Kash Patel Spars With Dems Over FBI Budget, Due Process

Kash Patel Spars With Dems Over FBI Budget, Due Process


FBI Director Kash Patel left senators dumbfounded during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday, practically scoffing at the idea that he has to deliver a budget request in a timely manner, while throwing up his hands about any responsibility the FBI might have in holding Donald Trump’s administration to account for denying due process to immigrants.

The hearing focused on the FBI’s budget, although Patel didn’t seem very interested in cooperating with Congress — which is tasked with appropriating the agency’s funding. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) was in disbelief that Patel didn’t have a budget request ready for review. “It was due last week, by law,” she said. Patel didn’t care. “You have no timeline?” Murray continued. “No,” Patel said.

“We’re now having a budget hearing without a budget request,” Murray continued. “So, Director Patel, where is the FY2026 budget request for the FBI?”

Patel said it’s being worked on and refused to give any sort of timeline for when it might be produced. “I’m doing the best I can,” he said.

“Well, that is insufficient and deeply disturbing,” Murray said.

“Kash Patel, the conspiracy theorist that Republicans made FBI Director, came to a Senate hearing on the budget — with NO budget, NO timeline, and NO clue,” Murray wrote later on X. “It’s downright incompetent, and it’s making America less safe. We need serious leadership at the FBI.”

The budget wasn’t the only thing Patel appeared clueless about. The FBI director also got into it with Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) over the Trump administration deporting immigrants without due process, and whether the FBI would investigate the matter. The Constitution explicitly affords due process to all people, and the Supreme Court has ruled and reaffirmed that the protection extends to undocumented immigrants — which means denying it is illegal.

Patel questioned whether the immigrants should have been afforded due process. “Your position is that every one of those individuals is by constitutional right afforded due process. I don’t know the answer to that,” he said, sounding skeptical of the idea that the hundreds of migrants the administration sent to prison in El Salvador were “supposed to be given due process.”

When Merkley said, “That’s what the Constitution says,” Patel said, “It doesn’t say that,” while simultaneously insisting he reads the Constitution “every day.”

“As the first public defender who’s ever served the FBI as its director, I am more aware of due process than any predecessor in my seat. You’re delineating between removal proceedings and criminal acts. My job is to investigate criminal acts,” Patel told Merkley during the tense back-and-forth, adding that the FBI is not the agency involved in removing immigrants.

“So if an agency other than the FBI violates the law and the Constitution, you will not investigate because it’s a different agency?” Merkley asked.

“I will investigate every violation of law.”

“But you just said you won’t investigate.”

Patel then said he disagrees that the Supreme Court has ruled that due process applies to undocumented immigrants. 

Top Trump officials have pushed a similar argument to justify the administration’s refusal to honor the Supreme Court’s order to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man wrongfully deported to El Salvador. 

Trump has tried to wash his hands of the issue entirely, repeatedly claiming ignorance while referring the matter to “his” lawyers, meaning the Justice Department. 

“Don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States, as president?” Kirsten Welker of NBC News asked the president on Saturday.

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“I don’t know,” Trump replied.

Patel doesn’t either, apparently, which doesn’t inspire much confidence in the leader of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency.



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