LIVE: Senate Votes on Nomination of Kash Patel as FBI Director

An unprecedented, terrible situation. With that, I yield the floor. Mr. President. Senator from Connecticut is recognized. Thank you, Mr. President. I want to begin where my wonderful friend and colleague, Senator Whitehouse of Rhode Island, ended in opposing the nomination of Cash Patel to be director of the FBI. I served as United States Attorney as well, and I know firsthand what an investigation and a prosecution can do to an individual's life, even without a conviction. I used to tell my staff, the most important thing we decide to do is to start an investigation or bring charges. Because that person will be under a magnifying glass, having to defend himself, even if no charges are brought, and to defend himself, even if there's no conviction. The charges themselves can do irreparable harm to a person's reputation, his finances, his family, his life. We entrust these positions, investigative and prosecutorial, to people who deserve the credibility and reliance that we give them. So the position of director of the FBI or Attorney General of the United States or prosecutors and investigators who work for them are not ordinary positions. Even potentially in certain situations, they are more powerful than a member of the United States Cabinet in the impact they can have on individual lives. For the ordinary nominee, any of the defects in character or experience or performance in past jobs would have been disqualifying. We live in a time that is not ordinary. And this nominee is not normal. I've never seen any nominee to a position of significant responsibility that has as many disqualifying factors in his or her background. But I think that one comment about him that strikes me whenever I read it is the full quote from former National Security Advisor John Bolton. Part of that quote has been cited by previous speakers. I want to read the whole quote. Cash Patel's conduct in Mr. Trump's first term and thereafter indicates that as FBI director he would operate according to secret police chief Lavrenty Beria's reported comment to Joseph Stalin, show me the man and I'll show you the crime. Now very few people remember secret police chief Beria and the terror he caused in carrying out Joseph Stalin's edicts to destroy people's lives, to execute them, to eliminate their families. But the mantra of Beria and Stalin, show me the man and I'll show you the crime, make up the crime to fit the man and we will eliminate him. We're talking here about a nominee who has an enemies list. He calls it something different. He calls it government gangsters. And he's on a manhunt for them. Manhunt is his word. You can use different words but the point here is he is on a mission to use the powers of this office in Donald Trump's name for political retribution against his enemies, against Trump's enemies, against MAGA's opponents. To use these institutions for political retribution is the height of irresponsibility. Even to hint at it ought to be disqualifying and he has made it explicit in his past writings and his statements and speeches, not just a couple of times. It is a theme that runs through his public comments that eliminating enemies through the use of prosecution is not only acceptable but it's desirable. The FBI is a very special agency. 38,000 civil servants including 13,000 special agents who go after international and domestic terrorism, cyber criminal syndicates, foreign espionage, organized criminal enterprises including drug cartels, child sexual exploitation and human trafficking and many other crimes that affect our lives and the lives of everyday Americans across the country. All different backgrounds, races, religions can be victims of crime that the FBI investigates and the FBI agents put their lives on the line because pursuing these crimes often puts them at risk from bad guys who may not even know that they're shooting at an FBI agent but it's somebody pursuing them. They may not know that an FBI agent is operating undercover and they may be killing him and so the FBI's work is a dangerous business but it is for our good and our safety. The American people deserve an FBI leader who is worthy of them. The American people deserve a director of the FBI who will keep them safe and who will make that safety a priority. But in recent weeks the Trump administration has systematically weaponized and politicized both the FBI and the Department of Justice. On her very first day of office Attorney General Bondi created a quote, weaponization working group. Let me repeat that, weaponization working group. And specifically named targets to be investigated, Letitia James, Alvin Bragg, Jack Smith, all of them have led legitimate prosecutions and lawsuits against President Trump. There have been reports that prosecutors and FBI agents have been reassigned from drug trafficking to do immigration enforcement, from terrorism task forces to immigration enforcement. And the administration has issued allegedly unethical or illegal audit causing many top prosecutors to bravely resign rather than betray their oaths of office. We're talking about men and women who love their jobs in the Department of Justice and do them well and they have sacrificed those jobs because they were ordered to take action that was unethical or illegal in their view. We need now more than ever an FBI director who is trustworthy and devoted to the ideals and values of the Department of Justice and the Constitution above all. Anyone taking one of those jobs raises their right hand and swears an oath to the Constitution, not to the President, not to the Attorney General, not to any other official, it is to the Constitution. Cash Patel is not that person, not the person to have that immense responsibility, most especially at this moment. He lacks the judgment, he lacks the integrity, he lacks the character and competence to be FBI director. Cash Patel's contempt for those agents who put their lives on the line has been clear, he's called them, the FBI, one of the most cunning and powerful arms of the deep state. And there are now highly credible whistleblower reports that he may have directed the purging of senior leaders at the FBI as well as potentially a mass firing of career FBI officials. Those FBI officials who serve professionally with distinction, put their lives on the line, purged as a result of Cash Patel involving himself, in fact, in those decisions, even as under oath, in response to my question, he said, quote, all FBI employees will be protected against political retribution. All FBI employees will be protected against political retribution. Well, we stood in front of the FBI headquarters this morning. In that very building, there are individuals who will be fired because they took assignments. They didn't choose, they were assigned to criminal investigations that happened to involve Donald Trump, political retribution at its very height. And if he directed the purging of those FBI agents, contrary to the assurances he made to our committee at his nomination committee, Cash Patel was certainly less than truthful with us. I have not been without criticism of the FBI. None of us have been. No agency is perfect. But I am also betting that members of the FBI would say there's room for improvement in this agency. Cash Patel would slash and trash the FBI, not improve it. He would engage in political retribution, not constructive reform. He would weaponize the FBI with that enemies list. He may not say it's an enemies list. He may call them government gangsters. But that manhunt would involve political retribution. And he has conspiracy theories. He's trafficked in them. He said he agrees with a lot of what QAnon says. He engages in election denialism, refusing to say that President Biden won the 2020 election. He's even suggested that the FBI planned the January 6th attack on the Capitol. And he has glorified those rioters by calling them political prisoners and, in fact, aiding them in their defense. Even the rioters who attacked and assaulted police officers and did them grave injury and, in some instances, contributed to their deaths. He has joined them in song, producing the J6 Choir's recording. And he has refused to be honest when it really matters, pleading the Fifth Amendment in the case about Donald Trump's handling of classified documents and then denying us, or at least refusing to cooperate, in providing us with access to the testimony that he offered. The litany of questionable comments, actions by this nominee shows he lacks the character and competence for this job. I've talked about roughly half a dozen various different facts in his background, statements, comments, actions that would be individually disqualifying. Altogether, they paint a picture of someone who has no proper role anywhere near a law enforcement agency, let alone director of the FBI. I'm appalled that my Republican colleagues voted for him in committee, unanimously, on their side. I'm appalled that so few may vote against him on the floor today. But I am absolutely sure of this one thing. This vote will haunt anyone who votes for him. They will rue the day they did it. To my Republican colleagues, think about it. Think about what you will tell your constituents, more important, your family, maybe your grandchildren, about why you picked and voted for this person who will so completely and utterly disgrace this office and do such grave damage to our nation's justice system. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. President, I ask permission to speak up to 10 minutes. Without objection, Senator from Vermont is recognized. Thank you, Mr. President, and I thank my colleagues for joining me here today. I oppose Kesh Patel and believe he is the dangerously wrong choice to serve as the director of FBI. We all have great admiration for the FBI. The men and women there serve our nation, do hard work every day, and for decades they've served as a non-political agency that protects us and defends the rule of law. I believe that Mr. Patel is on a mission to wreck the FBI. It's his own words. He wants to turn the FBI building into a monument or museum to the deep state. You know, I believe that this country and Congress is in the midst of a slow-moving but rapidly accelerating constitutional crisis. This is real, and we can ignore it or see it. It began most visibly, of course, in January 6th, 2021, when two norms of this republic, the peaceful transfer of power and the renunciation of violence to affect the outcome of a vote count and certification, were breached, and where many members of the House and Senate also voted against certifying the election of the person chosen by the people in their own states. The president continues to say that the election was stolen, and he has coached his nominees to embrace the big lie. Mr. President, the first month of the Trump administration has shown a contempt for the Constitution, an acceptance of lawlessness that is dangerous to the future of our republic. President Trump's election denialism was only an early sign of his disregard for the norms and requirements of the Constitution. Now empowered in a second term by a Congress and a judiciary which refused to assert their independence, Mr. Trump has enacted executive order after executive order to dismantle our institutions. He doesn't have the authority to do what he's doing. The federal funding freeze, clearly unconstitutional, invasion of the Article One power of the purse, shutting down agencies created by Congress without authority, revoking birthright citizenship, a constitutional provision that he asserts he can do by executive order, removing leaders of independent agencies created by Congress, clearly unlawful, firing inspectors general in violation of notice requirements created by Congress, unlawful, firing government employees who have civil service protections, clearly unlawful, and pushing, really, a quid pro quo order at the Department of Justice to drop charges against a corrupt mayor in New York so he'll accede to whatever the wishes are of the Trump administration regarding local enforcement. And that's only a short list. And we have reached a point where a federal judge has found that the White House defied his order to release billions of dollars in federal grants, marking the first time that a judge has expressly declared that the Trump administration is disobeying a judicial mandate. That is trouble. The country is headed into a situation where, in addition to acting without authority, the president and his enablers are indicting he will defy rulings from third branch of our government. Vice President Vance has made it very clear what his point of view is on judges. Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's, quote, legitimate powers. And if the courts don't like it, let them enforce it. Of course, under our Constitution, since Marbury versus Madison, the court is the final arbiter of what is legitimate or what is not. And the executive branch must enforce the laws as interpreted by the co-equal branch of government. Mr. President, it is my view that this administration is showing maximum contempt for core constitutional values, including, most importantly, the separation of powers. This is not about what the president's agenda is. This is about his disregard about the limits that apply to each branch of government. And we have a dilemma. There are many in Congress that are fully in support of President Trump's policies. That's his right to pursue them, any member's right to support them. But it has to be that we accept our unique responsibility, each of the 100 US senators, that we have to guarantee that in pursuit of those policies, it is done within constitutional boundaries. That is the glue that has held this country together through thick and thin for nearly 250 years. You know, this is not just talk about civic aspiration. It's a recognition that the separation of powers, that the system of checks and balances, we're custodians of that, each of us here, that the concept of the executive's ambition should be matched with the ambition of the legislature. That's what's held us together through the turmoil of our own history. We have fierce debates about important public policy matters. But what allows us to resolve them, despite intense disagreements, is staying within the guardrails of the Constitution. That process is being threatened directly and aggressively. The President's attack on our Constitution on January 6th has continued to this day. We've witnessed a renunciation of the decision that the American people made in the 2020 election by President Trump's nominees. Many of them who came before us, including Mr. Patel, were unable to simply say who won the 2020 election. They continued the stop the steal narrative even four years later. And now we have President Trump in his first month in office, acting in ways that continues to challenge the constitutional order. I'm voting against Mr. Patel primarily, but not exclusively, because he's clearly an instrument in that effort to continue eroding the precepts of the Constitution on separation of powers. And I urge all my fellow senators, Republican and Democrats, to embrace the responsibility we have to assert our responsibility and authority as a co-equal branch. This is a difficult time, particularly for many of my esteemed colleagues on the Republican side. You may support, as I mentioned, the policies of the President, but we've got to take a look at how he is going about trying to implement them. That really matters. We are all custodians of the constitutional order. I'm regarding what President Trump has been doing in his first month in office as an illegal rampage. It's a rampage of illegality. He's showing a contempt for Congress and a contempt for the United States judiciary. Mr. Patel has signed on to that agenda. He isn't just someone who will be forced to participate in the President's campaign of retribution. He's an active participant. He's got his enemies' list. We know this because his own words said what the FBI is, what was the FBI doing, planning January 6th for a year. No basis for that other than to set up the attack on the good men and women of the FBI. Mr. Patel is the one who created a list of deep state individuals. This is like Russia kind of stuff. Half of whom are Republicans in the so-called deep state. And he called it nothing more than a cabal of government gangsters and allies. This is the department he's gonna be leading, really. And he's the one who said thank you to President Trump for helping put so many government gangsters in their place. Mr. President, Mr. Patel is not the person to lead the FBI. And my hope is that all of us should consider what Mr. Patel will do. He's going to use the power of the FBI to go after all those in government, those in the media, and those across the country he doesn't agree with. He cannot serve as the next director of the FBI. I yield back. All post-closure time has expired. The question occurs on the nomination. Do I hear a sufficient second? There appears to be a sufficient second. The clerk will call the roll. Ms. Alsobrooks, Ms. Baldwin, Mr. Banks, Mr. Barrasso, Mr. Bennett, Mrs. Blackburn, Mr. Blumenthal, Mrs. Britt, Mr. Budd, Ms. Cantwell, Mrs. Capito, Mr. Cassidy, Ms. Collins, Mr. Coons, Mr. Cornyn, Ms. Cortez-Masto, Mr. Cotton, Mr. Kramer, Mr. Crapo, Mr. Cruz, Mr. Curtis, Mr. Daines, Ms. Duckworth, Mr. Durbin, Ms. Ernst, Mr. Fetterman, Mrs. Fisher, Mr. Gallego, Mrs. Gillibrand, Mr. Graham, Mr. Grassley, Mr. Haggerty, Ms. Hassan, Mr. Hawley, Mr. Heinrich, Mr. Hickenlooper, Ms. Hirono, Mr. Hoven, Mr. Husted, Mrs. Hyde-Smith, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Justice, Mr. Kane, Mr. Kelly, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Kim, Mr. King, Ms. Klobuchar, Mr. Lankford, Mr. Lee, Mr. Lujan, Ms. Lummis, Mr. Markey, Mr. Marshall, Mr. McConnell, Mr. McCormick, Mr. Merkley, Mrs. Moody, Mr. Moran, Mr. Moreno, Mr. Mullen, Ms. Murkowski, Mr. Murphy, Mrs. Murray, Mr. Ossoff, Mr. Padilla, Mr. Paul, Mr. Peters, Mr. Reed, Mr. Ricketts, Mr. Risch, Ms. Rosen, Mr. Rounds, Mr. Sanders, Mr. Schatz, Mr. Schiff, Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Schumer, Mr. Scott of Florida, Mr. Scott of South Carolina, Mrs. Shaheen, Mr. Sheehy, Ms. Locken, Ms. Smith, Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Thune, Mr. Tillis, Mr. Tuberville, Mr. Van Hollen, Mr. Warner, Mr. Warnock, Ms. Warren, Mr. Welch, Mr. Whitehouse, Mr. Wicker, Mr. Wyden, Mr. Young. Senators voting in the affirmative. Banks, Barrasso, Blackburn, Britt, Budd, Cassidy, Cotton, Ernst, Grassley, Haggerty, Hawley, Hyde-Smith, Kennedy, Moreno, Paul, Schmidt, Scott of Florida, Tillis and Young. Senators voting in the negative. Duckworth, Durbin, King, Lujan, Murkowski, Murphy, Padilla, Peters, Sanders, Warner and Welch. Ms. Locken, Ms. Locken, no. Mr. Sheehy, Mr. Sheehy, aye. Mr. Schatz, Mr. Schatz, no. Mrs. Moody, Mrs. Moody, aye. Mr. Crapo, Mr. Crapo, aye. Mr. Scott, Mr. Scott of South Carolina, aye. Ms. Rosen, Ms. Rosen, no. Mr. Tuberville, Mr. Tuberville, aye. Mr. Husted, Mr. Husted, aye. Mr. Johnson, Mr. Johnson, aye. Mr. Risch, Mr. Risch, aye. Mr. Kelly, Mr. Kelly, no. Mr. Ricketts, Mr. Ricketts, aye. Mr. Blumenthal, Mr. Blumenthal, no. Mr. Daines, Mr. Daines, aye. Mr. Justice, Mr. Justice, aye. Ms. Cantwell, Ms. Cantwell, no. Mr. Graham, Mr. Graham, aye. Ms. Collins, Ms. Collins, no. Mr. Marshall, Mr. Marshall, aye. Ms. Lummis, Ms. Lummis, aye. Mr. McCormick, Mr. McCormick, aye. Mr. Schumer, Mr. Schumer, no. Mrs. Gillibrand, Mrs. Gillibrand, no. Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Sullivan, aye. Mr. McConnell, Mr. McConnell, aye. Mr. Wyden, Mr. Wyden, no. Ms. Ossobrooks, Ms. Ossobrooks, no. Mr. Kramer, Mr. Kramer, aye. Ms. Blunt-Rochester, Ms. Blunt-Rochester, no. Mr. Kim, Mr. Kim, no. Mr. Merkley, Mr. Merkley, no. Mr. Lankford, Mr. Lankford, aye. Mr. Kane, Mr. Kane, no. Mr. Warnock, Mr. Warnock, no. Ms. Hirono, Ms. Hirono, no. Mr. Booker, Mr. Booker, no. Mrs. Murray, Mrs. Murray, no. Mr. Heinrich, Mr. Heinrich, no. Ms. Cortez-Masto, Ms. Cortez-Masto, no. Mr. Rounds, Mr. Rounds, aye. Mr. Moran, Mr. Moran, aye. Mr. Reed, Mr. Reed, no. Mr. Thune, Mr. Thune, aye. Mr. Cornyn, Mr. Cornyn, aye. Ms. Warren, Ms. Warren, no. Ms. Hassan, Ms. Hassan, no. Mr. Ossoff, Mr. Ossoff, no. Mr. Fetterman, Mr. Fetterman, no. Mrs. Smith, Ms. Smith, no. Mr. Van Hollen, Mr. Van Hollen, no. Mr. Markey, Mr. Markey, no. Mr. Coons, Mr. Coons, no. Ms. Baldwin, Ms. Baldwin, no. Mr. Hickenlooper, Mr. Hickenlooper, no. Mrs. Shaheen, Mrs. Shaheen, no. Mr. Bozeman, Mr. Bozeman, no. Mr. Bozeman, Mr. Bozeman, aye. Ms. Klobuchar, Ms. Klobuchar, no. Mr. Holvin, Mr. Holvin, aye. Mr. Schiff, Mr. Schiff, no. Mr. Bennett, Mr. Bennett, no. Mrs. Capito, Mrs. Capito, aye. Mr. Wicker, Mr. Wicker, aye. Mrs. Fisher, Mrs. Fisher, aye. Mr. Cruz, Mr. Cruz, aye. Mr. Mullen, Mr. Mullen, aye. Mr. Lee, Mr. Lee, aye. Mr. Gallego, Mr. Gallego, no. Mr. Curtis, Mr. Curtis, aye. Mr. Whitehouse, Mr. Whitehouse, no. The yeas are 51. The nays are 49. The confirmation is confirmed. Under the previous order, the motion to reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table, and the President will be immediately notified of the Senate's actions.