During Wednesday’s House Appropriations Committee hearing, Rep. Ben Cline (R-VA) questioned FBI Director Kash Patel about his push to move employees out of Washington D.C.
00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Director Patel, for being here.
00:04Director Patel, when President Trump nominated you to serve, he aptly called you an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution,
00:11who will bring back fidelity, bravery, and integrity to the FBI.
00:15You yourself have identified two important pillars in order to rebuild public confidence that include,
00:21first, streamlining operations at headquarters while bolstering the presence of field agents across the nation.
00:26I believe you just spoke to that.
00:27And two, second, ensuring that the FBI operates within the openness necessary to rebuild trust.
00:34It's a tall order, given the record of some in recent years, but I'm optimistic you'll be able to achieve it.
00:45I'd like to dig in on these pillars to get your perspective as we take your budget request into consideration and craft a final product.
00:51The President's skinny budget request rightly expresses its commitment to upholding the weaponization of the FBI that pervades the previous administration,
01:03which includes targeting peaceful pro-life protesters, concerned parents at school board meetings,
01:08and committed Catholics exercising their constitutionally protected rights to express their faith.
01:12You described to us the state of the Bureau from when you were confirmed.
01:17Today, you highlighted with our Attorney General more than 200 federal arrests for crimes targeting children.
01:24You also spoke to the reorganization necessary to meet the mission of the FBI.
01:28The President, in his skinny budget, also described reductions in, quote, pet projects from past administrations and duplicative agencies.
01:38In addition to speaking to moving employees out of D.C., can you expound upon this and how you plan to reorient the Bureau under this request?
01:47Absolutely.
01:49So part of the process is not just putting people out sporadically, throwing darts on the map.
01:54What we've done is we've taken a process with the careers at the FBI and said,
01:58where are some of the most violent crime places in America?
02:02And we've apportioned the plus-ups across every single state in this country based on percentages of where violent crime has been in an uptick on homicides,
02:10on gang violence, on drug overdoses across the country.
02:13And so, for instance, in the state of Virginia, we're going to give a plus-up approximately 20 folks from the FBI should we have our full budgetary requirements.
02:21And then the next step is, what do you do with them in the field?
02:24And what we do with them is what we've already done, Congressman Klein, in the state of – in the Commonwealth of Virginia, excuse me,
02:29is we stood up the first in the country interdiction task force where we brought in interagency partners from around the state of Virginia
02:37and the sheriff's offices and the FBI and our DHS partners and embedded them in an FBI building 50 miles that way
02:43and said, go to work because this is a hotbed of criminal activity.
02:50And in one month, the Virginia Homeland Security Task Force, as it was dubbed, arrested over 500 violent felons, 500 violent felons.
02:57And that wasn't by doing any new process or creating a new way to get after crime.
03:03It was done by letting good cops be good cops.
03:05And we want to take that plus-up and that model to every state in the country, not because I said it works, but because it actually worked.
03:13And we've been asked by other governors and other senators and other representatives to bring that to their states,
03:19and that's exactly what we want to do, and we're planning to do that here.
03:22I commend you for the accomplishments in the Commonwealth.
03:27Prior to the swearing-in of the current administration, a report was released detailing how federal law enforcement
03:32used its virtually unchecked access to private financial data to deputize the financial sector as a de facto investigative arm.
03:40In particular, under your predecessor, the FBI manipulated the suspicious activity report filing process
03:46by encouraging financial institutions to file SARs based on names and other criteria shared by the FBI.
03:51This process appears to bypass the requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act and allowed the FBI
03:57and possibly thousands of other law enforcement officials to obtain warrantless access to American-sensitive financial data
04:02through a process known as FinCEN query.
04:05Additionally, it appears that though 27,000 federal officials are able to download BSA data
04:11onto their own internal agency systems outside the purview of FinCEN regulators
04:16through the agency Integrated Access Program.
04:18You've been working well with the Judiciary Committee, where I also sit,
04:21to provide some transparency into the past actions of the Bureau before your tenure.
04:25Could you describe some of the work you've done on this to still achieve the major successes you've had
04:29on arresting violent criminals while preserving civil liberties of Americans?
04:33It's a balance that the FBI must strike every single day.
04:37To achieve the law enforcement capabilities, we've already talked about that,
04:41but to achieve the capabilities of restoring public trust and working with our overseers in Congress,
04:47we must actually work with our overseers in Congress.
04:50And every appropriate request for information, we've delivered upon.
04:54And then it is up to the men and women in Congress to say,
04:56we need you to look at X, Y, or Z.
04:58We don't think this is working.
04:59Can you change this regulation or policy?
05:01I'm not the expert on all of it, but what I can do is provide you with every documentation
05:05because you represent the men and women of America.
05:07And in my opinion, y'all are the custodians of the records that we hold,
05:11except in some very scarce national security instances.
05:13But we have provided, on a large basis, unredacted documentation
05:17for every appropriate request we've received.
05:19And we'll continue to do that because it allows us to work with Congress directly
05:22to improve the process and make sure there are no warrantless seizures of American persons' datas.
