ICYMI: FBI Director Kash Patel Appears Before Congress

0:07You're listening to the 1A Podcast. I'm Jen White. And this is In Case You Missed It, where we bring you some of the week's biggest conversations you might have missed. FBI Director Kash Patel appeared before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday for a second day of questioning by lawmakers. Patel faced questions about his leadership of the Bureau, including the firing of dozens of FBI agents and officials. He was also asked about the release of investigative files to relate it to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the shooting of right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk. The second day of hearings came after clashes with Senate Democrats on Tuesday, and Wednesday was no different.

0:44Here's some of Patel's heated exchange with Democratic Senator Adam Schiff of California. Well, you can take an internet troll. Take it to the bank that the FBI is protecting this country and the state and citizens of California. We are seeing historic reform. An internet point of order. Eric Tucker joins us after the break to discuss the biggest takeaways from the hearings. He's a reporter covering national security at the Associated Press. Stay with us. We've got a lot to get to.

1:16Eric, welcome to 1A. Thank you so much for having me. So let's start with Tuesday. The Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Patel about a number of issues, including the firing of FBI staffers. The Justice Department lost more than 4 ,000 employees due to federal downsizing efforts. More than 700 vacant FBI agent positions were part of those cuts. And five top officials were fired last month from the FBI. What did Patel say about staffing at the bureau right now? So he really declined to get into specifics about the recent purge, but he repeatedly fell back on a line that anyone who has been fired from the FBI is because they didn't meet the standards of what the institution is currently looking for.

2:01But as you noted, you know, the Bureau is currently facing a lawsuit from five former agents and top executives who were fired last month. And what they claim is that they were let go as part of a Trump campaign of political retribution. And he didn't really get into that in those specifics because it's litigation. But he otherwise indicated that the Bureau does have the staffing that it needs to carry out its mission. And one of the agents suing is former acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll. Now, we heard a clip of Senator Schiff's exchange with Patel, and he wasn't the only Senate Democrat to have a heated back and forth with the FBI director.

2:38How did the tone and direction of questioning fall along party lines? Now, that's a great question. I mean, I think one of the really notable takeaways from the hearing was the extent to which it broke along partisan lines. People described the directors being under pressure and beleaguered, but you wouldn't know that from the questioning from the Republican side of the aisle. Republicans were really quick to shower praise on Director Patel, who is, of course, a loyalist and a strong ally of President Trump. Democrats, by contrast, really seized on a whole bunch of different topics. Among them was the fact that senior executives have been fired.

3:16But they also raised broader concerns that the FBI under Patel's watch has become weaponized and politicized and is being used to pursue the grievances of President Trump. Well, on Wednesday, Patel began his hearings by touting the accomplishments of the Bureau under his leadership. Under this administration, the FBI has arrested more than 23 ,000 violent criminals, 23 ,000 in seven months. That's twice as many year to date last year. We've taken over 6 ,000 firearms off the streets. 6 ,000 guns are no longer in the hands of criminals in seven months. Eric, tell us more about Wednesday's House Judiciary Committee, what those hearings focus on.

3:56So actually on Wednesday, what we saw a lot more discussion of than on Tuesday was about the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation. And Director Patel was presented with statements that he had made on podcasts in the years before he became director, in which he said that the FBI director was in possession of Jeffrey Epstein's, quote, black book, unquote. And he described the fact that information had not been released by the Justice Department as part of a government cover-up. But then he became director, and in July, the FBI and Justice Department announced that it would not be releasing any additional investigative files from the Epstein investigation.

4:34And so Democrats suggested that now he, in fact, was part of the cover-up, and they suggested that that was part of an effort to conceal disparaging and derogatory information about President Trump, who is known to be named in the Epstein files as somebody who was at one point in time friendly with Epstein. And Kaj Patel, for his part, denied that that was part of it. And he insisted that he had released everything that he could legally release. Did he walk back any of the comments he's made on podcasts about these files? No, not necessarily. I didn't read him to be walking back anything except to tout that the Trump administration had released more information than anyone else had previously done.

5:18And he also made a point of saying, you know, you're attacking me for, you know, Epstein and lack of transparency. But Epstein went uninvestigated for so many years by my predecessors. And so you should be pointing the finger at them. But this issue of the release of files related to Epstein, this isn't the first time it surfaced. It came to a head for Patel and his deputy FBI director, Dan Bongino, in the past. Bongino and Patel got into a reported spat with Attorney General Pam Bondi over the administration's decision not to release all the files. Bongino considered resigning due to the handling of the files in July.

5:55So give us more insight into what's happening inside the administration, inside the FBI, over handling of these files. So, you know, everything you mentioned is exactly right. So this was really a summer of turmoil and tumult inside the FBI and Justice Department because of the fierce backlash primarily from the right that the FBI and the Justice Department encountered. And since then, the Justice Department has really scrambled to try to present itself as being transparent, and it's done that by a couple different steps. One, it unsuccessfully petitioned for the release of grand jury testimony in the cases of Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.

6:32It also dispatched Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to Florida to interview Maxwell, and the Justice Department did produce a transcript of that conversation. It also gave Congress tens of thousands of records from the investigation that Congress subsequently released. But it's worth noting that those records were primarily already in the public domain, so there was really nothing new to glean from any of that. And all the while, the department has refused to release any additional files from its own holdings. And it explains that in part because it says a lot of it is child pornography, child sex abuse material that's not fit for public view anyway.

7:07Patel was also questioned about the shooting death of conservative political commentator Charlie Kirk in Utah last week. How much insight did we get into that investigation from Patel's answers? I would not say that we got especially significant new information. You know, Director Patel noted very proudly that the alleged gunman had been taken into custody within 33 hours of the shooting, although I should note that that's in part because of the family having recognized the photographs that were distributed as opposed to something specific that law enforcement did to take him into custody. I one of the other things that came up was the fact that Director Patel had posted on X or Twitter on Wednesday soon after the killing that the quote subject was in custody.

7:57That winds up not being the case. Two different people were taken into custody, but neither was connected with the shooting in any way. And Patel was asked about that, and he suggested that what he was trying to do was simply be transparent with the American public. And he acknowledged that he perhaps could have been a little bit clearer in his verbiage. And just to be clear, Eric, how typical is it for the director of the FBI to share details like that early on in an investigation? No, none of that, I would say, is typical in the way it transpired. And that's in part because we've never had an FBI director who has been online like that before.

8:33You know, there's never been an FBI director who's maintained while in office a public Twitter account where information gets posted. So that's incredibly unusual for an announcement to be made. And it's especially unusual for an announcement to be made when you're not even sure that that's the person who's going to be charged. But the Charlie Kirk investigation was always going to be so closely scrutinized in part because he was a very close friend of the president himself, close with Cash Patel, close with Trump administration officials. So the pressure to get somebody into custody was, of course, enormous.

9:08A House Democrat, Becca Ballant of Vermont, asked Patel how he plans to turn down the temperature on divisive political rhetoric following Charlie Kirk's killing and the killing of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband in June. Hortman, of course, was a Democrat. What did he have to say about that? You know, he did acknowledge that there's political rhetoric on both sides that's leading to violence. And so under questioning, you know, I don't think he shied away from suggesting that there was probably too much violence that goes in both directions. But did he say, surrounding his own rhetoric, that he would change his speech because he has used inflammatory rhetoric often in the past?

9:55No. So, you know, he does not believe that he is somebody who is contributing to that climate. He does not see his rhetoric as being, you know, worthy, you know, meriting scrutiny in some way. And, you know, I think Director Patel sees himself as meeting the moment in that sense. What's at stake for Director Patel? What was his relationship with the White House like before these hearings and how might it change now? You know, that's an important question. I think one of the wild cards is the fact that the FBI and the Justice Department leadership, due in large part to the Epstein sort of kerfuffle, have really had a difficult relationship.

10:43You know, the Trump administration brought in a new co-deputy director from Missouri to serve alongside Bongino. And that move raised leadership questions about the future. But I do think it's important to note that Republicans really did rally behind Cash Patel. And he really does retain a constituency such that we don't really have an indication that the White House in any way has begun to sour on the director. And in fact, Trump communicated his support for Patel via Fox News. But I do think that the issues like the lawsuit that's pending, where there could be discovery that reveals additional information, all of that is sort of going to be closely watched going forward.

11:32That's Eric Tucker. He's a reporter covering national security and the FBI at the Associated Press. Eric, thanks. Thank you. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Jen White. Thanks for listening, and let's talk more soon. This is 1A.

12:02Thank you.