FBI chief Kash Patel defends hiring policy changes on prostitution,
bestiality at fiery hearing
[September 16, 2026]
By ERIC TUCKER
WASHINGTON (AP) — FBI Director Kash Patel defended Tuesday a recent
policy change to allow some applicants who have engaged in prostitution
and bestiality to be considered for employment, insisting that the move
was made to enable victims of those acts to apply for a job without fear
of automatic disqualification.
The subject arose during a fiery Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in
which Patel clashed with Democrats over his firing of agents who
participated in investigations of President Donald Trump and suggested
that agents might be dispatched to the polls on Election Day amid
Justice Department and White House concerns about voter fraud.
The hours-long hearing featured the name-calling and bitingly personal
exchanges that have come to define Patel's appearances on Capitol Hill,
with Democrats characterizing the Trump appointee as unqualified,
criticizing him for politically charged investigations into Trump's
enemies and highlighting travel that has included a trip to the Winter
Olympics in Italy in which he partied with U.S. hockey players and a
snorkeling excursion at the Pearl Harbor memorial in Hawaii.
“He’s an incompetent lackey. He'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. He’s an embarrassment to the agency and
wouldn’t qualify even to be an FBI agent,” said an exasperated Sen. Cory
Booker of New Jersey, his voice rising in anger.
“What a mockery you are,” he added.
Patel shot back, “You are the biggest mockery in the United States
Senate, and you're sitting next to Schiff.” That was a reference to Sen.
Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and outspoken Patel critic.
Patel was pressed on the FBI's hiring standards
The FBI quietly issued guidance this past spring lifting a categorical
hiring restriction on applicants who had previously participated in
prostitution. The bureau made a similar change with regard to childhood
experience in bestiality.
Under questioning, Patel denied that the changes reflected a lowering of
employment standards and insisted they were designed to prevent victims
who'd been forced to engage in that conduct from being automatically
disqualified.
“We did not want to punish victims of bestiality, victims who were
trafficked. We did not want to make it an automatic disqualification for
the FBI to consider you if you were a victim of these awful, heinous
acts,” Patel said. “We are not going to target victims and prevent them
from serving in their capacity to serve this country.”
The questioning spanned partisan lines, with Republican Sen. John
Kennedy of Louisiana grilling Patel about the rationale for a change
that the FBI director said was proposed to him by subordinates.
“When you saw bestiality, I say this with respect: The person who
recommended it, why didn’t you just say what planet did you parachute in
from?” Kennedy asked.
Patel conceded that was his initial response, but “they then explained
to me and showed me cases in which people were forced into it and
applied to the FBI and so I thought they should be considered. It's not
an automatic disqualification.”
The Associated Press reported last month that the FBI still intends to
bar some applicants who are revealed to have previously engaged in
prostitution, including if they've done so within the last 10 years.
Patel did not rule out sending agents to polling places on Election
Day
The hearing took place two months before the midterm elections in
November and at a time when the FBI has opened investigations related to
the 2020 contest, including by seizing voter data in Fulton County,
Georgia.
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FBI Director Kash Patel testifies during the Senate Judiciary
hearing on Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026 in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Trump regularly makes false claims that elections are rigged and
riddled with fraud, especially in the months before an election. But
there is no widespread fraud in American elections. Local election
officials have detailed processes for auditing the accuracy of the
vote after ballots are tallied. Even as he disputed his loss in
2020, audits, reviews and recounts in the battleground states where
he challenged the outcome all affirmed Democrat Joe Biden’s win.
Those voter fraud claims, and the FBI's efforts to investigate the
2020 race, have spurred Democratic concerns that Patel could plunge
the bureau into the upcoming election.
Asked whether the FBI has the general authority to monitor
elections, Patel replied that responsibility rests with the
Department of Homeland Security. He said the FBI's presence on
Election Day will be “housed” with election crimes coordinators at
each of the bureau's 56 field offices, but under questioning, he
declined to rule out that agents would be dispatched to the polls in
the event of problems or reports of interference.
“Do you pledge that you will not in any way interfere in the will of
the American people when they go to the polls in November?” asked
Democratic Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont in one of the hearing's more
combative exchanges.
“I pledge unequivocally that I will not participate in your charade
of lies,” Patel said, later calling Welch a “total fraud.”
FBI firings were also a featured topic of the hearing
Patel repeatedly touted what he asserted was his record-breaking
success at the FBI, proclaiming the “most prolific reduction in
crime in U.S. history” even though violent crime rates in American
cities had begun dropping well before Trump took office last year
for reasons that are difficult to pinpoint.
Even as the Republican-led panel tried through its questioning to
keep the focus on Patel's crime-fighting efforts from his perch at
the nation's premier federal law enforcement agency, Democrats
seized on the tumult inside the FBI over the last year — including
sweeping firings of agents who participated in investigations of
Trump, the bureau's aggressive efforts to investigate media leaks by
serving subpoenas at reporters' homes and Patel's travel schedule
that has blended private leisure with professional responsibilities.
Democrat Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut pressed Patel on the
firing of national security agents with expertise in Iran shortly
before the U.S. launched attacks on the country last February. He
noted that the agents had participated in an FBI investigation into
Trump over his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago
estate in Florida.
“Do you think firing the president’s political opponents is more
important than retaining the decades of experience and expertise
monitoring intelligence threats from Iran?” Blumenthal asked.
“I think what’s most important is to not have a weaponized FBI, and
I will endeavor every single day to make sure we have no one there
that is doing that,” Patel responded. He did not say why their
participation in the Mar-a-Lago investigation represented
“weaponized” law enforcement.
Patel later suggested that the scope of firings had been overblown,
saying many agents had retired on their own. And he defended his
personal travels by pointing to numbers that he said showed that two
recent predecessors, Chris Wray and James Comey, had traveled more.
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