By In another contentious Senate confirmation hearing for a Trump nominee, Kash Patel, the president’s nominee for FBI Director, strongly defended the use of presidential pardons while clashing with Senator Dick Durbin over clemency granted to January 6 defendants. The discussion quickly escalated into a broader debate over the limits and implications of executive clemency, with Patel redirecting the conversation to President Joe Biden’s own record on pardons.
Senator Durbin pressed Patel on Trump’s decision to issue blanket pardons and commutations for approximately 1,500 individuals charged in connection with the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Citing specific cases, including one involving a pardoned individual who later engaged in violent behavior, Durbin directly questioned whether Patel opposed the former president’s sweeping use of clemency by giving out blanket pardons.
Patel gave a response for the ages and flipped the script on the Democrat, writes The Daily Caller.
“Thank you ranking member, a couple of things on that,” Patel said. “One, the power of the presidential pardon is just that, the president … as we discussed in our private meeting senator, I have always rejected any violence against law enforcement and including in that group, [I have] specifically addressed any violence against law enforcement on January 6 and I do not agree with the commutation of any sentence of any individual who committed violence against law enforcement.”
Durbin then asked the nominee if he believes the U.S. is “safer” as a result of the commutations, leading Patel to point to Biden’s last-minute commutation of Native American activist Leonard Peltier who served a life sentence for the deaths of two FBI agents in June 1975. The now-former president commuted the sentences of 2,500 individuals, including two who were convicted of killing a police officer, on the Friday before he left office.
“Senator, I have not looked at all 1,600 cases, I have always advocated for imprisoning those who cause harm to our law enforcement and civilian communities. I also believe America is not safer because [of] President Biden’s commutation of a man who murdered two FBI agents. Agent Coler’s and Agent William’s family deserve better than to have the man who at point-blank range, fired a shotgun into their heads and murdered them released from prison. So it goes both ways,” Patel said.
Durbin attempted to defend Biden’s commutations by arguing that Peltier is an elderly man who is in home confinement. When he continued to press Patel on the pardoned defendants, the FBI nominee said the nation will be safe once the number of homicides and drug overdoses is reduced across the U.S.
Earlier in the month, Biden became the first president to ever pardon members of his immediate family who had been charged with crimes and pardoned other close relatives a “preemptive” pardon that gave them clemency for any past, nonviolent crimes they may have committed over the past decade, despite no accusations.
The New York Times explained that “President Biden pardoned five members of his family in his last minutes in office, saying in a statement that he did so not because they did anything wrong but because he feared political attacks from incoming President Donald J. Trump.
‘My family has been subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me — the worst kind of partisan politics,” he said in his last statement as president. “Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end.’
Mr. Biden’s action pardoned James B. Biden, his brother; Sara Jones Biden, James’s wife; Valerie Biden Owens, Mr. Biden’s sister; John T. Owens, Ms. Owens’s husband; and Francis W. Biden, Mr. Biden’s brother.
The White House announced the pardons with less than 20 minutes left in Mr. Biden’s presidency, after he had already walked into the Capitol Rotunda to witness the swearing-in of Mr. Trump before leaving the Capitol for the last time as president.”
Like RFK, Jr., Patel has shown a willingness to take on Democrats and their talking points rather than simply keep his head down in hopes of getting passed by the narrowest of margins.
Conservative supporters of Patel on social media praised him for his response.
“Brutal reality check,” political commentator and Confirm 47 executive director Camryn Kinsey posted on Twitter.
Durbin: “Is America safer after Trump pardoned 1,600 J6ers?”
Kash Patel: “America is not safer because Biden commuted the sentence of a man who m*rdered two FBI agents. The families deserve better.”
Brutal reality check. pic.twitter.com/HiTonEIPTo
— Camryn Kinsey (@camrynbaylee) January 30, 2025
In his opening remarks, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said, “Public trust in the FBI is low.”
“Only 41% of the American public thinks the FBI is doing a good job. This is the lowest rating in a century,” he continued, according to Fox News.
The Iowa senator praised Patel’s experience as a public defender and at the Justice Department, as well as his involvement in the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in 2017 to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia probe.
[Read More: RFK Jr. Gets Major Backup]
