nannan - FBI Director SNAPS: "I Go Where I Want To Go" — Jaw-Dropping Senate Clash!

A Hearing Room Unlike Any Other

Four days in Italy. A seat on the government plane. A walk into the locker room of a winning American Olympic team. When a senator asked the director of the FBI about his travel, Kash Patel did not explain it. He said this: "I go where I want to go."

Remember that sentence, because it sums up the whole hearing. For more than four hours, under oath, in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the director of the FBI was asked about his own grand jury testimony, about a Russian oligarch and the president's son, about a reporter he is suing for $250 million, and about his trips. Again and again, the answer came back the same way. He decides what counts.

This is the hearing room, one exhibit at a time.

The Room and the Stakes

On September 15th, the committee held an oversight hearing, the kind the Judiciary Committee holds so senators can ask the FBI director how the bureau is being run. Chairman Chuck Grassley ran the room. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the committee, opened with a history lesson. After September 11th, he said, Director Robert Mueller rebuilt the FBI, and Durbin was proud to work with him.

Then he turned to the man at the witness table. "Mr. Patel is the least qualified and most partisan FBI director in our nation's history," Durbin said. "He does not have the judgment, experience, or temperament of Director Mueller."

Durbin listed his reasons. The enemies list of so-called government gangsters that Patel compiled before he took the job. The purge of career agents. Polygraphs, Durbin said, to find out whether officials had ever criticized the director. And thousands of FBI personnel moved on to immigration work.

Patel came with numbers of his own, and he would repeat them all day. Murders down, violent arrests up, children found. Keep both sides in mind. The question today is not whether the FBI has made arrests. It is whether the man at the top answers to anyone.

Exhibit A: The Grand Jury Testimony

About four years ago, by his own account, Kash Patel testified before a federal grand jury. What he said in that room, he has never described. Any grand jury witness has the right to talk about his own testimony. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island has raised this before, and he raised it again. His first question was simple. Was anything stopping him?

"I don't believe there was a court order," Patel replied, "but the investigation at the time was ongoing." No court order. Hold on to that.

The next question: if no court stopped him, did the Justice Department? "Not that I'm aware of," Patel said. So no court order and no instruction that he knows about. Patel has said he wants his testimony out. Whitehouse made the obvious point. The one person who can describe it today without waiting on anyone is Patel himself.

"You can also describe your testimony and you have so far not done so, correct?" Whitehouse asked. "Four years later, no," Patel said. When pressed on whether he had ever done so, he answered, "The transcript is the best evidence of that information. So the transcript should say that."

So the transcript is the best evidence, he says, and the courts can release it. That is true as far as it goes, but notice what it does. It moves the decision somewhere else. Later in this same hearing, senators would point out that Patel talks freely on television and on social media about cases he says he cannot discuss here. On his own testimony, four years later, he has nothing to add. It is the first time today that he decides what the public gets to know. It will not be the last.

Exhibit B: The Wedding and the Oligarch

The day before the hearing, reports said a Russian oligarch had helped pay for the wedding of the president's son. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut has been to Ukraine eleven times. He named the oligarch, said the man had direct ties to Vladimir Putin, and asked the head of America's main counterintelligence agency a counterintelligence question.

"We learned yesterday to the astonishment and shock of many Americans that a Russian oligarch bankrolled the wedding of the president's son with perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars," Blumenthal said. He asked whether Patel had begun an investigation of potential intelligence compromises involving this individual with direct ties to Putin. It would seem an effort to curry favor with the president's family, he said. It may involve some intelligence degradation. He wanted to know what steps were being taken.

A direct question about a possible intelligence risk to the president's family. Here is the first answer. "I'm not sure what public reporting you're referring to," Patel said. "The only thing I can tell you is that the counterespionage arrests by this FBI are up 53%, including from Russia. We've arrested more espionage actors in these last 18 months than any 18-month period in FBI history, and we'll continue to investigate."

He was not sure which reporting the senator meant. He was very sure about his arrest numbers. Blumenthal pressed. The family, he said, had apparently confirmed the payment. Now listen to what Patel says about the news itself.

"You're referring to something that happened yesterday in public reporting," Patel said. "And public reporting generally is inaccurate. And so what the men and women of the FBI will do, as we do in every case, is we will look at whatever information comes our way and analyze it."

Blumenthal noted that the involvement of this individual in bankrolling the wedding in substantial amounts of money had apparently been confirmed by the family. Was Patel unaware of those reports? "I don't track public reporting from yesterday for preparation in this hearing," Patel said.

I don't track public reporting from yesterday. Think about that sentence from an FBI director. A reported payment from a man the senator tied directly to Vladimir Putin to the family of the sitting president. And a full day of headlines was not enough to get it into the director's briefing book. Notice the line just before it, too. Public reporting generally isn't accurate. Keep that line in mind, because it is a pattern. When the news is about him or about the president, it is unreliable. When he cites his own numbers, they are history.

Blumenthal asked him to report back to the committee on what he was doing. Whether he does is up to him. And that is the point. Blumenthal had one more counterintelligence question, and this one was about Iran.

"Just days before the United States launched its military operation in Iran, you fired a dozen agents and staff members from a counterintelligence unit called CI 12, which was specifically tasked with monitoring threats with Iran," Blumenthal said. "I am astonished that this kind of action was taken. I'd like to know whether the dozen employees in CI 12 have been rehired."

"Individuals that have been removed were removed for reasons that they basically failed to meet the standards of the FBI," Patel said. A dozen people, by the senator's count, from a unit that watched Iran, removed days before the United States launched a military operation against Iran. Were they rehired? He did not say. He said they failed to meet the standards of the FBI, and then he went straight back to his arrest numbers. Which standards, he did not say either. Two counterintelligence questions, two answers that tell the Senate nothing it can check, in a hearing that exists so the Senate can check.

Exhibit C: The Reporter and the Lawsuit

Earlier this year, The Atlantic published an article saying Patel drank to excess, including at a private club in Washington and at the Poodle Room in Las Vegas. Patel says it is false. He sued the author, a reporter named Fitzpatrick, for $250 million.

Senator Peter Welch of Vermont did not ask whether the article was true. He asked something else. "You filed five defamation lawsuits against journalists since 2019," Welch said. "And you filed your second against the author of an article in The Atlantic demanding $250 million from her. The complaint is based on, according to your complaint, these are your words, that she wrote you were known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication in many cases in a private club at Ned's in Washington, D.C. She also wrote you were known to drink to excess at the Poodle Room in Las Vegas. Mr. Patel, is the FBI currently investigating or did the FBI ever investigate the author of that article, Ms. Fitzpatrick?"

Did the FBI ever investigate her? A yes or no question. Here is the answer in full. "As a U.S. citizen, I have every right to claim the truth. She printed false material. I'm taking her to court as a personal private—let me finish." Then, "No." Then, "As a personal private citizen, I am allowed to participate in my own defense, especially when there's a smear campaign, one which you are participating and continuing the falsehoods and lies that have been directed at me."

He continued: "You cannot stand the fact that President Trump and this FBI have made America more secure than it has ever been. You didn't do it in your 20 years in the Senate. No other administration has done it. We've done it. Your time's up."

Welch asked again. "Did the FBI investigate her? Is the question I asked." Patel: "The FBI investigates criminals. The FBI investigates criminals and the FBI does not investigate personal matters. I told you I addressed it personally." Welch asked a third time. "No," Patel said. "Miss Fitzpatrick." When Welch pressed once more, Patel replied, "You're hard of hearing. I just said no."

It took a speech about smear campaigns and an attack on the senator's record, but in the end he said no. Now hold that answer up next to what Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey said later in the same hearing about the reporters this FBI has gone after.

"Reporters like you like Hannity, you give them all the information they want. You answer their questions. Reporters you don't like, you subpoena their mothers' records," Booker said. That is the senator's charge and Patel denies it. His defense is that his FBI is chasing leakers, not journalists.

"The Obama administration subpoenaed countless reporters, did 1,200 interviews of reporters in an investigation into reporters," Patel said. "This administration focuses on the leakers of classified information that endangered the lives of elected officials and American citizens. We are not targeting reporters at any point in time."

We are not targeting reporters. Maybe so, but look at the shape of the argument. Asked about his FBI, he talks about the Obama administration. Asked about his lawsuit, he says he is a private citizen. Asked whether the bureau ever looked at a woman who wrote about him, he says he addressed it personally. Personally is exactly the problem. When the man suing a journalist also runs the agency that could open a file on her, every answer has to be clean and quick. This one needed a speech before it got to no.

Exhibit D: The Trips and the Locker Room

Welch had time for one more subject and he spent it on Italy. Patel went to the Winter Olympics in Milan. Welch said the director is required to fly on the government plane and he had the schedule. "I understand that there's a requirement that you take the official plane when you go to where you want to go," Welch said. "And apparently you wanted to go to the Olympics."

Welch laid it out. Four days there. A dinner with the ambassador. An hour with Italian counterpart operatives. Three twenty-minute meetings. A security briefing. A thirty-minute tour over four days. And then, he said, Patel barged into the celebration of a winning Olympic team. "What were you doing doing that?" Welch asked. "Can't you let the players enjoy the joy of their own victory?"

Patel's answer came in two parts. The first was about friendship. "What you'll never understand is the players who are my friends invited me into the locker room," Patel said. He noted that during that trip, where 300,000 Americans went to Italy to participate in the games and watch them, not a single security incident occurred. He said the same of the World Cup, crediting a joint operations center. And he pointed to a result: the seizure and capture of China's most prolific hacker and his return to the United States.

The players invited him, no security incidents, and a Chinese hacker brought back to the United States, which to be fair is a real result and one he has pointed to before. Then Welch moved closer to home, to a stay at a ranch the senator called a boondoggle. Here is the moment from the top of this video, this time in full.

"How many days off a year do you take? Because I took four this year," Patel said. "Where I want to go after delivering the most prolific crime reduction in US history. You take 180 days off a year and you can put up all the posters you want and all the lies you want, but everybody sees you for the complete and total fraud that you are."

I go where I want to go. You take 180 days off a year. You are a fraud. That is the director of the FBI under oath to a United States Senator.

To be fair, the chairman had a point of his own about travel and it deserves to be heard. "I find it interesting that my Democratic colleagues continually bring up Director Patel's travel, yet my Democratic colleagues didn't seem too interested about my past oversight of then FBI Director Wray's travel or how Wray left a Democrat-led oversight hearing early for a personal vacation," Grassley said. He said he has looked into Patel's travel and requested detailed information. Patel, he said, has been more responsive than his predecessors and has agreed to provide access to Wray and Comey's travel records and access to his own.

Grassley says he pressed Christopher Wray on travel for years and that Democrats did not join him. If so, that is a fair hit and Democrats should own it, but it answers a different question. Nobody in this hearing asked whether FBI directors are allowed to travel. Welch asked what this trip was for and Patel's answer was that his results buy him the right not to explain. That is not a travel policy. It is a philosophy.

Exhibit E: The Breaking Point

By now, the pattern was clear and it was not limited to one senator. Earlier, Welch had asked Patel a question that in any other year would be routine. Will the FBI stay out of the November elections? Listen to the answer and to what came after it.

"Do you pledge that you will not in any way interfere in the will of the American people when they go to the polls in November?" Welch asked. "I have pledged unequivocally that I will not participate in your charade of lies," Patel replied. Welch followed up, asking about the president's claims regarding the 2020 election and about whether Democrats could only win in 2026 by cheating. "What I believe in is the rule of law," Patel said. "Are you done with your campaign ad?" he added at one point, before turning to a question about the senator's personal wealth, until a voice from the dais told him to knock it off.

A senator asks the FBI director to pledge that the bureau will not interfere with an election. The director calls it a charade of lies, calls it a campaign ad, and then asks about the senator's personal wealth until he is told to stop. That is the temperature in the room when a senator is asking about the integrity of an election.

Later, it was Senator Booker's turn. He had asked about the reporters, about the Epstein birthday book that he says Patel promised to investigate, and about what he called stonewalling. When the chairman said his time was up, Booker argued that it was not. Then he gave his closing remark.

"We don't have an FBI director. We lack a lackey here," Booker said. He called Patel an incompetent lackey, an embarrassment to the agency, and said Patel would not qualify even to be an FBI agent. "He won't answer questions for our committee. He insults Democrats here and you don't step in. He has a little book by his side that he literally is using to try to intimidate people in the same way he intimidates reporters. He is a disgrace, sir."

A lackey, a disgrace. Strong words and Booker chose every one of them. When the chairman finally gave Patel the floor, his reply was short. "I don't have much to say. This guy called me a thug. It's kind of ironic. He's running for president of the United States. He just got his 22nd ad campaign."

A thug, an ad campaign, and then came the last exchange, the one that traveled all over the internet. "What a mockery you are," Booker said. "You are the biggest mockery in the United States Senate and you're sitting next to Schiff," Patel replied. "Eight million people in New Jersey don't think so," Booker answered. "At least I didn't get my job the way you got your job."

The biggest mockery in the United States Senate. And Booker's reply about how each of them got his job is the difference in one line. One was elected by the voters of New Jersey. The other was appointed and he answers to the Senate. Whatever you think of Booker's speech, it was a senator on the record doing oversight.

Analysis: Who Decides What Counts

Step back from the noise and a single method emerges across all five exhibits. When a question is uncomfortable, the answer is redirected. Grand jury testimony becomes a question for the courts. A reported payment from a foreign oligarch becomes a question about public reporting's accuracy. A lawsuit against a reporter becomes a personal matter, even though the man filing it runs the agency that could investigate her. A four-day trip becomes a recital of arrest statistics.

There is a legitimate version of this hearing. Patel can point to real numbers, and the chairman can point to real inconsistencies in how travel oversight was applied to predecessors. Oversight should cut both ways, and it should be boring, methodical, and checkable.

But oversight requires answers that can be verified, and the pattern here was answers that cannot be. No court order, not that he is aware of. No investigation of the reporter, after a speech. Failed standards, without saying which standards. Public reporting, generally inaccurate. Each answer moves the question one step away from the witness.

The deeper issue is structural. The FBI director is not a cabinet secretary who serves at the president's pleasure and not a private citizen with a public platform. He is a Senate-confirmed official who is expected to explain, under oath, how he spends public resources and how he keeps the bureau out of politics. That expectation is not partisan. It applied to Mueller after September 11th, it applied to Comey, and it applied to Wray, whose travel Grassley pressed for years.

What changed in this hearing is the standard of response. "I go where I want to go" is not a defense of a trip. It is a claim that results confer immunity from explanation. That claim is the real subject of the hearing, and it is the one the Senate will have to decide whether to accept.

Conclusion

Four hours. Five exhibits. One sentence that ties them together. The arrests are real, the crime numbers are real, and the hacker returned to the United States is real. None of that answers whether the director of the FBI will explain himself to the committee that confirms him.

On the record, under oath, the answer was that he goes where he wants to go after delivering the most prolific crime reduction in US history. That is a claim about results, not a claim about accountability. The Senate asked for the second and got the first, again and again, until the room boiled over. The record is now public. What the Senate does with it is the next exhibit.