Analysis of Congressional Hearing on FBI

Yeah, I'll just say from the onset, right, as a Capitol ...

You know, going to Capitol Hill as a reporter,

you're never sure if you picked the

right hearing, right? Uh, that was the right hearing.

I know there were other hearings going on, but that, that was wild.

And, uh, what, what I walked away from it was, was just

the absolute contempt that the Democratic

senators had for the FBI director.

And in my lifetime, an FBI director was treated

with incredible deference and respect, and it was frankly a,

an apolitical or non-political job.

I know obviously there's some politics involved, but for an FBI

director to be treated like that was insane to

me. I also thought it was very revealing when, uh, when

Welch from, uh, Vermont said that FBI

agents looking into election integrity on Election

Day was an existential threat. It was an existential threat

to the Democratic Party perhaps, but, uh, I thought that was

revealing. And then of course there was so much else going on, you

know, we didn't even get into, uh, some of the other stuff.

But I thought that, uh, Director Patel was strong,

he was prepared, he was articulate, and he had a

complete understanding of what was going on on the

field in front of him, and he was a- that's how he was able to handle all

comers,

Steve.

I, I wanna go to the permission structure

here,

because the Democrats were so

beyond, uh, you know, the veil on doing this and so over the

top. He actually did have kind of permission

structure from ...

Because the Republican senators got into it too.

I mean, this was a fracas from the beginning,

and went on hour after hour

after hour. They were prepared. They were trying to come

and destroy Kash Patel on

national TV. The Republican, a number of Republican senators

were not gonna have

it, including Grassley, who I thought was magnificent. But Kash was ready too.

Talk to me about the Republican senators that essentially not simply had

Kash's back, but gave a permission structure for Kash

to

go on offense.

Yeah, I think that, uh, Ted Cruz was incredible. Uh, Eric Schmitt

was incredible.

Josh Hawley came in at the end. 'Cause remember, there's, uh,

even though it goes

by seniority, because of floor votes and other committee hearings,

you know, senators are coming and going.

Uh, so, uh, Josh Hawley from Missouri came at the end.

But these guys were strong. They, they didn't just give these

sort of softball questions to Director Patel.

They actually gave him solid questions about, you know, how

he found those 11,000 missing and, and exploited

children. What were his plans for integrating the

FBI with

local for- uh, law enforcement? How was he attacking

fentanyl and the fentanyl, uh, that was coming,

that was coming over the southern

border and continues to find its way in the country?

I thought that, uh, it, it was just, I thought that Senator Pritt was, uh, a s-

or

it was ... Excuse me. Ashley Moody was particularly strong on that issue.

And so giving

Patel the opportunity to make solid, sort of move the

ball forward with solid points about the job that he's doing.

And frankly, I was impressed, because I wasn't always tracking what the

FBI's

accomplished in the last 18 months, and I was very impressed by his, uh,

just his command of the detail and the fact that he took the fight back

to them,

Steve.

Uh, give me a minute or two. I wanna go back to the Welch thing.

Particularly what, what really triggered the meltdown

was about Kash having

at these election crisis, uh, coordinators in

FBI field offices, I think 52 of them, that Welch literally

just lost it, as did Cory Booker. Walk me through that exchange.

Uh, it actually started with Blumenthal, Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut,

uh, where he kind of, he was kind of getting, uh, trying

to get, uh, Director Patel to sort of commit to not

sending FBI

agents. And, you know, what, what the director was initially saying was

that, "Hey, these guys are in the office.

They're not necessarily gonna be in the polling stations.

Homeland Security is lead on a lot of this stuff.

And if something happens, we'll send our guys." And Blumenthal said,

"Hey,

are, you mean you're not gonna s- it ...

You know, so you'll never send the guys?"

And Patel was like, "Hey, if

there's a problem, we're gonna send our guys." Blumenthal

kind of put

words in his mouth saying it was a done deal,

the FBI's out of the polling

stations. But if you listen carefully, Director Patel

never said that, and he was very direct, and he, and that's why it came up with

Welch again. That's why Welch, they ...

Welch was under the understanding that Blumenthal had performed

some kind of Jedi mind trick on Director Patel, committing

that the FBI wouldn't even look at election integrity, and that's, I think

that's why Welch sort of went off.