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\n

Senate Democrats battered FBI Director Kash Patel Tuesday at a Senate Judiciary oversight hearing, combatively criticizing a broad swath of his behavior and performance to the point the panel\u2019s chairman asked one to \u201cshut up.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n

The scrutiny from Democrats previews how they may try to hold members of the Trump administration accountable if they take the majority after the midterms. It also highlights how the party has embraced the course confrontations common from Cabinet member testimony during the second Trump administration.<\/p>\n

The party pressed the intelligence agency director on his investigations into journalists, drinking with U.S. hockey players in an Olympic locker room, and using taxpayer money to go on a \u201cVIP snorkel<\/u><\/a>\u201d trip at the Pearl Harbor memorial in Hawaii, among other issues.<\/p>\n

The tension climaxed when the normally genial Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) angrily asked Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) to end his questioning of Patel, saying, \u201c\u201cAre you done now? Are you ready to shut up?\u201d<\/p>\n

Booker had called Patel a \u201cthug\u201d who targets reporters<\/u><\/a> and their families when they write stories critical of him and the broader Trump administration, and who investigated a journalistafter writing a story<\/a> on his girlfriend. When Grassley asked Booker to wrap up his comments, Booker said Grassley wasn\u2019t being equitable with members\u2019 time to speak.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe’s like an 18-year-old kid who wants to join a fraternity that he could never be a member of doing keg stands and chugging with friends,\u201d Booker said.<\/p>\n

Patel called Booker \u201cthe biggest mockery in the United States Senate, and you\u2019re sitting next to [Senator Adam] Schiff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grassley appeared to grow frustrated with Booker\u2019s remarks and told him he wasn\u2019t respecting him as chair. Booker later called for Patel to be sanctioned for speaking in what he said was a disrespectful manner to Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.).<\/p>\n

Earlier in the hearing, Patel sparred with Welch after Welch brought up Patel\u2019s Olympic drinking, and intimated he couldn\u2019t hear well after answering a question.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you hard of hearing? I just said no,\u201d Patel said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you will never understand is the players who are my friends invited me,\u201d Patel said, adding that the FBI was able to ensure \u201cnot a single security incident occurred” in at the event and called Welch a \u201ccomplete and total fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patel also pushed back against Booker’s statements around his probes of journalists and Sen. Mazie Hirono’s (D-Hawaii) questioning of his Hawaii trip, saying media coverage of the allegations has been incorrect and senators were lying.
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Senate Democrats battered FBI Director Kash Patel Tuesday at a Senate Judiciary oversight hearing, combatively criticizing a broad swath of his behavior and performance to the point the panel\u2019s chairman asked one to \u201cshut up.\u201d\u2019 The scrutiny from Democrats previews how they may try to hold members of the Trump administration accountable if they take […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}