FBI Director Kash Patel and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker began yelling at each other during a heated discussion at Patel’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
During questions from Democrats over his handling of the investigation into the killing of Charlie Kirk, the case against Jeffrey Epstein and the dismissals of senior FBI staff — who have accused Patel of illegal, politically motivated retribution — Booker said he was responsible for a “generational destruction of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency.”
“Donald Trump promised to make us all safer. You have pushed out senior FBI agents with decades of knowledge and experience,” the New Jersey Democrat added, pointing out that before their appointment, neither Patel nor the agency’s deputy director had any experience with the FBI.
Booker also accused Patel of shifting the agency’s focus to pursuing Trump’s anti-immigration agenda and jeopardizing U.S. security.
“I believe you have made our country weaker and less safe. I believe that we are more vulnerable to a major event, and I pray to God it doesn’t happen,” Booker went on.
During his heavy-handed assault on Patel’s conduct, Booker said the only people who benefit from the way the FBI operates under Patel are “corrupt people” and criminals, citing Vladimir Putin and Epstein.
“Mr. Patel, in just eight months, you have assaulted the institutional integrity of the FBI,” Booker told his colleague.
Patel fired back, labelling Booker’s words “a rant of false information,” and saying that he was an “embarrassment.”
New Jersey Senator Corey Booker and FBI Director Kash Patel got into a shouting match during his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
CBS News
The Republican chairman of the committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley, pounded his gavel repeatedly but struggled to gain control of the hearing.
The hearing provided Democrats with an opportunity to scrutinize the Trump administration’s response to a rise in political violence across the United States, which the president has blamed on the “radical left.”
In an address in the Oval Office following the death of Kirk, he said left-wing rhetoric is “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”
“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” he added, before threatening to find every person who “contributed” to his death and to other acts of political violence, as well as organizations that fund and support it.
He did not mention any such organizations by name. Still, he referenced assassination attempts against himself, “attacks on ICE agents,” the killing of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson, and the shooting of House majority leader Steve Scalise.
The president omitted the killings of former Democratic Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, who were shot dead inside their home in June.
— With files from the Associated Press