Red Flags: Past Colleagues Raise Alarm Ahead of Kash Patel’s High-stakes Confirmation Hearing

Ahead of the highly anticipated confirmation hearing of Kash Patel to be FBI director, several of his past colleagues from the first Trump administration are warning that the Indian American Trump devotee tends to make stuff up. Also, lawmakers on the other side of the aisle describe him as “dishonest, untrustworthy, and utterly lacking in character,” and as someone who has “neither the experience, the temperament, nor the judgment to lead the law enforcement agency. 

Adding to concerns regarding Patel’s ability to lead the FBI, is a new whistleblower report which claims that he violated protocol during a hostage rescue mission in the Millde East in October 2020. Now, the Senate Democrats, led by Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, are requesting material related to Patel’s involvement in the hostage rescue mission. 

CBS News reports that according to the whistleblower, Patel “leaked news that two Americans and the remains of a third were being transferred to U.S. custody from Yemen, where they had been held hostage by Houthi rebels.” Patel allegedly shared the news with The Wall Street Journal “hours before the hostages were actually in U.S. custody, potentially endangering the deal.” FBI protocol is “to withhold information about hostage deals until the subjects were both in U.S. custody and their families had been notified,” the whistleblower said, according to CBS News.

Senate Democrats are choosing not to disclose the identity of the whistleblower “fear of retaliation” CBS News reported, noting that the whistleblower “worked with the FBI’s Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell, which leads the government’s missions to rescue hostages overseas.”

In a letter sent yesterday (Feb. 27)  to the FBI, the Department of Defense (DOD), the State Department, and the Department of Treasury, Durbin has asked for “all records of communications between Patel and the FBI’s Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell concerning the rescue of the captives, as well as any records reflecting authorization for him to disclose the hostage deal before there was confirmation that the Americans were safely in U.S, hands.”

The news of the hostage rescue mission was published by The Wall Street Journal on Oct. 14, 2020, at 10:55 a.m., quoting Patel who confirmed that the two American captives and the remains of a third were exchanged for two hundred Houthi fighters who were being held in Saudi Arabia. The news report was published “several hours before the hostages were in the confirmed custody of the United States,” the whistleblower said. The Americans returned home safely, but “officials involved in the mission were livid over Patel’s leak, which they regarded as reckless and potentially risking tragic results,” the report added. 

Democrats also plan to highlight another instance where Patel broke hostage recovery protocol to inappropriately insert himself in a sensitive or high-profile recovery mission. In late 2020, two weeks after the Yemen hostage deal, Patel was involved in the rescue of Philip Walton, a 27-year-old American, who was kidnapped by six armed men armed from his farm in Massalata in south Massalata in southern Niger in the early morning of Oct. 27. The “kidnappers demanded a million dollars in ransom,” and there were also “indications that they were contemplating turning him over to a terrorist group operating in the region,” news reports said at the time. 

Mark Esper, who was the defense secretary at the time, has described the incident in detail in his memoir, “A Sacred Oath,” which Maddow highlighted on her show yesterday. Before Esper gave a green light to the mission to rescue Walton after weighing the risk of using the Nigerian airspace, Patel had already “assured Defense Department officials that the State Department had received the necessary permission from the Nigerians.” While “the mission went forward, was executed flawlessly, and Walton was returned to safety,” Esper says Patel “had inserted himself into the operation in violation of regular protocol, and then nearly botched it by transmitting false information.” Patel was the senior director for counterterrorism at the time.

Patel, however, has denied Esper’s version of events. In his book, “Government Gangsters,” Patel has portrayed Esper as a “deep-state” actor who “always seemed to be subverting the president’s agenda,” including by putting up obstacles to counterterrorism raids in Africa and the Middle East,” according to CBS News. 

Patel also denied his role in the Nigerian rescue mission when Durbin asked him about it during their meeting last week.  Durbin, however, did not yet have the whistleblower’s information about the Yemen hostage deal, but he is expected to closely question the FBI nominee about that episode at Thursday’s confirmation hearing. 

After their meeting, Durbin issued a statement saying Patel has “neither the experience, the temperament, nor the judgment to lead the FBI.” In a speech on the Senate floor on Jan. 22, Durbin said that as the FBI “plays a critical role in keeping Americans safe from terrorism, violent crime, and other threats,” the person leading it “should be someone who is nonpartisan, solid, reliable, with demonstrated skill in law enforcement.”

Apart from these incidents, Patel’s loyalty to Trump and his views on the FBI and Trump’s second term are equally concerns to lawmakers. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told Maddow that Patel is “the last person you want as FBI director.” In addition to being “dishonest, untrustworthy, and utterly lacking in character — he will do anything in the service of Donald Trump,” he said, adding that Patel was the go-to person to do the dirty work no one else wanted to do.” 

The last person you want as FBI Director is Kash Patel.

It’s a position of immense, at times unreviewable, power.

And in addition to being dishonest, untrustworthy, and utterly lacking in character – he will do anything in the service of Donald Trump. Anything. pic.twitter.com/PksvByFXux

See Also

Indian Citizen Accused of Plotting to Assassinate Sikh Separatist Leader Extradited to U.S.

— Adam Schiff (@SenAdamSchiff) January 28, 2025

Kash Patel is maybe Trump’s most dangerous nominee. He wants to the use the FBI to target a political enemies list. Like Trump, he thinks the number one enemy of our nation isn’t China or Russia or rapists or murderers. It’s Democrats. pic.twitter.com/onbmbwhBQM

— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) January 27, 2025

Speaking to Maddow’s MSNBC colleague Jen Psaki, former national security adviser John Bolton said he believes Patel resembles a “climbing weed” in his ascension to the role. “You have to know what your job is and what your limits are. And Kash Patel sort of like a climbing weed doesn’t show respect for the limits,” Bolton said. 

Many of Patel’s podcast appearances are raising an alarm as well. Speaking to podcaster Shawn Ryan, Patel said he’d “shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one… and reopen it as a Deep State museum.” He would even “send the 7,000 employees in the building ‘across America’ to go be cops instead of having them in D.C.” 

He has also broadly vowed to retaliate against Trump’s “enemies” during a second stint in the White House. Steve Bannon on his “War Room” podcast said that he wanted to go after perceived enemies “not just in government but in the media.” They are going “to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel said, referring to the 2020 election. “We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly. … We’re putting you all on notice.” 

In “Government Gangsters” Patel had also laid out his vision for retribution against the FBI and Justice Department, calling for “clearing out the top ranks of the bureau, which he called a threat to the people,” according to The New York Times. He also wrote a children’s book, “The Plot Against the King,” in which he reveals “the major players and tactics within the permanent government bureaucracy, which has spent decades stripping power away from the American people and their elected leaders,” according to its synopsis. 

These concerns about Patel, and the subsequent grilling by the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, will come into light later this week during Patel’s confirmation hearing on Thursday, Jan. 30. Many from the Trump world believe that his confirmation will be a breeze, but it’s too soon tell what lies ahead for one of Trump’s controversial pick.