California’s U.S. senators agree: FBI nominee Patel is a conspiracy theorist
California Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff agree: President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the FBI is a conspiracy theorist.
Both senators are currently members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will hold confirmation hearings on Kash Patel’s bid to head the agency. When asked their views on Patel, they independently had the same quick response.
“Initially, I’m very skeptical,” Padilla told The Bee. Asked why, the California Democrat asked sarcastically, “A conspiracy theorist? Really?”
Schiff, interviewed shortly afterward by The Bee, has known Patel for years.
“This is someone profoundly unqualified and is a terrible choice. He’s a conspiracy theorist,” said the California Democrat, sworn into office a week ago.
As a Los Angeles-area congressman, Schiff chaired the House Intelligence Committee from 2019 to 2023 and was its top Democrat for four years before that. Patel was a Republican staffer for the committee for part of that time.
Much of the committee’s work is classified, so specifics can be difficult to ascertain.
But, Schiff said, “Patel is unqualified. I know him well enough already from his time on the House Intelligence Committee. I just think he lacks the character and judgment we would want in any public office.”
Patel, he added, “has no independent judgment. He is simply there as the president’s sycophant.”
Patel has long been active in Republican intelligence and national security circles. NBC News found that his online show “Kash’s Corner” has featured “detailed but unfounded claims of conspiracies involving government officials, law enforcement agencies, the media and tech companies, among others, all aiming to rig elections, silence conservative voices and undermine Trump’s presidency and re-election.”
His book, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” maintains career government workers are part of a controversial “deep state.” He has suggested shuttering the FBI headquarters in downtown Washington and converting it to a museum.
That history concerned Padilla.
“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,” the senator said.
This story was originally published December 17, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
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