Senate confirms Kash Patel as FBI director. California’s Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla protest
Kash Patel, says Sen. Alex Padilla, has called FBI agents gangsters. Patel has promoted unfounded conspiracy theories. And once in office, “Americans will be less safe.”
Sen. Adam Schiff has identical views, calling Patel “patently unfit for that office or any other.”
Republican senators thought otherwise and Thursday confirmed Patel as FBI director by a 51-49 vote largely along party lines. All 47 senators who caucus with Democrats voted against Patel. Among Republicans, Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, voted no. All other GOP senators backed Patel.
California’s Padilla and Schiff not only voted no — hardly an unusual verdict from them for a Trump administration appointee — but they were particularly adamant about Patel.
Their last stand came in bitter Washington early morning cold Thursday when they joined other Senate Democrats in front of the FBI headquarters to protest the choice of Patel.
“This political hack does not deserve to be in this building,” said Schiff.
“Only in this year 2025 when President Trump basically has the Republican Party in a headlock can an extreme nominee like Kash Patel be put forward,” Padilla added.
Padilla and Schiff are members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, a 22-member panel that examines whether nominees for top Justice Department posts, as well as judgeships, are qualified.
Partisan tension is common, but rarely does it spill into the sort of vitriol Patel stoked.
Soon after Donald Trump nominated Patel in late November, Padilla said “Kash Patel has repeatedly promoted conspiracy theories about a hostile ‘deep-state’ within the very agency he’s been nominated to lead.
“His intent to gut the FBI by removing senior officials and shuttering its headquarters in Washington, D.C., would have severe consequences for our national security,” Padilla said.
Republicans for Patel
Republicans have countered that Democrats had eroded trust in the FBI.
“They claim Mr. Patel wants to weaponize government. That is blatantly false,” said Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyoming. “It was Democrats who turned the FBI into a political attack dog against their political opponents.”
Patel has held top positions at the Pentagon, House Intelligence Committee and the Director of National Intelligence.
In 2023, he wrote “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” and argued career government employees were part of a “deep state,” a phrase used by some conservatives to describe career officials who thwart the right’s plans.
In his book, Patel listed 60 people he called “members of the executive branch deep state,” including former Trump administration Attorney General William Barr and former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton, both of whom served during Trump’s first term.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, the leading Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, warned that Patel would move to rid the FBI of longtime career employees.
“It is unacceptable for a nominee with no current role in government, much less at the FBI, to personally direct unjustified and potentially illegal adverse employment actions against senior career FBI leadership and other dedicated, nonpartisan law enforcement officers,” Durbin wrote in a letter to the inspector general of the Justice Department.
Patel labeled Schiff as one of Washington’s “corrupt actors of the first order.” Schiff, a Los Angeles area congressman for 24 years before being elected to the Senate last fall, was House Intelligence Committee chairman from 2019-23 and its top Democrat for four years before that. Patel was a top GOP committee staff member for part of that time.
Schiff was the top prosecutor in the 2020 impeachment of Trump. Republicans were sharply critical of him and his tough style.
The Republican-led House censured Schiff in 2023 on a party-line vote, saying he misled the public about links between Trump’s campaign and Russia. Schiff said the allegations were “false and defamatory.”
An angry Padilla
Padilla has been feisty and combative toward Patel as well, though he has been less of a publicly noticed figure.
At Patel’s Jan. 30 Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, Padilla lamented how “ I can’t help but identify the pattern of Mr. Patel calling FBI leadership corrupt, labeling agents as gangsters, accusing them of being part of a criminal ‘deep state’ conspiracy.”
He cited other Patel views, calling them “inconsistent with the role of FBI director, a position that demands independence, professionalism, and unwavering commitment to the rule of law.”
Republicans, who control 53 of the Senate’s 100 seats, were largely unmoved by any of these arguments.
“Mr. Patel’s leadership will not be business as usual at the FBI, as it has been in previous administrations when the FBI — the people on the seventh floor, not the local agents — were used for political weaponization,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said during the Patel debate.
In the days before the final vote, Padilla persisted. He posted a 45-second plea on the social media platform X.
“Why did I vote against Kash Patel? He is completely unfit for this role,” Padilla said.
In recent decades, the FBI director’s job includes remaining independent from politics. That’s why they’re supposed to serve 10-year terms. Patel is replacing Christopher Wray, who Trump appointed in 2017 and remained through Democrat Joe Biden’s presidency.
During Wray’s time, the FBI was accused by conservatives as acting against Trump. He and his supporters are highly critical of the 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago home, where the agency sought documents that officials believed he had taken from the White House.
Barrasso countered that too often the FBI was used by the Biden administration as a political tool. Patel, the senator said, “saw how the power of the FBI could be abused.”
Padilla in his X talk cited Trump’s recent Justice appointments, sharply disagreeing with Republicans.
“These are people who are far from independent. They claim to want to depoliticize the FBI when their history and their track records show that they’re going to be doing the exact opposite and already are,” he said.
So why does Patel, like all other Trump nominees so far, get confirmed with solid Republican support?
“I think Trump and his MAGA empathizers have successfully intimidated any opposition to any of the nominations, and it has just melted away,”said Schiff. “I cannot believe my colleagues don’t see his patent unfitness for the office.”
This story was originally published February 20, 2025 at 11:34 AM with the headline "Senate confirms Kash Patel as FBI director. California’s Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla protest."
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