Kash Patel Defends FBI’s Accomplishments in Hearing

“This FBI will not be weaponized anymore, on either side of the aisle.”

That was the bold statement this morning from FBI Director Kash Patel as he appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to defend his agency’s record. Some Senators questioned Patel’s investigation into the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the ensuing manhunt for Tyler Robinson, the firing of certain FBI agents, his relationship with FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, and the Bureau’s failure to release the Epstein files.

While some far-left politicians may choose to criticize the FBI’s actions during Patel’s brief tenure, the statistics from this FBI are considerably favorable, especially when compared to the previous Administration.

As Director Patel himself stated:

I promised to provide the courageous men and women of the FBI with the tools and resources they need to crush violent crime and defend the homeland. I pledged my commitment to full transparency, oversight, and accountability so we could restore the public’s trust in the FBI.

And that’s exactly what I’ve done.

Under this administration, the FBI has arrested more than 23,000 violent criminals. That’s more than twice for the same time period from last year alone. Twenty-three thousand. More than twice from the same time period last year.

Director Patel went on to list specific numbers to refute any claims that the agency wasn’t performing well under his leadership:

We’ve taken over 6,000 illegal firearms off the streets. That number is an exponential increase.

We’ve identified and located more than 4,700 child victims. More than 4,700 child victims have been found by this FBI. That is a 35% increase from the same time period last year.

Fifteen-hundred child predators have been arrested. That’s a 5% increase from the same time last year.

Three hundred human traffickers have been arrested. That’s a 10% increase from the same time last year.

Over 350 members of Tren de Aragua, a foreign terrorist organization, have been arrested. We have 42 ongoing cases. That is a 250% increase from the same time last year. . . .

We have also captured four top ten fugitives from the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted list. To put that in perspective, that’s the same amount that I’ve captured in the past seven months that my predecessor did during the entirety of the Biden administration.

President Trump ran on a promise to make America safe again, and these numbers certainly indicate that is what this FBI is doing. And it certainly had its hands full from the start.

To be clear, today’s hearing didn’t take place in response to the Charlie Kirk assassination. These congressional hearings happen on a regular basis, but this is the first that Patel has conducted for this specific group. It just so happened to occur at this unfortunate time. Although it’s worth noting that during the Committee meeting, Senator Chuck Grassley (IA) introduced records regarding an FBI initiative conducted under the Biden Administration called “Arctic Frost,” in which the agency investigated Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA.

Some members of the Senate body seemed to wish to discredit Patel, asking for very specific information, precise numbers, incidents within specific FBI field offices, such as how many people have resigned in the hopes of tripping him up or perhaps making him appear incompetent. But Patel came with receipts of his own, laying out specific statistics of what his FBI has already accomplished.

These are wins that every American should be celebrating because one primary criticism about the Biden FBI under former Director James Comey and then-Director Christopher Wray was that the FBI had become a political machine. It was conducting political investigations, going after parents at school board meetings and pro-life advocates. It even planted undercover spies inside churches.

Some conservatives don’t trust Patel or don’t like the job he’s done. But he showed today that his strategy is paying off. By shifting the priorities of the agency away from being a political tool and back to stopping real crime, assisting local police forces, it’s gotten real results.

As we pointed out earlier, the FBI has already caught four fugitives that were listed on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list in six months – more than the entire Biden Administration did in four years. That’s showing real results to the American people. It’s impressive, and Patel did a good job of laying it out.

Today’s Sekulow broadcast included more analysis of the FBI Director’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee and what the stats reveal about the direction of our country. We were also joined by ACLJ Senior Counsel CeCe Heil with an update on a death row case of two persecuted Christian brothers in Pakistan.

Watch the full broadcast below: