dpToday’s Senate hearing on the oversight of the FBI will be starting in less than an hour, at 9 a.m. ET. FBI Director Kash Patel will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of the hearing.
Patel was confirmed as FBI director in February 2025, in a 51 to 49 Senate vote.
During his Senate confirmation hearing, Patel said there would be “no politicization” at the FBI and “no retributive actions.” He also accused Democrats of cherry-picking excerpts of old comments.
Patel, a former public defender, was raised Hindu by his immigrant parents, according to his 2023 book, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy.”
He wrote that he grew up apolitical but became more right-wing during his time at the University of Richmond.
Patel spent stints in the public defender’s office in Miami-Dade County and in the Southern District of Florida before going on to work as a federal prosecutor in the National Security Division of the DOJ, according to his book.
He has also previously heavily criticized the FBI in the past.
In a 2024 podcast interview, before he became its director, he called for the agency’s headquarters in Washington, DC, to be dismantled and turned into a “museum of the deep state.”
CNN’s Clare Foran, Morgan Rimmer and Jack Forrest contributed to this reporting.
