The director of the FBI has been grilled in Congress over a rule change that removed bestiality as an automatic disqualifier for job applicants.
The FBI had specific rules preventing people who had engaged in bestiality from working for the bureau.
FBI Director Kash Patel has been accused of incompetence by Democratic senators. AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
But those rules were overturned by Director Kash Patel in June.
Patel explained the change during a Senate hearing on Tuesday.
“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 criminalise and prevent victims from serving the United States of America and the premier law enforcement agency in the world.”
“It automatically disqualified any individual who participated on either side of it,” Patel said.
“The side of what? The bestiality?” Kennedy replied.
“So, you disqualified the animal?”
Patel said somebody had recommended the bestiality disqualifier be removed from the hiring process.
“I say this with respect, the person who recommended it, why didn’t you just say, what planet did you parachute in from?” Kennedy said.
“All of this stuff has really hurt the FBI.”
Patel was grilled in a Senate hearing. AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
The hiring rules were also changed to allow people who had admitted to hiring sex workers or stealing from an employer to join the FBI.
Democratic Senator Dick Durbin pressed Patel on the changes to hiring standards.
“In July, you claimed the FBI is ‘losing too many qualified candidates to the rigours and requirements from yesteryear’,” Durbin asked.
“Director Patel, do you believe those who have previously stolen from employers, solicited sex, or engaged in bestiality are qualified candidates the FBI is losing?”
Patel replied that he did not want to punish victims of bestiality, including victims who were trafficking.
Under the new standards, the FBI can hire someone who has engaged with a sex worker, provided it has not happened more than three times and not within the past ten years.
Those who stole from their employers can be hired if it happened more than three years ago.
In his opening statement, Durbin described Patel as “the least qualified and most partisan FBI director in our nation’s history”.
The hearing got more heated when Democratic Senator Cory Booker called Patel a “thug”.
“We don’t have an FBI director, we have a lackey here – and frankly, he’s not even a good lackey, he’s an incompetent lackey,” Booker said.
“He’s like an 18-year-old kid who wants to join a fraternity that he could never be a member of, doing keg stands and chugging with friends.
“He’s an embarrassment to the agency and wouldn’t qualify even to be an FBI agent.”
Kash Patel celebrating with America’s ice hockey team at the Olympics. X
Booker was referencing Patel’s trip to the Winter Olympics this year, in which he was seen downing a beer in the locker room of the American men’s ice hockey team after their gold medal win.
“This is a mockery and a sham,” Booker said.
“We have a rogue agent intimidating the press, violating people’s First Amendment rights, and doing everything the president has.”