The Situation: The FBI Director Can’t Be A Liar

The Situation on Monday inquired into the capacity of the courts to handle our tempestuous day.

Today we need to return to the subject of Kash Patel.

When we last considered the subject of President Trump’s nominee to run the FBI, I was questioning his veracity before the Senate Judiciary Committee. I was not, I want to emphasize once again, “accusing him of perjury. I am accusing him, rather, of showing a lack of candor in [his confirmation] hearing.” 

Yesterday, in a letter to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) did accuse Patel of perjury—or all but accused him of it. “I have received highly credible information from multiple sources that Kash Patel has been personally directing the ongoing purge of career civil servants at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),” he wrote. Patel is not yet confirmed and has no business directing firings at the FBI. Yet Durbin says he has learned that Patel is secretly directing things through White House aide Stephen Miller.

This is a problem because a private citizen should not be running the FBI. But Patel was also asked about his involvement in ongoing personnel actions at his hearing. Writes Durbin:

If these allegations are true, Mr. Patel may have perjured himself before the Senate Judiciary Committee. During his confirmation hearing on January 30, Senator Booker asked Mr. Patel: “Are you aware of any plans or discussions to punish in any way, including termination, FBI agents or personnel associated with Trump investigations? Yes or no.” Mr. Patel answered that he was “not aware of that.” Mr. Patel continued: “I don’t know what’s going on right now over there, but I’m committed to you, Senator, and your colleagues that I will honor the internal review process of the FBI.”

Patel’s testimony on this subject was actually not one of the issues about which I questioned his truthfulness. While I noted the patently disingenuous manner in which he answered questions about his prior statements on a number of issues, his non-credible tale about Trump’s preparations for Jan. 6, his false claims about his promotion of QAnon and his prior suggestions that the FBI had planned Jan. 6, and any number of others matters, I didn’t question his professions of ignorance about the FBI purge, which began literally hours after his hearing.

The reason? Candidly, I assumed the purge was happening prior to his confirmation precisely to protect him from knowledge about or involvement in it. I assumed his ignorance was calculated, but I assumed it was probably real.

Far from it, alleges Durbin:

On January 29, 2025, Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll and Acting FBI Deputy Director Robert Kissane scheduled a meeting where it was relayed that a group of Executive Assistant Directors (EAD) and other supervisors must resign or be fired. The [Director’s Advisory Team] was in possession of a written list that identified certain officials and was seen by multiple FBI leaders. Their understanding of the list was that “a lot of names were people in the crosshairs.” This meeting had been prompted by a meeting earlier that day between Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI leadership.
Contemporaneous notes from that morning meeting read: “KP wants movement at FBI, reciprocal actions for DOJ.” Acting Deputy Attorney General Bove told meeting attendees that he received multiple calls from Stephen Miller the night before. Mr. Miller was pressuring him because Mr. Patel wanted the FBI to remove targeted employees faster, as DOJ had already done with prosecutors. According to my sources, Mr. Patel is receiving information from within the FBI from a member of the [FBI director’s advisory team (DAT)]. Mr. Patel then provides direction to Mr. Miller, who relays it to Acting Deputy Attorney General Bove. Each DAT member had represented to one or more officials at the Bureau at some point before January 30 that they had been in direct contact with Mr. Patel. 

The Patel hearing, at which he professed ignorance of “what’s going on over there right now” took place the following day.

To be clear, I do not know whether Durbin’s information is true or not. In my view, as I argued before these allegations arose, Patel showed a lack of candor that should preclude his confirmation even if Durbin has this specific matter all wrong. That said, voting to confirm the man when the committee’s ranking member has made a specific allegation of misconduct against him, and an allegation as well that he lied before the committee about that misconduct, should be unthinkable.

At a minimum, a reasonably functioning committee would need to get Patel under oath responding to the facts Durbin has alleged.

To wit, Patel needs to be asked the following questions: 

• Have you personally directed or consulted about, or were you aware of by non-public means, any employment actions directed at civil servants at the FBI?
• Have you in any fashion directed or suggested actions to be taken by bureau employees, including but not limited to employment actions, through Stephen Miller, Emil Bove, or any member of the DAT?
• Do you know why notes taken at a Jan. 29 meeting concerning FBI firings would read: “KP wants movement at FBI, reciprocal actions for DOJ”?
• Do you know why Bove told attendees at a meeting that day that Miller was pressuring him to take personnel actions because you wanted the FBI to move fast against targeted FBI agents? 
• Have you received information from within the FBI from any member of the DAT?
• Have you provided any information received from inside the FBI to Miller?
• Do you wish to revise your testimony of Jan. 30 that you were at that time ignorant of any personnel actions taking place at the FBI?
  

In addition, DAT members should be asked individually about whether they have been in touch with Patel about personnel and FBI management matters and about the nature of any such contacts.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote tomorrow on Patel’s nomination. So far, I see no evidence that this latest set of allegations even constitutes a bump in the road to his confirmation. 

It’s not surprising, really. If members of the committee minded being lied to, there was enough reason to worry about that before Durbin’s letter to have slowed things down. And if they don’t mind being misled about all those other things, why should they mind being misled about this?

But Durbin’s letter creates a small problem for Patel that Republican senators might want to spend a moment thinking about: It creates a record that, if Durbin’s facts are right, will not—as the saying goes—stay in Vegas.

There will come a time when one or more of the fired FBI agents is going to sue over their dismissals. And when they do so, they are going to be able to allege, based on this letter, that Patel directed their dismissals and then lied about it under oath to the Senate.

And some federal judge, who is not going to be as pliant as the nonagenarian Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, is going to preside over that case. And he or she is going to allow the plaintiffs discovery on this true-or-false factual claim. The plaintiffs are going to be able to depose members of the DAT, even if the Judiciary Committee doesn’t bother to do due diligence on Durbin’s claims. And they are going to depose Emil Bove and Stephen Miller. And they are going to be able to depose Patel himself, even if the committee doesn’t bother asking him the questions above. 

And when that happens, the story is going to come out—to the discredit of the entire FBI before the courts and to the well-deserved embarrassment of very foolish senators who raced to vote on a plainly inappropriate nominee knowing there were many questions, including this one, about his veracity before the Senate.

If the majority wants to vote now without looking into this matter, that’s fine; that’s their prerogative. But if it doesn’t get aired now in the Senate, this question will get aired later in the courts. There is no way the genie of Patel’s candor is going back in the bottle.

The Situation continues tomorrow.