Trump’s nominees to lead the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are scheduled for Senate hearings on Jan. 30.
The Senate will hold hearings on Jan. 30 to consider President Donald Trump’s nominees to lead the U.S. intelligence community and the FBI; key national security appointees that are likely to face intense scrutiny before they can proceed to a confirmation vote.
Trump has nominated Tulsi Gabbard as his director of national intelligence (DNI) to oversee the various U.S. intelligence and national security agencies, including the FBI.
Gabbard, who currently serves as a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, represented Hawaii’s second congressional district from 2013 to 2021 as a Democrat.
Trump has nominated Kash Patel to serve as director of the FBI.
Patel has worked as a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Security Division. During Trump’s first administration, Patel also worked as a counterterrorism adviser on the White House National Security Council and as a principal deputy in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in 2020 under then-acting DNI Richard Grenell.
After the first Trump administration, Patel hosted a show on EpochTV.
Government Weaponization
The political views of the next FBI director could be a key concern as the Senate considers Patel for the leadership role.
Some Republicans have alleged the last FBI director, Christopher Wray, allowed the bureau to become unfairly politicized and weaponized against conservatives and other ideological opponents of former President Joe Biden while providing preferential treatment to the Biden family.
Patel has also expressed concerns about corruption and politicization within the intelligence and national security community, including efforts specifically targeting Trump.
In a September 2024 interview on the “Shawn Ryan Show,” Patel said if he were put in charge of the FBI, he‘d shut down its Washington headquarters on his first day and then reopen it the next day “as a museum of the ’deep state.’”
While Trump and other Republicans might see Patel as the change agent needed to counter their concerns about politicization within the FBI, some Democrats have raised concerns Patel would bring his own brand of political bias to the bureau.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, raised objections to Patel’s nomination in a Senate floor speech last week, arguing Patel “is a staunch political loyalist who has repeatedly peddled false conspiracy theories and threatened to retaliate against those who have slighted him personally and politically.”
Democrat Objections
Democrats have accused Patel of promoting views about the 2020 election and the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, that amount to unfounded conspiracy theories. They’ve also accused him of promoting QAnon, a conspiracy theory movement focused on claims powerful individuals operate child sex trafficking rings and are involved in a secret cabal influencing the actions of the U.S. government.
In a Jan. 16 letter, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) called on Patel to answer whether he believes FBI informants instigated violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In his letter, Blumenthal also asked Patel about his views on the QAnon movement and quoted Trump’s nominee as saying, “I disagree with a lot of what that movement says, but I agree with what a lot of that movement says.” Blumenthal has called on Patel to explain the specific ideas of the QAnon movement to which he ascribes during his confirmation hearing.
Domestic Surveillance
As she sits before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Gabbard is likely to face questions about her views on the U.S. government’s domestic surveillance laws, such as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Section 702 of FISA allows U.S. intelligence agencies to collect the communications data of foreign nationals without a warrant and to collect communications between U.S. nationals and foreign nationals already under surveillance.
In 2018, as FISA authority came up for renewal, Gabbard shared a social media post describing the intelligence-gathering provision as a “blank check” to trample Americans’ civil liberties. She also joined Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) in sponsoring legislation in 2020 to repeal the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act.
In a statement earlier this month, Gabbard signaled that her views had changed over FISA Section 702. She said the provision has been sufficiently reformed since her time in office and now “must be safeguarded.”
Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee may call on Gabbard to explain her shifting views. Lawmakers could also ask about her past calls for Trump to pardon Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the National Security Agency who exfiltrated and helped publish documents on the agency’s digital surveillance practices before fleeing to Russia.
Foreign Conflicts
Senators are also likely to question Gabbard on her views of U.S. foreign policy and interventions abroad.
In a 2016 interview with the Hawaii Tribune-Herald, Gabbard described herself as a “hawk” when it comes to U.S. military operations against terrorist groups, but a “dove” when it comes to “counterproductive wars of regime change.”
Gabbard has previously spoken out in opposition to U.S. actions targeting Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, who relinquished power and fled to Russia last month. In 2017, she argued Trump should have waited for a full investigation on claims that Assad had ordered a chemical attack in Syria’s Idlib province instead of immediately ordering missile strikes targeting the Assad government.
“This Administration has acted recklessly without care or consideration of the dire consequences of the United States attack on Syria without waiting for the collection of evidence from the scene of the chemical poisoning,” her 2017 statement reads.
Gabbard also spoke at a 2023 rally calling for a negotiated settlement to the ongoing Russia–Ukraine war.
In a Jan. 29 Senate floor speech, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) accused Gabbard of spreading false claims and acting in support of Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Given her history, it’s not unreasonable to ask if Ms. Gabbard would use the DNI job to push false intelligence for political ends,” Schumer said.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has refuted attacks on Gabbard’s loyalty to the United States.
“This is a woman who served 21 years in uniform, who’s passed five background checks. I reviewed the latest one last week. It’s clean as a whistle,” Cotton said in a Jan. 29 interview with Fox Business.
Gabbard and Patel will likely also face accusations that they aren’t qualified to serve in the positions Trump has nominated them for.
Despite her military service, Gabbard doesn’t have an extensive background in intelligence.
In his letter earlier this month, Blumenthal noted that former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr—Trump’s second attorney general—had written that Patel “had virtually no experience that would qualify [him] to serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency.”
Durbin has also called for the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, and ODNI to turn over records of alleged misconduct by Patel while he worked for those departments and offices. The Illinois Democrat has raised allegations Patel politicized the declassification process when he worked at the ODNI during Trump’s first term in order to declassify documents he felt were favorable to Trump.
Patel has said Trump had directly declassified records that the FBI recovered in a raid of the president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in August 2022.