Kash Patel Twists Himself in Knots on FBI Hires and Bestiality

FBI Director Kash Patel on Tuesday was forced to answer why his agency is no longer automatically disqualifying applicants who engaged in bestiality. What followed was a perplexing exchange that highlighted the deep absurdity of our current political moment.

Democratic Senator Dick Durbin kicked off the bestiality questioning.

“According to a memo issued this June, the FBI has lowered its hiring standards by dropping automatic disqualification for applicants who have stolen from [their employers], paid for sex, are engaged in bestiality. In July, you claim the FBI is ‘losing too many qualified candidates to the rigors of requirements from yesteryear,’” Durbin said. “Director Patel, do you believe those who have previously stolen from [employers], solicited sex, are engaged in bestiality are qualified candidates that the FBI is losing?”

“What we did was, we did not want to punish victims of bestiality—victims who were trafficked,” Patel replied, failing to clarify that the FBI was not in fact making it easier to hire people who had sex with animals. “We did not want to make it an automatic disqualification for the FBI to consider you if you are a victim of these awful, heinous acts.”

“He’s no longer protecting those who’ve been charged with bestiality, he’s protecting those who are victims. Just turned it upside down,” Durbin replied. “What I’m reading to you is you dropped automatic disqualification for applicants who have been engaged in bestiality, not victims of bestiality. Applicants who have engaged. Do you disagree with that?”

“Applicants who have engaged in bestiality means they were victims of bestiality because they were forced to do so,” Patel said. “And at this FBI, we are not going to criminalize and prevent victims from serving the United States of America and the premier law enforcement agency in the world.”

Even Republican Senator John Kennedy was stunned by Patel’s answer, arguing with the FBI director about the loosened hiring standards.

“What about the bestiality?” Kennedy said, genuinely confused.

“It automatically disqualified any individual who participated on either side of it,” Patel replied.

“Either side of what, the bestiality?”

“Yes.”

“So you disqualified the animal?”

“Well, we have great canines, but we’re not going to disqualify [them],” Patel said, a poor attempt at a joke.

“I’m trying to understand why you did this.... And I understand the game. People try to make you look bad. We do the same thing when the other party’s in office,” Kennedy continued. “Why would you even get into bestiality?”

“We are not into bestiality—”

“I know you’re not, but you changed the qualifications and mentioned bestiality. If if Joe participated in bestiality—not as the animal but as the human—don’t you think he ought to be disqualified?” Kennedy raised, still confused.

“If he voluntarily did it, sure. But if he was trafficked into it…”

“How do you involuntarily do it?”

“In a lot of these cases, when human traffickers … they don’t just traffic you for prostitution. They traffic you for degrading acts of all kinds,” Patel said. “And some of these individuals would go on to be law enforcement officers, who qualified to be law enforcement officers and later applied to the FBI.”

“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? Why do I wanna lead with my chin and get into bestiality?!’” Kennedy hollered.

“That was my initial response, senator. But they then explained to me and showed me cases in which people were forced into it and had applied to the FBI, and so I thought they should be considered. It’s not an automatic disqualification. That’s all,” Patel said, alluding to an apparently significant number of bestiality victims who want to join the FBI.

“Okay, all right. I think I understand. But you’re not telling us today that if a human being had sex with an animal, that they can still be an FBI agent,” Kennedy asked.

“No, they cannot.”

“In fact, they oughta be in jail right?”

“They all are.”

“Yeah, well. OK.”

Iran has inflicted heavy damage on U.S. installations across the Middle East since February, much more than had been previously disclosed.

On Monday, the Department of Defense inspector general released an official account of U.S. losses from February 28 to June 30 to Congress, and the findings are stark. The military lost dozens of aircraft, including drones, fighter jets, helicopters, and refueling tankers. Hundreds of buildings on U.S. bases were damaged or destroyed by Iran, including the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, which suffered extensive damage in a February 28 drone attack. U.S. munitions have been depleted, with supply chains to restock them hit with bottlenecks.

The U.S. spent close to $22.3 billion on munitions and $33.4 billion on the war in general in that four-month period. At least 11 U.S. service members were “killed in action,” while another seven were killed in “non-hostile events.” At least 417 U.S. troops were wounded in the war as of June 30. U.S. diplomatic facilities were damaged to the tune of $184 million in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

All of this doesn’t include the costs and damage sustained since hostilities resumed in July. Iran captured a U.S. submersible Dive-LD earlier this month and traded attacks on oil tankers with the U.S. last week.

As the war continues, the White House has requested $87.6 billion in emergency supplemental funding, including $67.1 billion for the Pentagon itself. Senior White House officials have warned President Trump behind closed doors that the war could stretch through the end of 2028. The war has hurt the global and U.S. economy and sent gas prices skyrocketing. Billions of taxpayers’ dollars are essentially being set on fire for a war that wasn’t even necessary to begin with.

The Senate advanced the nomination of Judge Matthew R. Byrne, a longtime member of the Federalist Society and an anti-abortion advocate, by a vote of 47–46. The tie-breaking vote: Maine Senator Susan Collins.

Donald Trump nominated Byrne for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. The upper chamber invoked cloture on Byrne’s nomination Monday, ending debate over the judge’s qualifications for the federal gig and proceeding toward a floor vote.

Byrne’s track record on women’s reproductive health is concerning. The Indiana native has several affiliations with anti-abortion groups, including Ohio Right to Life, Cincinnati Right to Life, Warren County Right to Life, the Center for Christian Virtue, and the Federalist Society.

Byrne elaborated on his beliefs in a 2020 judicial candidate survey, noting that he opposed abortion for any reason other than to protect the life of the mother, without any exceptions for rape or incest. He also believed the phrase “life of the mother” should be “strictly defined so as to avoid creating loopholes.”

When pressed over the summer to explain his rationale by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Byrne claimed that it would be “inappropriate for me to opine on this issue as your question asks me to comment on a matter of political controversy,” citing restrictions in the Code of Conduct for United States Judges as they relate to impartiality and political neutrality.

Byrne also stood in the way of the will of Ohio voters in 2023. He was the sole figure on the seven-judge Ohio Supreme Court who refused to dismiss a case involving the legislature’s six-week abortion ban, even after abortion was enshrined in the Ohio Constitution following a statewide voter referendum.

Collins too has a spotted history when it comes to women’s reproductive rights. The Maine Republican is in a vulnerable midterm position, but she has attempted to elevate her odds in the blue-leaning state by branding herself as an abortion rights proponent.

She has repeatedly lamented the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, writing in a statement at the time that it was an “ill-considered action.”

But actions speak louder than words: Collins had voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the high court in 2018. At the time, she told 60 Minutes she was “very comfortable that I’ve made the right decision.” Kavanaugh would ultimately side with the majority in the court’s 5–4 decision to overturn the abortion precedent.

President Donald Trump majorly crashed out Tuesday after the Supreme Court killed his efforts to restrict mail-in voting ahead of the midterm elections. 

In a lengthy tirade on Truth Social, Trump raged against “another bad decision” from the Supreme Court. 

“It is a big loss for Republicans, and America itself, and makes cheating by the Radical Left ‘Dumocrats,’ on Mail-In Ballots, a much easier thing to do—And now they have an open field to do so!” Trump wrote. “The Supreme Court has really let our Country down!”

The president continued to rant about the Supreme Court’s previous decisions to undo his disastrous “Liberation Day” tariffs and block his efforts to scrap birthright citizenship. 

“The damage done to America is incalculable, and they know this, just as everyone else does—It is an irreparable and unrecoverable harm!” Trump wrote. “The Court’s inability and unwillingness to do the right thing for our Country will go down, in a very negative way, in the annals of History.”

Trump claimed that certain justices were “petrified of these craved and depraved Democrats” and had been “cajoled by the Radical Left.”

“These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves, a Court that is costing the United  States Trillions of Dollars with shockingly bad rulings that are of such magnitude that it won’t be easily possible for our Country to recover or heal,” Trump wrote, referring to Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neil Gorsuch, all of whom Trump saw appointed to the bench. 

Kavanaugh wrote a brief concurring opinion, noting that “there is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service’s statutory authority.” But he said that “applying the rule in the 2026 elections would be arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act because state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections.”

Trump claimed that “it is not easy for me to write this criticism of the United States Supreme Court—it will likely cost me dearly for years to come—but I feel it my obligation and duty, as President, to do so for the America we love!” 

Of course, it is easy for the president, who has spent months railing against the Supreme Court, including its conservative justices. 

What would you think if your senator went nearly 100 days without speaking publicly? 

It’s been over three months since we have heard Senator Mitch McConnell’s voice, after he was found unconscious in his D.C. home in June and spent all summer collecting a paycheck while offering few updates on his health. His team kept that streak going after he finally returned to Capitol Hill on Monday for a vote, ensuring he appeared in a corridor in which press is banned from recording video—probably a strategic move given that McConnell still does not look lucid or coherent. Of course,  that would be easier to determine if he could just address the public—one of the most basic tasks of his job. 

“Reporters aren’t allowed to film in the hallways outside the Senate chamber, which is where this pic is, except for at weekly leadership press conferences held here,” HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery wrote Tuesday on X. “In other words, you can lose your credentials over this.… My best guess is his staff is avoiding all press in the halls and using more private ways into and out of the building.” 

Various GOP colleagues have claimed to have spoken to McConnell since June. But while rumors of his demise swirled, he released just two photos of himself and his wife, along with two press statements, none of which offered evidence that his language and cognition were adequate—something you might worry about with an 80-year old senator with years of health problems who was found passed out on the floor.

McConnell did apparently speak off camera. CNN’s Manu Raju described him as looking “frailer and his voice slower.” 

“I must admit, after two years, two decades, actually dodging your questions, I wasn’t sure how many of you would be here today, but I’m glad to see you,” the longtime senator reportedly said. “Time to get back to work, finish the job for this Congress. I’m here to work on the farm bill.… As I think you know, I have an ongoing issue in NATO and backing up our good friends who are totally in the fight against the Russians.” He didn’t take any questions. 

McConnell does look frail and spaced-out in the few videos we have of him.

McConnell’s speechless return was even panned by the far right. 

“Absolutely wild that after 3 months of being near death, one of the first things Mitch McConnell says he’ll now focus on is pushing for more war in Ukraine,” hard-line MAGA commentator DC Draino wrote. “Not lowering prices for middle class Americans. Not deporting illegals. Nope, he wants more foreign wars. Evil man.”