Kash Patel, President Donald Trump‘s FBI director nominee, reignited a long-standing feud with Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) during his Thursday Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing.
Patel previously served on the staff for the House Intelligence Committee, where he authored a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act memo that alleged the FBI improperly secured warrants to surveil a former Trump adviser during the 2016 campaign.
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Schiff served as the ranking member on the committee and was one of the loudest voices on Capitol Hill claiming that Trump and his team had been compromised by Russia. The FISA memo is credited with partially debunking those claims.
Schiff opened his Thursday line of questioning by asking Patel about his role in promoting a song recorded by the “J6 Prison Choir,” a group of January 6 defendants.
However, the conversation quickly shifted to semantics after Schiff began reading the transcript of an appearance Patel made on Steve Bannon’s podcast.
“What we thought would be cool is if we captured that audio, and then, of course, had the greatest president, President Donald J. Trump, recite the pledge of allegiance,” Schiff said, quoting Patel’s appearance. “Then we went to a studio and recorded it, mastered it, digitized it, and put it out as a song now releasing exclusively on the War Room.”
“We, we, we. If you had nothing to do with it, Mr. Patel, why did you tell Steve Bannon all those listeners that you did?” he continued. “When we say ‘we,’ that includes you, doesn’t it Mr. Patel?”
Patel responded negatively: “Not in every instance.”
“Well, that’s new,” Schiff exasperatedly countered. “I always thought that we included the person who pronounced the word, but maybe not.”
The disagreement continued. Patel claimed that he had been using the “proverbial ‘we’ appropriately,” to which Schiff threw up his hands and exclaimed, “the royal ‘we,’ oh, I see.”
“So when you said ‘we,’ you didn’t really mean ‘you’?” Schiff said.
Patel replied: “Not unless you have a new definition for the word ‘we’?”
Seeking to make a point that Patel’s involvement with the Jan. 6 choir is disrespectful to law enforcement, including to Capitol Police, who fought off rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, Schiff ordered Patel to “turn around” and tell the officers present in the hearing that “you’re proud of what you did.”
“I’m looking at you,” Patel responded shortly.
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You can watch Patel’s hearing in full below.
