Trump's FBI chief pick, Kash Patel, insists he has no 'enemies list' and won't seek retribution

WASHINGTON (AP) — Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, insisted to deeply skeptical Democrats on Thursday that he did not have an “enemies list” and that the bureau under his leadership would not seek retribution against the president’s adversaries or launch investigations for political purposes.

“I have no interest, no desire and will not, if confirmed, go backwards,” Patel said at a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing at which support for the nominee broke along starkly partisan lines. “There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken.”

The reassurances were aimed at blunting a persistent line of attack from Democrats, who throughout the hearing confronted Patel with a vast catalog of prior incendiary statements on topics that they said made him unfit for the director’s job and raised alarming questions about his belief in conspiracy theories and loyalty to the president. Patel, for his part, sought to distance himself from his own words, accusing Democrats of taking them out of context, highlighting only snippets or misunderstanding his point.

The focus by Democrats on Patel’s rhetoric, at a time when the FBI is facing urgent national security concerns including Chinese espionage and a heightened terrorism threat, underscored the extent of their fears that his own words could foreshadow destabilizing upheaval inside the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency and bring the bureau into alliance with a Trump White House.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-fbi-patel-senate-f3465219e265df1598e15da3ad0e8a07

Sure and RFK jr. isn't anti-vax, Pete Hegseth does not have a drinking problem and Donny is an Olympic class athlete.