Trump’s FBI chief pick, Kash Patel, insists he has no ‘enemies list’ and won’t seek retribution

WASHINGTON (AP) — Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, insisted to deeply skeptical Democrats on Thursday that he did not have an “enemies list” and that the bureau under his leadership would not seek retribution against the president’s adversaries or launch investigations for political purposes.

“I have no interest nor desire and will not, if confirmed, go backwards,” Patel told a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing at which support for the nominee broke along starkly partisan lines. “There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken by the FBI.”

The reassurances were aimed at blunting a persistent line of attack from Democrats, who throughout the hearing confronted Patel with a vast catalog of prior incendiary statements on topics that they said made him unfit for the director’s job and raised alarming questions about his belief in conspiracy theories and loyalty to the president. Patel, for his part, sought to distance himself from his own words, accusing Democrats of taking them out of context, highlighting only snippets or misunderstanding his point.

The focus by Democrats on Patel’s rhetoric, at a time when the FBI is facing urgent national security concerns including Chinese espionage and a heightened terrorism threat, underscored the extent of their fears that his own words could foreshadow destabilizing upheaval inside the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency.

“There is an unfathomable difference between a seeming facade being constructed around this nominee here today, and what he has actually done and said in real life when left to his own devices,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat. His colleague, Sen. Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota, later added: “It is his own words. It is not some conspiracy. It is what Mr. Patel actually said himself.”

Republicans control the Senate, and GOP members made clear their broad support for Patel and determination to get him confirmed over a Democratic minority that appeared united in its opposition but fac