Kash Patel Snaps Back, Shuts Down Dick Durbin’s ‘Gotcha’ Question On J6
FBI director nominee Kash Patel may be sharing Washington, D.C.’s attention with a slew of other Trump nominees being grilled Thursday morning, but that didn’t stop him from going viral for slapping down a “gotcha” question lobbed by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL).
The senior Illinois senator and member of Democratic leadership attempted to bait Patel into asking if America is “safer” following President Donald Trump’s decision to pardon all 1,600 J6 defendants, including those charged and convicted of inflicting violence that day.
Have they “been given an opportunity to come out of serving their sentences and live in our communities again?” Durbin, the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, asked Patel in a heated exchange.
The Trump nominee fired back, suggesting Durbin and Democratic senators stood by silently as former President Joe Biden pardoned a man guilty of killing federal agents.
“I’ve advocated for imprisoning those that cause harm to our law enforcement and civilian communities,” said Patel. “I also believe America is not safer because of President Biden’s commutation of a man who murdered two FBI agents. Agent Coler and Williams’ families deserve better than to have the man that at point-blank range fired a shotgun into their heads and murdered them released from prison. So it goes both ways.”
Durbin disregarded the lesson in hypocrisy, excusing the murderer Leonard Pelletier for his lengthy sentence served and age.
“Leonard Pelletier was imprisoned for 45 years. He’s 80 years old, and he was sentenced to home confinement. So he’s not free as you might have suggested.”
Patel didn’t let the comment go.
“He killed two FBI agents,” he repeated.
Democrats entered Thursday’s hearing with a list of questions they were eager to ask Patel, including “his peddling of so-called vaccine detoxification supplements” and “a video reposted by Patel of an AI-generated version of himself taking a chainsaw to the likenesses of [Sen. Adam] Schiff and former Rep. Liz Cheney,” Politico reported.
Other questions previewed by the press were related to Patel’s founding and management of a charity dedicated to protecting whistleblowers. Nonprofit forms disclosed that the Kash Foundation raised $1.4 million in its first two years but gave less than 20 percent of the sum back to the defendants.
Regardless, Senate Republicans believe the former national intelligence advisor is on firmer footing than Pete Hegseth was, an outcome Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) attributed to Patel’s charm offensive and ability to speak to the job of FBI director.
“There’s a social media, national media persona of who Kash is and then there’s who he actually is,” Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) told the Washington Post. “There’s this cartoon of him that’s out there, that he’s this mean, hateful, intense individual that when you meet him you think, ‘Where is that person that’s being described?’”
One tangible example of Patel’s deeper well of support is Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), a fair-weather ally to Hegseth who has been downright jovial about Patel’s nomination. Fox News scooped that Tillis brought bingo cards to the Judiciary Committee hearing that offered opportunities to jot down some of Democrats’ cliché attacks on Patel if they come up, including the terms “Deep State,” “enemies list,” and Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
