Not The Onion

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/28517588

FBI Director Kash Patel might be the most ludicrous, scandal-dogged Donald Trump henchman in this incompetent, embarrassing second administration. An Atlantic report on Patel in April chronicled a pattern of heavy drinking, odd behavior, and mysterious absences—it was headlined “The FBI Director Is MIA.” Representative Jamie Raskin is investigating his payments of more than $1 million in taxpayer dollars to favored FBI agents. He’s fired long-term, respected FBI agents for political reasons. Patel has also been in trouble for using public assets to ferry himself and his country music star girlfriend to entertainment venues. He’s regularly rumored to be close to being fired.

Patel was grilled on some of his decisions at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on Tuesday. He opened by recounting a barrage of purported FBI accomplishments in reducing violent crime and thwarting terrorism, many of which were exaggerations or falsehoods, featuring activities largely the terrain of other agencies, not the FBI. But the most attention went to his hilarious answer on the serious question of why the FBI had lowered its standards to recruit new agents, and no longer bars applicants who’ve engaged in prostitution, trafficking, or bestiality. The FBI, by many reports, has lowered other standards, at least partly because so many have either been fired, or left the agency on their own under Patel’s leadership.

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin opened by saying flatly that Patel should be replaced. He was the first to express bewilderment at the agency’s new welcome mat to applicants who’d “engaged in bestiality.” It was left to GOP Senator John Kennedy to drill down on the strange new regulation. When pushed, Katel insisted that “the previous regulation automatically disqualified any individual who participated in either side of it,” to which Kennedy asked what the entire audience had to be wondering: “Either side of bestiality? So you disqualified the animal?”

Kennedy went on: “You’re not saying that if a human being had sex with an animal, they can be an FBI agent?”

Patel tried to explain. “Applicants who have engaged in bestaility means they were victims of bestiality because they were forced to do so. At this FBI we are not going to criminalize and prevent victims from serving.”