NEW: Senate Confirms Kash Patel as FBI Director, 51/49

J.D. Vance didn’t need to cast the tie-breaking vote — but it came close. Both Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins voted against confirming Kash Patel as the new director of the FBI, but Mitch McConnell voted in favor, allowing Patel to take office by the narrowest Senate vote thus far for a Donald Trump nominee:

Every Senate Democrat voted against Patel. They were joined by two Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who said they believed Patel was too overtly political to lead the nation’s top law enforcement agency.

“Mr. Patel’s recent political profile undermines his ability to serve in the apolitical role of Director of the FBI,” Collins said ahead of the 51-49 vote.

Patel’s confirmation marks a tectonic shift at the bureau, as he plans to adjust its focus from terrorism and counterintelligence work back toward its historical mission of fighting violent crime. His priorities, partisan approach and open criticism of the agency he will lead set him apart from most every other director in the bureau’s history.

Given the political nature of the FBI over the past decade — and much of its first 50 years or so — one might think Patel to be a natural fit for the position. It certainly does send a signal that business as usual is over at the FBI, although what form that will take remains to be seen. Adam Schiff, who kept insisting that he’d personally seen evidence of Trump’s collusion with Russia and leaked false information while serving on the House Intelligence Committee, now fulminates in the Senate over [ahem] “trust”:

About a half-dozen Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee gathered outside FBI headquarters earlier Thursday in a last-ditch plea to derail his confirmation.

“This is someone we cannot trust,” said Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). “This is someone who lacks the character to do this job, someone who lacks the integrity to do this job. We know that, our Republican colleagues know that.”

This is a clear case of projection. Schiff spent two terms in the House channeling Sen. Joe McCarthy and promising to prove that Trump was a Russian asset, while Devin Nunes and Patel exposed his lies and prevarications. For Schiff, this is all about revenge, not public trust.

Nonetheless, Patel does need to demonstrate that he can rise to the occasion and truly take the FBI in a non-partisan direction. He tried to back away from heated partisan rhetoric in the past, but firmly stuck to his plans to reform the bureau and bring it back to a strictly law-enforcement approach:

“I’ve overwhelmingly said multiple times that 98% of the FBI is courageous, apolitical warriors of justice. They just need better leadership,” Patel told senators during the hearing.

He touched only briefly on his desire to protect the country from national security threats, namely Chinese espionage, terrorism and Iranian aggression. But he repeatedly said his goal was to “let good cops be cops,” and spoke of sending more agents from Washington into the field to fight crime.

That partly depends on Congress, however. The FBI as a law-enforcement agency makes sense. Having the FBI do counterintelligence at the same time sounds good in theory, but in practice has been a disaster. The best approach would be to divorce those responsibilities from the FBI and to hand them off to another agency that’s less tempted to use the combination of both powers for political purposes. Unless and until Congress acts to do so, however, Patel is stuck with both missions and needs to demonstrate real integrity in keeping a nonpartisan balance. 

Perhaps Patel can start working on a proposal for Congress to address this. That would be a very good step toward real reform and would help build confidence in his leadership. It’s his show now; let’s keep a close eye on how Patel performs.