Kash Patel's FBI hiring and election policies
FBI Director Kash Patel faced bipartisan bewilderment at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing after defending the bureau's decision to stop automatically disqualifying job applicants over past prostitution or bestiality. Patel said the change, quietly issued last spring, was meant to keep trafficking victims who had been forced into such acts from being barred from consideration, telling lawmakers 'we did not want to punish victims.' Republican Senator John Kennedy pressed him repeatedly on why the policy needed to mention bestiality at all, while Democrats used the same hearing to renew broader criticism of Patel's leadership, including mass firings of agents tied to investigations of President Trump and his handling of the bureau's role around the midterms.
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