Sen. Richard Blumenthal questions Kash Patel at a committee hearing over fired FBI employees, asking whether firing "the president's political opponents" outweighs decades of expertise monitoring threats from Iran. Patel says the employees "were terminated for weaponizing" the FBI. Blumenthal says Patel promised the committee no retribution against agents for participating in investigations and asks how the two statements are consistent.
The receipt
- Who
- Sen. Richard Blumenthal
- Where
- hearing - Senate questioning of FBI Director Kash Patel
- Original footage
- Prime Politics · watch the full video from this moment
- Length
- 53 seconds, unedited within the cut
- Plays
- 132 on Instagram
Read the transcript
Do you think firing the president's political opponents is more important than retaining the decades of experience and expertise monitoring intelligent threats from Iran? I think what's most important is not to have a weaponized FBI and I will endeavor every single day to make sure we have no one there that is doing that. Well in fact the firing of these employees not only politicized but weaponized the FBI against its own employees who had involvement in investigation, they were assigned to it, they had no choice. What was the reason for firing them? Those individuals were terminated for weaponizing the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You know, the promise you made to this committee was that no retribution would be taken against any FBI agents for participating in investigation. How can you make those two statements consistent? Simple. If you weaponize law enforcement, you don't get to work at the FBI.
Machine transcript of the clip's audio; names are checked, small words may differ.