Kash Patel’s Hearing, Expected To Produce Fireworks, Was Mostly A Dud

President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FBI appeared to consolidate Republican support Thursday, swatting aside repeated attacks by Democrats who struggled to articulate a cohesive case against a nominee who has sent shockwaves through law enforcement circles.

There was building anticipation for Kash Patel’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee after Democrats used their time a few weeks ago to question attorney general nominee Pam Bondi not about her own record but Patel’s. Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) opened Patel’s hearing by acknowledging the day’s events could be “controversial.”

A longtime Trump loyalist, Patel has a lengthy record of comments suggesting he would use his office to go after Trump’s political adversaries and root out the “Deep State.” Yet on Thursday, Democrats chose to frequently highlight his collaboration with a group of violent Jan. 6 offenders in recording a rendition of the National Anthem. Efforts to create viral moments by casting Patel as an extremist fell flat and did little to steer Republican questions in a more provocative direction.

It offered a stark split-screen with the other high-stakes confirmation hearings happening elsewhere throughout the day, where members of both parties asked sharp policy questions of Trump’s selections to lead the intelligence community and the Department of Health and Human Services, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., respectively. Those hearings left little question that Gabbard’s and Kennedy’s nominations were still in limbo in a narrowly-divided Republican majority.

Patel’s hearing appears to have done nothing to meaningfully chip away at Republican support. And by the end, even one of the panel’s Democrats said he anticipated Patel would be confirmed.

“I suspect it will be Mr. Patel,” Sen. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat and a member of the Judiciary Committee, conceded.

Assuming the committee will vote to report Patel’s nomination to the full Senate, there’s still a chance Patel will face hurdles with GOP lawmakers who don’t sit on Judiciary. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski and former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky voted to oppose Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, forcing Vice President JD Vance to break a 50-50 tie. Their views on Patel, however, remain publicly unarticulated.

Democrats spent a significant portion of the hearing grilling Patel over his help in producing a song by the “J6 Prison Choir” — a group of the most violent members of the mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

They pressed him repeatedly to articulate his involvement in producing the song, which included a Trump voiceover, and pressed him about whether its proceeds went to the felons’ legal aid fund and whether he viewed the participants as “political prisoners,” as one of his Truth Social posts suggested. Patel claimed to have no knowledge of which defendants participated in the choir and said the money raised was steered to the families of “nonviolent” Jan. 6 offenders.

Democrats asked about the choir repeatedly, sometimes appearing unaware that colleagues had asked precisely the same question just minutes earlier. At one point, ranking member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) acknowledged that his party’s focus on the choir “may sound a little silly to the audience here,” but still went on to explain why Democrats viewed it as an important test of whether Patel was qualified to lead the FBI.

“Why are we so concerned about this choir singing a song?” Durbin said to Patel. “The question is, who are you going to care about?”

By the time Sen. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, questioned the nominee over his involvement in the J6 Choir’s song release, the back-and-forth devolved into an argument over the definition of the word “we.”

Democrats chose not to follow up after Patel said he rejected far-right “QAnon” conspiracy theories, despite the fact that he once said he agreed with “a lot” of the movement. And it wasn’t until after the lunch break that any Democratic senator asked about Patel’s decision to plead the 5th during special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation that led to Trump’s indictment over his mishandling of classified documents. Prosecutors would later give Patel immunity to compel his testimony before a grand jury.

“What are you hiding from Congress?” Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, asked.

In one significant break from Trump, Patel acknowledged — albeit somewhat indirectly — that he disagreed with the president’s decision to pardon violent Jan. 6 offenders, saying he believed all of those who attacked police officers should face imprisonment.

This response actually seemed to win over one Republican who is being closely watched for defections on contentious Trump nominees across-the-board: Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who is up for reelection in 2026. Tillis, who called the Capitol rioters “thugs,” said he believed Patel would have helped Trump reach a different conclusion in his decision to pardon the participants in the Capitol riot.

Democratic efforts to paint Patel as an out-of-touch extremist might also have prompted Republicans to double down in their support for the nominee.

“It is ludicrous, but sadly predictable that Democrats are endeavoring to tarnish you, to paint a false caricature based on innuendo and smoke,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican.

Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.