Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel Face Tough Questions During Senate Confirmation Hearings. Key Takeaways

Hindu-American Tulsi Gabbard and Indian-American Kash Patel, tapped by US President Donald Trump to be heading respectively Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), on Thursday testified before Senatorial committees for the confirmation of their posts.

Initially, both the nominations were said to be controversial. However, after the confirmation of Pete Hegseth as the Defence Secretary, the chances of their confirmation by the US Senate have increased. As per the US law, all the Cabinet ranking positions and several other senior administration positions need to be confirmed by the US Senate.

It starts with a confirmation hearing by their respective Senatorial committees.

TAKEAWAYS FROM TUSLI GABBARD’s CONFIRMATION HEARING
Gabbard is seen as the most endangered of Trump’s picks, potentially lacking the votes even from Trump’s party for confirmation for Director of National Intelligence. However, her hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee offered a roadmap toward confirmation, the Associated Press stated.

In her prepared opening statement, Gabbard specifically stated that Title I of FISA had been used to surveil Page.

It opened with the chairman, Senator Tom Cotton, R-Ark., swatting back claims that Gabbard is a “foreign asset”, undercover for some other nation, presumably Russia. He said he reviewed some 300 pages of multiple FBI background checks and she’s “clean as a whistle”.

However, Virginia Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the panel, questioned whether she could build the trust needed, at home and abroad, to do the job. Gabbard, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, defended her loyalty to the US. She dismissed GOP Senator Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, when he asked whether Russia would “get a pass” from her.

“Senator, I’m offended by the question,” Gabbard responded.

Pressed on her secret 2017 trip to meet with then-Syrian President Bashar Assad, who has since been toppled by rebels and fled to Russia, she defended her work as diplomacy.

Gabbard may have made some inroads with one potentially sceptical Republican. Senator Susan Collins of Maine asked whether Gabbard would recommend a pardon for Edward Snowden. The former government contractor was charged with espionage after leaking a trove of sensitive intelligence material and fled to residency in Russia.

Gabbard, who has called Snowden a brave whistleblower, said it would not be her responsibility to “advocate for any actions related to Snowden.”

(In 2020, then-Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard introduced legislation calling on the federal government to drop all charges against Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor who in 2013 revealed the existence of the bulk collection of American phone records by the NSA before fleeing to Russia.)

“I’m focused on the future and how we can prevent something like this from happening again,” Gabbard said. She sought to lay out reforms she would undertake to prevent future leaks on the scale of Snowden’s, including “making sure that every single person in the workforce knows about the legal whistleblower channels available to them.”

“Edward Snowden broke the law,” she said, adding, “He also, even as he broke the law, released information that exposed egregious, illegal and unconstitutional programs that are happening within our government that led to serious reforms.”

Even when pressed multiple times for a yes-or-no answer by a visibly angry Democratic Senator Michael Bennet, Gabbard calmly and stolidly declined to give one.

Hinting at the pivotal role her views on surveillance are likely to play in her success or failure at the committee level, Gabbard was also pressed by Democratic Vice Chairman Senator Mark Warner, among others, on an apparent about-face she has made on her views of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Gabbard said reforms had been made to the law since her time in Congress that had led her to support the law; Warner pressed her: “Which reforms?”

“There are a number of reforms,” she said. Warner pointed out that after the reforms were already passed into law, she told podcaster Joe Rogan that the reforms had made the law “worse”.

In a remarkably partisan opening statement for a nominee to lead the US intelligence community, Gabbard aimed at “political opponents” and “Democrat senators” who she said had fomented anti-Hindu bigotry against her over her connections to a fringe off-shoot of the Hare Krishna movement and painted her as a “puppet” of Trump, Russia and others.

“The fact is what truly unsettles my political opponents is I refuse to be their puppet,” Gabbard said. “I want to warn the American people watching at home: You may hear lies and smears that challenge my loyalty to and love for our country,” she said.

“They used the same tactic against President Trump and failed. The American people elected President Trump with a decisive victory and mandate for change,” she added.

TAKEAWAYS FROM KASH PATEL’s CONFIRMATION HEARING
At his combative Senate confirmation hearing, Kash Patel downplayed his past promotion of right-wing conspiracy theories and his pledges to pursue retribution against Trump’s opponents.

According to CNN, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee tried to pin down Patel over past comments praising the rioters who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, his public courtship of influencers in the QAnon conspiracy movement and his promise to go after current and former Justice Department and FBI officials that he once put on a list of “corrupt actors”.

There is no ‘enemies list’, Patel said.

As Democrats homed in on Patel’s well-documented record – in TV interviews, podcast appearances, his books and social media posts – of calling for punishments against the people he believes are part of the “deep state” that has attempted to undermine Trump, Patel said, “I have no interest, no desire, and will not, if confirmed, go backwards.”

“There will be no politicisation at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken by any FBI,” he added. This also came as Democrats raised concerns about what they called an “enemies list” from Patel’s 2023 book, ‘Government Gangsters’.

Patel later said, “It’s not an enemies list – that is a total mischaracterisation.” Before the hearing, some advisers had encouraged Patel to express regret for his comments about the people on his list. He didn’t take that path during the hearing.

Patel said that he wasn’t aware of any plans to punish FBI agents involved in the various Trump probes and that “no one will be terminated for case assignments”.

Further, despite Patel saying he didn’t want to look backwards, Republican lawmakers encouraged him to do just that. They brought up gripes about the 2016 Trump-Russia probe, the Hunter Biden investigation and other actions they believe were motivated by anti-Trump bias.

Later during the hearing, GOP Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana asked Patel, “Do you believe in the adage that two wrongs don’t make a right – but they do make it even?”

“Senator, I think if anyone commits a wrong in government service, the American public deserves to know every absolute detail of that corrupt activity,” Patel responded. As he was questioned on the January 6 clemency, Patel said he opposes Trump’s commutations that freed from prison hundreds of convicted January 6 rioters who attacked police officers.

“I do not agree with the commutation of any sentence of any individual who committed violence against law enforcement,” he said, breaking from Trump. (On Trump’s first day in office, he pardoned more than 1,200 convicted rioters and granted commutations to 14 convicts tied to far-right extremist groups. These clemency actions freed hundreds of violent rioters from prison, including many who assaulted police.)

“As for January 6, I have repeatedly, often, publicly and privately, said there can never be a tolerance for violence against law enforcement,” Patel told lawmakers. On the topic of January 6, there was a combative exchange between Patel and California Senator Adam Schiff – who have been at loggerheads for nearly a decade, dating back to both of their service on the House Intelligence Committee during Trump’s first term.

Schiff dared Patel to stand up and apologise to the US Capitol Police officers “guarding you today”. Patel declined and retorted, “How about you ask them if I have their backs?”

Also, Patel rebutted Democratic allegations that he was a “conspiracy theorist” by saying he believes QAnon “baseless”, despite his past praise for the movement that promotes the false notion that top Democrats are at the helm of an international paedophilia cabal.

“I have publicly, including in the interviews provided to this committee, rejected outright QAnon baseless conspiracy theories. They must be addressed head-on with the truth and I will continue to do that,” Patel said.

He also complained that Democrats were misquoting and twisting his words about QAnon, as he did throughout the day on a variety of topics. He declined to answer many questions by repeatedly telling Democrats, “I don’t have the full quote in front of me.”

“Snippets of information are often misleading,” Patel said at one point.

He repeatedly said he’d focus his energy on other topics like fighting drug trafficking, hunting down gangs and rapists, and keeping the country safe from foreign terrorism, CNN reported.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT TULSI GABBARD
Soon after his electoral victory in November, Trump nominated Gabbard, 43, as his spy master-in-chief as the head of DNI.

A four-term Congresswoman, 2020 presidential candidate and NYT bestselling author, Gabbard is a veteran with three deployments to war zones in the Middle East and Africa. She recently moved from being a Democrat to a Republican member.

In October 2022, she announced she was leaving the Democrat Party, and becoming an Independent. On August 26, 2024, Gabbard formally endorsed Trump for a second term and soon after began serving as co-chair of his transition team.

On October 22, 2024, she joined the Republican Party because of President-elect Trump’s leadership and how he has been able to transform the Republican Party, bringing it back to the party of the people and the party of peace.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT KASH PATEL
Trump also nominated Patel for the position of Director of the FBI, a position which is normally filled for 10 years. Patel, 44, is the highest-ranking Indian-American nominated by President Trump in his administration. If confirmed, he would be the first-ever Indian American to lead the most powerful American investigation agency.

Patel would replace Christopher Wray. He is considered to be a loyal supporter of Trump.