” said Welch. Is this true? Patel shifted uncomfortably, tried a few lines that didn’t work, then started getting worked up.

“Based upon the Russiagate hoax, the president is completely justified in making his opinions known!” Patel said, and “if you want to continue lying about the men and women of the FBI so you can have your four-second campaign ad, then–”

At this point, Welch started asking his questions again, but Patel couldn’t allow it: instead, he started shouting the stats he’d presented at the start of the hearing again and again. Gangbangers put away! Missing children found! Safest America ever!!

“This is existential,” Welch remarked back. “...This is about whether United States citizens are deciding this election” or if it will be decided by “election interference. Do you pledge you will not in any way interfere with the election?”

“I pledge unequivocally that I will not participate in your charade of lies!” Patel responded, before adding, “What I believe in is the rule of law. Are you done with your campaign ad?” To the shock of most people in the room, he then immediately started trying to ask Welch about how his own wealth had gone up while he was a senator. At this point, the chairman stepped in.

But Welch wasn’t done. He asked about Patel suing The Atlantic, to which a now entirely rattled Patel responded that “there is a smear campaign against me, which you are participating in.” He then yelled: “You cannot stand the fact that President Trump and his administration has made this country safer than it’s ever been!” before demanding that the chairman rescind Welch’s time.

It was a mess, and in the remaining minute where Welch continued questioning, it got even worse. “What you’ll never understand,” he kept repeating, before adding various qualifiers: Welch will never understand that Patel is personally beloved by the U.S. Olympic team; Welch will never understand that Patel is the best at reducing crime “in history.” He then called Welch a fraud and the senator’s time ran out.

And so we learned a lot about Kash Patel from the questioning, but very little about what he’s doing in the FBI. Following up, Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii didn’t even bother directing any questions to Patel.

“I just watched you today as you dodged questions and refused to answer,” she said, and “I just watched you today in a very combative mode with my colleague, Sen. Welch, and you were attacking him, which is again how you approach questions you don't want to answer.

“The list of your failings is long and, frankly, growing,” she continued, before listing a few of the personal and structural issues that have been reported about Patel.

“If I thought I could get a real answer out of you, I'd ask you things like: What the hell were you thinking, getting rid of 12 Iran experts on the eve of a war with Iran?” Hirono concluded. But she wasn’t going to bother, she added, because she knew that it would be pointless. Eventually, she simply turned to the chairman and said, “I’m done with this witness.”

And that’s the point, really, isn’t it? You can turn up to all the hearings they demand, but if all you employ is doublethink and personal insults, you’re not actually turning up. You can claim transparency while obfuscating, shout about a weaponized FBI while building one, and descend into righteous insults if you need a distraction from what somebody just said.

In that environment, you certainly provide interesting fodder for psychoanalysts and, eventually, historians. But you don’t make anything clearer, to the congressional branch or to the American public, what you’re actually doing behind the curtain. And when you’re the head of the most important production in America, that’s a very alarming thing indeed.