House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan on Wednesday opened FBI Director Kash Patel’s second Congressional oversight hearing in two days by going after a former colleague, Sen. Adam Schiff.
“Why would the head of the Intelligence Committee, the chair of that committee, who’s supposed to be guarding our secrets — why would he be encouraging the leaking of classified information?” Jordan, the Ohio Republican, said in his opening remarks regarding Schiff, the California Democrat who was elected to the Senate last year.
Republicans, including Patel, have accused Schiff of moving to leak damaging information about President Donald Trump in his former capacity as chair of the House Intelligence panel.
Patel, a former staffer on House Intelligence who once worked to discredit Schiff’s investigation into Russian election interference, went after Schiff directly during his appearance before Senate Judiciary the day before, calling him a “liar,” “the biggest fraud to ever sit in the United States Senate” and “a political buffoon at best.”
A Schiff spokesperson said in a statement that “Kash Patel’s smear against Senator Schiff is absolutely and categorically false, and is just the latest in a series of defamatory attacks from the President and his allies meant to distract from their plummeting poll numbers and the Epstein files scandal.”
Schiff, who led Trump’s first impeachment, has become a prominent political target for the Trump administration, and Trump has repeatedly levied attacks against him since his inauguration. The Justice Department has also begun probing his mortgage activities.
In his opening remarks Wednesday, Patel also signaled he was prepared to project a defensive posture in his testimony in the House as he did in the Senate, particularly when challenged by members of either party.
“If you want to criticize me, bring it on, but do not attack the brave leaders in the field,” he told House lawmakers. “I’m dedicated to restoring the trust in the mission and the integrity of the FBI, and we cannot do so without Congressional oversight.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, contended that the Senate hearing underscored Patel’s “explosively volatile temper.”
“The intractable problem is that you are running the FBI not as a law enforcement agency charged with keeping the American people safe, but as a political enforcement agency working directly for the President’s vengeance campaign,” said Raskin, a Maryland Democrat.
Both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees have scheduled their annual oversight hearings with the FBI director at a watershed moment for the agency — and for Patel’s tenure as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer.
His handling of materials in the case of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the manhunt for conservative political activist Charlie Kirk’s killer, and recent FBI personnel departures have all prompted renewed questioning of Patel’s leadership.
In both his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday and House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Patel has been forcefully defensive, brandishing how his agency handled the Kirk investigation and crime at large across the country.
