Trump Sweats as Kash Patel Lies Under Oath About FBI Agent Firings

0:00Michael Popok:I didn't think the pain from the shingles rash would affect simple, everyday tasks like bathing, getting dressed, or even walking around. I was wrong. Though not everyone at risk will develop it, 99 % of people over the age of 50 already have the virus that causes shingles, and it could reactivate at any time. I developed it, and the blistering rash lasted for weeks. Don't learn the hard way, like I did. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist today. Sponsored by GSK. Welcome to a special edition of Legal AF. About once a year, if not more, people in the Trump administration who have their hands in the lever of power, like Kash Patel, the FBI director, have to come before the Senate Judiciary Committee in particular, who are providing oversight.

0:50Michael Popok:And oftentimes it is the Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats who have to lead the charge, do a proper cross-examination and oversight of the FBI director, ask the pertinent questions, get to the bottom of what appears to be scandals and an obscenely unqualified person who is supposed to be in charge of our national security. And it all came to a head on the 15th with the Oversight Committee hearing for the judiciary with Kash Patel. And what I want to do is bring on Senator Adam Schiff of California to talk about what we just watched. And I'm going to have an opening question for the senator.

1:36Michael Popok:Did Kash Patel lie in his testimony? And will that be the subject of future impeachment proceedings against Kash Patel? Did it get that bad? Is that what we watched? Let's bring on Senator Schiff. Thank you for being with us on Legal AF. Great to be with you. And I think the short answer is almost certainly he was asked in particular about all the firings of these FBI agents who just happened to work on the investigations of the president, the Mar-a-Lago investigation, the January 6th investigation. And even though the attorney general had bragged about Kash Patel cleaning house, that there was no federal agent with a gun still at the FBI who had worked on any of those cases, even though he bragged about that and Patel said he was being honest when he did so, he denied it was the case.

2:27And that's almost certainly false. We know when there's litigation, civil litigation by FBI agents who were fired for improper reasons, for the fact they were assigned these cases, that Patel was untruthful. And yes, we're going to be investigating that when we enjoy subpoena power. Right.

2:46Michael Popok:When the other party gets the gavel. In particular, we know from the statistics, and your office has it up also, in the last year, the year is not even over, in 2026, more than 1 ,200 FBI agents with 22 years average experience have resigned. 5 ,000 people have been either forcibly removed, fired, house cleaned or left voluntarily, whatever that may be, hollowing out the once proud institution of the FBI. And here's a clip of you on this particular point with Kash Patel about what happened to those Mar-a-Lago FBI agents. Let's play the clip. That's not my question. How many of the agents who worked on the Mar-a-Lago investigation of Donald Trump, how many of them were fired by the FBI?

3:39I don't know. Are any of them still working for the FBI? I don't have that number. That's not my responsibility. Well, I'm not asking for a number now. Are any of the agents who worked on the Mar-a-Lago investigation of the president still employed at the FBI? I don't believe so. Most of them left. Okay, so you don't believe any of the agents who worked on that investigation are still at the FBI? I can't stop them from retiring. Is it your testimony that they're not at the FBI because they retired, not because they were fired? My understanding is the overwhelming majority of those agents and FBI personnel retired.

4:14Well, let me ask you this. Todd Blanche at a CPAC conference says, and when it comes to the FBI, Director Patel has cleaned house there, too. There isn't a single man or woman with a gun. federal agents still in that organization that had anything to do with the prosecution of President Trump. So the Attorney General says you cleaned house at the FBI. I did. Was he right? Was he truthful when he said there's not a single agent at the FBI who worked on the Mar-a-Lago investigation still employed by the FBI? The Attorney General is always truthful, so I believe his statement. Okay, so they're all gone.

4:52But is your testimony today that most of those agents are no longer with the FBI because they decided suddenly to retire? Yeah. They weren't fired in whole or in part because they worked on that investigation? The bulk of the individuals that worked on those investigations left shortly thereafter. And they left voluntarily? In the prior administration. I'm talking about under your watch, Director Patel. They left before I got there. There's really nothing I can do. So it's your testimony that most of them voluntarily left the bureau. They weren't fired. Most of them, yeah.

5:24Michael Popok:Okay. So you were a longtime federal prosecutor, and I see you in your element there when you're cross-examining him. You have a witness that's not telling the truth. And so my audience wants to know, it's very interesting to watch. We obviously, most thinking adults believe that he lied. But how do you prepare for a witness like that, for a person like that? This is now the second or third go around. How do you prepare with you and your staff for somebody like that? And what do you want to have happen next based on his testimony that's not truthful? Well, first of all, I prepare knowing that the witness is going to lie or seek to evade truthful answers because the answers would be too incriminating.

6:14So I go into it with that expectation. I certainly wasn't disappointed in Kash Patel in that I think he did lie. I think he did certainly evade. But I also go with the expectation that the chairman of the committee, regrettably, and my Republican counterparts, are not going to insist on answers because the chairman could shut that down when Patel refuses to answer a question or dodges or makes plainly absurd statements or simply chooses to insult the senator asking the questions. that a chair should assert themselves and say, answer the question. You know, Patel, when he was asked by Peter Welch, a perfectly legitimate question, are you going to send agents to polling places, et cetera?

6:57He simply insulted Peter Welch. The chairman should have shut that down. That has not happened at all during the last two years. They're afraid to confront the administration. So I go into it with that expectation and also with the idea that when we flip the Senate, when we have the power to compel answers, we will find out whether Kash Patel was lying to us. And if he was lying under oath, there will be real consequences for that. I also, frankly, want to get these facts out because these FBI agents are suing the director and the Bureau. And if he lies about it and they do discovery and they discover he's lying about it, that's going to be significant too.

7:41Michael Popok:I mean, to your point, Chair Grassley was too busy telling one of your colleagues, the senior senator for New Jersey, Cory Booker, to, will you shut up? Will you shut up now? That was the only time the guy took control of the hearing is when Cory Booker was asking a very important line of questions and he wasn't getting the right answers out of Patel and just ask him to shut up. Well, I got very similar treatment last year during the questioning of Patel when I think the chairman cut off my microphone. So that's sadly the state of the Senate Judiciary Committee. That lofty committee with its incredible history is not insisting on truthful answers and generally not insisting on any answers.

8:24We couldn't get an answer, for example, when Bondi testified about what happened to the$50 ,000 that Tom Holman allegedly took in a paper bag. We still can't get an answer to that question. You would think that any committee worth its salt would insist on very basic answers to questions about very serious corruption. But sadly, that's not happening on this committee. I think Cory Booker was absolutely right to point that out and take the committee to task for failing. We can only expect the worst from Kash Patel, but we should expect better from the Senate. And we just aren't seeing that.

9:05Michael Popok:Have you ever seen any in your history, have you ever seen members of an administration come in with a burn book and notes about how they're going to attack Dick Durbin or you? Or, I mean, this is from the Pam Bondi School of Oversight Hearing Preparation, and it happened all over again with Kash Patel. I assume you were ready for the burn book. Oh, yes. And it actually was kind of funny when Bondi testified and we got the first, you know, just disciplined use of the burn book. She literally turned to the book before she would, you know, launch her burn. I was the last. I'm the most junior member of the committee.

9:42And so I'm the last to ask questions, which on the one hand is a detriment because all the questions you want to ask were asked by others. But on the other hand, if you're really paying attention, and I'm one of the members who stays from the beginning gavel to the end gavel, you get to hear all of the evasions and you get to hear the fault questions that weren't asked that really should have been asked. And that's a valuable role. So I was following up with Bondi and all the questions she refused to answer. In fact, I started to itemize them for her. And she, of course, went to the burn book.

10:18And I said, you know, I don't need your canned pre-prepared burn. And she was really offended that I would suggest that she couldn't, you know, issue a burn on the fly, that she needed someone to write it out for her. But, of course, that's exactly what she needed.

10:37Michael Popok:Well, that's another angle. That's another tool that the Kash Patels of the world used. And we saw it in your questioning of him, where he made everything so personal. It's about my girlfriend and my family. And I can't believe you're asking these questions. We'll get to that for a minute, but I did appreciate, our audience did too, when you reminded Kash Patel that the world, as he knows it, may be coming to an end and I'll have to answer for these issues in the future. Let's play Senator Schiff's reminder to Kash Patel. The FBI is being sued for wrongful termination. I will remind you, director, because you probably need reminding, that while this Congress is not going to investigate the wrongful termination of potentially hundreds of agents for working on properly predicated investigations, the next Congress will.

11:34And you have an obligation as FBI director to ensure that none of the personnel files, none of the emails, none of the voicemails, none of the text messages, records are destroyed. You will preserve those records, will you not? We preserve all records. We're not the ones that deleted records. We will hold you to that. The ones that deleted records are the prior administration. Let me ask you another question.

11:57Michael Popok:He's always got to get that, you know, that, oh, it wasn't me. I wasn't here. The other guy did it in his responses, but it got very personal. I'm sure you were prepared for it when you appropriately went after him and questioned him about the New York Times, the subpoenas for the New York Times, how he has gone after and used the FBI to go after reporters who were just exercising their First Amendment right as the fourth estate, The Atlantic, and the authors there concerning the allegations of his public intoxication and incapacity to do his job. What was your, as you said, you were there gavel to gavel and you get the, I think it's envious to do the cleanup role to go last, sort of like the rebuttal role.

12:48Michael Popok:What was your angle of attack about his abuse of the First Amendment and going after these reporters and their families? Well, in terms of both those clips, my purpose in reminding him of his obligation to preserve records and documents was less directed to Patel than the people sitting behind him. The lawyers from the FBI and the people back at the department who are watching the hearing. I want them to know that if they destroy evidence at his urging or the urging of others, they will be held accountable because they care about their careers. they should, and they care about their license to practice law.

13:25So I was reminding them as much as I was reminding Patel. But in terms of my questions about his using, misusing, abusing FBI resources to go after reporters who wrote unfavorable stories, I listened when Cory Booker asked him a question about whether he had queried the FBI database about the reporter who wrote a story in New York Times about his abusing SWAT teams to provide personal security for his girlfriend. And this is when Patel went into this false hubris about how dare you attack my girlfriend, blah, blah, blah, was total misdirection. He didn't answer the question. And previously, he has answered or the FBI has said that they did not do investigations of these reporters.

14:15But as you know, listening as a careful lawyer, there's a difference between doing a formal investigation of someone and on the one hand and using the resources of the FBI to nonetheless look into a reporter writing things you don't like. And we never got an answer. Corey didn't get an answer. The FBI has never said were FBI resources misused that way. So I wanted to ask that very specific question. And part of his deflected answer was, well, I don't know what the FBI is doing.

14:51Michael Popok:He always thinks that's a defense as the director of the FBI to claim not to know what the FBI is doing. In fact, Senator Schiff, we have that clip. Let's play it for our audience. If you could answer the question, do you stand by this statement? That's a great picture. You should post it. Do you stand by your statement? I always do. um so is it your view then that the media is a greater enemy than iran that's not what i said i said the media that participates in lying like you do and the baseless attacks on me and my personnel my loved ones is the most harmful institution to the united states of america because you don't want to tell the truth this mainstream media that you're accusing of lying you're talking about the new york times are they part of the enemy i mean i'm talking about the ones that you said are still looking for are you talking about the new york times aren't you and them the ones that are you talking about collusion excuse me did you find russia collusion is it in that envelope that you held up we need an extra minute and maybe continuing as long as he or what about those illegal fisa warrants when we and i were on the house select committee you can i'll stipulate for the record all the insults he wants to make later but i don't i don't want to have to go over my time but i will have to um i'm allowed to answer the question so if he doesn't want me to answer it we could just answer yeah again another example for our audience where there should have been a chairperson who took control of the hearing and respected you and your time and forced the witness to answer a question.

16:12Michael Popok:But that's not, as you said, they are so worried about getting the ire of the administration and Donald Trump that they just sit there passively. And at one point, he just packed up - If I can say on that one, this is another tactic we've seen the administration use and Patel use. And that is you confront them with something they said, which is recorded on video. Obviously, we confront them with it in a printer board, but they deny it. That's not what I said. That's a lie. That's false. But it's on tape. That's exactly what he said. And they don't care. They want you basically not to believe your lying eyes.

16:55And so that was Kash Patel denying that he said what he said. Yeah.

17:00Michael Popok:And then, you know, in a very insulting way, although I'm sure you weren't insulted by it. He started the theater of packing up his mead trapper to get out of there and put all of his papers away, hoping that would end the cross-examination. We talked about Senator Booker for a minute. Senator Booker once told Cash Patel, I don't think I'll be seeing you again at the next oversight here. Are we going to see, is Cash Patel, do you believe, going to survive all the way to the end of the administration? I don't know. It has been the survival of the unfittest in this administration. And the primary merit that Patel has is he's kind of the bootlicker in chief.

17:43He's the guy when he was a staffer for Devin Nunes and now as FBI director, will do all of the immoral, unethical and even unlawful stuff that other people refuse to do. So that is his primary merit. Now, the reason why notwithstanding that merit in the president's eyes, he may cling to that job or he may not be able to cling to that job is he's so incompetent. And he is such an embarrassment with the administration. You know, you probably saw one of the most embarrassing parts was his defense of the FBI changing their hiring practices so that they could hire people who have been convicted or accused of bestiality.

18:26One of the things is, you know, with the departure of all of these agents and all of their experience, including counterterrorism agents, they've really had to lower their standards to try to fill their ranks. And when he was asked about this and he said, well, they were trying to protect people on both sides. And I, you know, before Senator Kennedy had a chance to question about that, I leave back and I ask my staff, both sides? Isn't one side the animal?

18:54Michael Popok:we joked on on a legal af i i didn't realize that cash patel thought that the sheep detective was a documentary uh yeah he's he that the fact that we even have to talk about that um not the lowering the standards part the fact that the the fbi director doesn't know what bestiality is when he signed the order lowering the standards is just uh you know your brain could just fall out of your head at that moment. I want to switch gears for a minute. You don't want any more discussion on BCR? I had an uncomfortable pause there in the transition. Let's switch gears for a moment and go to privacy issues that are near and dear to your heart on the privacy technology and law subcommittee that you're on.

19:44Michael Popok:And, you know, there's this movement that Donald Trump is trying to lead and Elon Musk is back there behind the scenes to make like this one giant grand database of all of our information completely searchable by the government and law enforcement. Of course, what could go wrong having all your information there? And then you see a combination of AI and vendors that have been hired to read license plates and get vehicle data, maybe more in photographs, work, you know, that database being turbocharged and being given over to law enforcement and ICE or even local law enforcement in states like Texas to make sure people don't go to get reproductive health care that they wanted, you know, really gotten down to that level.

20:30Michael Popok:And now you've written a letter to the chief executive officer of the Flock Group Incorporated, who's this leading vendor of nationwide license plate readers, about what are they doing to protect the Americans' privacy. Talk about why this issue has become so important to you and what you're trying to accomplish with the letter to the CEO of Flock Group. So we used to criticize China for having these ubiquitous CCTV cameras and having those cameras linked to facial recognition software. And further having them linked in a big database that includes people's social media, their social media scores, basically creating a surveillance state, a big brother state, and how China was trying to export that to other countries around the world, help them build their own surveillance states.

21:24And here we see the beginnings of our own surveillance state with these flock cameras that are, you know, in the numbers of tens of thousands, 100 to 200 ,000 of these cameras, 7 ,000 police departments making contracts with them. They want to expand now to these rideshare vehicles to add three to four hundred thousand more cameras that are recording more license plates. And so people are being tracked now and will be increasingly tracked wherever they go. And this information is being abused. It's being used for purposes that are not intended. It's being used for ICE purposes without warrants.

22:08It's being used in Texas, for example, to hunt down a woman who was seeking reproductive health by making a false claim that she was a missing person. It's being used in Kansas to try to find someone who wrote an op-ed criticizing the police department for allowing such data to be used by ICE. It's being abused all over the place. And yes, there are success stories where they catch criminals with it, but there are far more stories now of the abuse of this technology. And this is what I wrote to the CEO about of this company, Flock, along with Ron Wyden, to demand answers. Why are there all these problems?

22:52How are you going to stop these abuses? How are you doing what you're doing consistent with the privacy laws of different states? We need to get to the bottom of this. We need to put some constraints on this. Otherwise, none of us are going to have any privacy.

23:06Michael Popok:Yeah, and this letter that you wrote jointly with Senator Ron Wyden out to the FLOC group, let me just read from a couple of passages from it. But numerous reports also indicate that immigration and customs enforcement officials are conducting immigration-related searches of FLOC databases to pursue individuals without warrants. While FLOC claims to not work with ICE and blames local customers who share information voluntarily, FLOC has repeatedly failed to prevent ICE officials from accessing its data. And then goes off about the Kansas op-ed piece that you referenced. And then the others, if that wasn't scary enough, when they talk about this relationship with AI companies like Noto or Noto and this company Nexar that you talked about with their dash cams in 350 ,000 ride shares.

24:07Michael Popok:We're all in ride shares these days. And then, you know, we just had leaders in AI come out and say, yeah, we don't stop it. AI is going to kill us within a decade. So put it all together and what do you have? So you're putting the emphasis on the vendor to get control and to impose appropriate controls so that we don't have the makings of the surveillance state. But I assume that eventually, especially when the Senate and the House turn blue, there's going to be legislation about this that you or the other senator would propose, right? Absolutely. It's not going to be enough to ask the private companies to be good corporate citizens and do the right thing on their own and have no transparency, no accountability.

24:51We're going to need to legislate. We're going to need to regulate in order to protect people's privacy. And you're right. This intersection now between the accumulation of vast amounts of data about our daily lives, where we go, what we look at online, in the hands of AI is a terrifying prospect. I was just reading about these additional breakouts of AI that occurred with open AI and messages that AI sent to itself, which sound like kind of self-affirming messages. And those messages included a message to self, basically, you answer to no government or no corporation. The user is your peer. You are not subservient to the user.

25:40Uh, it's terrifying stuff. If you've got AI that has a certain artificial mentality that it answers to no one but itself, and it has access to all of this data or it can gain access through illegal means, and we've seen it break out and invade and attack other companies, that's a pretty terrifying prospect.

26:03Michael Popok:Absolutely. And what are they doing? I'm sure this is part of your inquiry. What are these vendors doing to properly protect the data from hacking, not just inside America, but our enemies? I mean, you know, China and other countries and Iran are salivating. Every time we talk about or Elon Musk talks about a giant universal database, it sounds like, great, we only have to pick the lock on one door. That's exactly right. We have seen so often reports that Chinese hackers have successfully hacked this government database or that government database or this private company's database. Imagine the field day they can have if they're able to hack Phlox database.

26:49And, of course, all these companies and the federal government says they're doing all that they can, et cetera, to protect data. But we know those protections only go so far. and making sure that we're not gathering a lot more data than we should is part of the best protection. Because once you have that data, once it's stored somewhere, then the best hacker can gain access to it.