VOA News | Friday, January 30, 2025 
Trump’s FBI chief pick, Kash Patel, insists he has no ‘enemies list,’ won’t seek retribution

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 nor desire and will not, if confirmed, go backwards,” Patel told a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing. “There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken by the FBI.” The reassurances were aimed at blunting a persistent line of attack from Democrats, who throughout Thursday’s hearing confronted Patel with a vast catalog of his incendiary statements. They said those statements raise alarming questions about his loyalty to the president, such as when he described some of the prosecuted Jan. 6 rioters as “political prisoners” and called for a purge of anti-Trump “conspirators” in the government and news media. “There is an unfathomable difference between a seeming facade being constructed around this nominee here today, and what he has actually done and said in real life when left to his own devices,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat. His colleague, Senator Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota, later added, “It is his own words. It is not some conspiracy. It is…Read more