Patel gets GOP embrace as FBI pick, Gabbard faces bipartisan doubt in spy job hearing

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In a pair of confirmation hearings Thursday (Jan. 30) for roles overseeing American intelligence and law enforcement agencies, Tulsi Gabbard faced bipartisan skepticism of her suitability to serve as President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, while Kash Patel, the nominee for FBI director, appeared to have the support he will need to advance despite vocal opposition from Democrats.

Gabbard and Patel, who appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee, respectively, faced questions about their judgment and qualifications for two key national security positions, and about their loyalty to Trump.

Senators repeatedly pressured Gabbard to label Edward Snowden a “traitor” for exposing sensitive U.S. surveillance programs more than a decade ago. She affirmed that Snowden “broke the law” but declined multiple invitations – exhortations by the end – to condemn the former National Security Agency contractor in harsher terms. Instead, she credited him with exposing “egregious, illegal and unconstitutional programs that are happening within our government.”

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Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colorado) raised his voice as he demanded that Gabbard answer “yes or no, is Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America?”

When she sought to assure him that she understood “how critical our national security is,” Bennet replied, “Apparently you don’t.”

Some Republicans used a lighter touch but appeared no less exasperated.

Sen. Todd Young (R-Indiana) cocked his head and frowned after failing to get the nominee to agree that Snowden had undermined U.S. national security. “It’s notable you didn’t say yes,” he told Gabbard, all but pleading with her to make her nomination more palatable to the intelligence workforce that overwhelmingly rejects the characterization of Snowden as a whistleblower and views him instead as a rogue criminal.

In 2020, Gabbard introduced legislation in the House of Representatives that would have dropped all charges against Snowden.

“I think it would befit you and be helpful to the way you are perceived by members of the intelligence community if you would at least acknowledge,” Young told her, that Snowden “harmed national security.”

Gabbard, 43, is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve and a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who broke ranks and joined the GOP last year. Patel, 44, is a former federal prosecutor, congressional aide and national security official who ingratiated himself with Trump by working to expose alleged wrongdoing in the polarizing probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Republicans hailed Patel as a reformer, recasting his relative inexperience and record of partisan point-scoring as assets. They spent much of the hearing relitigating a long list of complaints against a bureau they have accused of unfairly targeting conservatives.

“Mr. Patel has precisely the qualifications we need at this time when the FBI is not being respected by our public,” said the judiciary panel’s chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). “In my time, I’ve never seen our law enforcement and intelligence community institutions so badly infected with political decision-making.”

Both nominees have disparaged the agencies they now seek to lead.

Gabbard has questioned U.S. intelligence assessments of major foreign policy challenges, including atrocities perpetrated by deposed Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and accused the intelligence community of anti-Trump bias. In her opening statement, she echoed one of Trump’s enduring grievances in condemning the 51 former national security officials who signed a 2020 letter suggesting that the dissemination of material from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden bore the hallmarks of a “Russian information operation.”

Patel, for his part, has warned of a vast “deep state” plotting against the president, issuing bombastic pledges to reform the agency that have included shutting down FBI headquarters on his first day on the job. In his opening statement, he faulted the agency for the erosion of trust in its operations, saying only 40 percent of Americans have faith in the FBI.

Each nominee struck some conciliatory notes.

Gabbard affirmed that Russia was to blame for the war it initiated in Ukraine in 2022 and acknowledged that Assad had used poison gas against his own people. She had previously suggested that chemical weapons attacks in Syria may have been staged by opposition forces and argued that Russia’s onslaught arose from Western refusal to acknowledge Russia’s “legitimate security concerns.”

While seeking to reassure lawmakers that her views fell within the mainstream, Gabbard hit back at suggestions that her skepticism of Washington consensus represented disloyalty to the country. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) told her, “I want to make certain that in no way does Russia get a pass in either your mind or your heart, or in any policy recommendation you would make or not make.”

Gabbard replied that she was “offended by the question because my sole focus, commitment and responsibility is about our own nation.”

Patel, meanwhile, broke with Trump’s sweeping grants of clemency related to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, saying he did “not agree with the commutation of any sentence of any individual who committed violence against law enforcement.”

As for his own actions and utterances, he sought to downplay incendiary opinions aired on right-wing podcasts and claim that they were taken out of context. He maintained that the long list of political foes appended to his book “Government Gangsters” had been misinterpreted. “It’s not an enemies list,” Patel said.

“There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken by the FBI,” he said.

Patel disavowed agreement, expressed in a 2022 podcast interview, with the extremist pro-Trump ideology QAnon, and he told senators he was not familiar with the records of many of the rioters who breached the Capitol four years ago, including those who appeared on a song he helped promote called “Justice for All” recorded by defendants calling themselves the J6 Prison Choir.

He also refused to discuss grand jury testimony he gave in 2022 about Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents. He falsely maintained that grand jury rules barred him from doing so. The Washington Post has reported that Patel at first invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and only agreed to testify after the Justice Department granted him immunity from prosecution.

Patel sidestepped efforts to get him to commit not to fire agents who had worked on former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations of Trump. Both nominees evaded questions about how they would act if given illegal or improper orders by the president.

Asked by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) whether she would comply with an order by Trump to withhold appropriated funds from the intelligence community’s inspector general, Gabbard said she didn’t “believe for a second President Trump would ask me to do something that would break the law.” Patel would not commit to resigning if forced to open an investigation into a political adversary at Trump’s direction, pledging simply that he would follow the law.

The two nominees diverged on a key privacy question: whether a warrant should be required to search a U.S. citizen’s communications swept up in intelligence collection on foreigners located abroad. Gabbard said yes, Patel no.

Gabbard has shifted her stance on the underlying intelligence program, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which she once sought to repeal. Following her selection as Trump’s DNI, she changed her tune, saying she recognized its importance to U.S. intelligence capabilities.

Still, she held fast to the need for a warrant requirement.

“Warrants should generally be required” before any agency undertakes a query of a U.S. citizen’s communications, Gabbard wrote in remarks submitted before the hearing. That insistence appeared to trouble Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who quizzed her on whether a warrant requirement was practical.

Patel’s position was more absolute. He told members of the Judiciary Committee that a warrant was unfeasible given the need to “go through that information in real time,” prompting an outcry from privacy advocates.

Both nominees spoke of streamlining or rightsizing their sprawling agencies.

Patel said he would seek to redeploy some of the 7,000 employees at the FBI’s D.C. headquarters to investigate cases in the field. He also said he’d be open to moving the bureau’s central office to a facility in Alabama, a plan that has previously been floated by some FBI officials.

Gabbard told the intelligence panel that she planned to brief the president personally on the daily summary of intelligence presented to the commander in chief.

In that role, Gabbard vowed to “make sure that the truth is reported, whether that truth is convenient or not.”

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