By Morgan Sweeney
The Center Square

While Democrats contend that FBI Director Kash Patel is running the agency as a political “vengeance campaign” for the president, Patel defends his reforms and Republicans insist that the bureau has changed for the better.

Tuesday and Wednesday, the Senate and the House held FBI oversight hearings where they grilled the new director on his seven-month leadership of the agency. The hearings lasted for a combined total of more than 10 hours, during which Patel responded to many tough questions from Democrats on personnel and resource decisions and his handling of the Epstein files.

However, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and chair of the House Judiciary Committee thanked Patel for bringing to light things that former Director Chris Wray had left in the dark.

“Because of the work of Director Patel, we learned that the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee and current United States senator leaked classified information,” Jordan said, referring to Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

Patel recently declassified the testimony of a 2017 Democratic staffer who said that Schiff had encouraged the disclosure of “false information” that “was going to be used to indict President Trump.” Jordan accused Schiff and former FBI Director James Comey of conspiring together to “sabotage and undermine” the president.

Schiff has repeatedly denied the allegations.

“But for this guy, Kash Patel – but for this guy – we would never have known this information,” Jordan said.

Both Jordan and Patel have characterized the FBI under Patel as one that has actively uncovered and disclosed things that previous administrations have tried to hide, bringing transparency to an organization they say has been weaponized against the American people.

“Director Wray didn’t tell us that there were 26 confidential human sources at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, even though he was repeatedly asked about that by members of this committee,” Jordan said.

Confidential human sources are registered informants who provide ongoing intelligence to the government. They are not government employees, nor are they always paid for their work. Twenty-six CHSs were present at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Of those, four entered the Capitol and 13 entered the restricted area around the Capitol. Only three of the 26, however, were asked to “report on specific domestic terrorism case subjects who were possibly attending” that day; the rest, according to the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, attended of their own volition and had not been given an assignment for the day.

Later, Jordan ran through a list of things he believes the FBI wrongly did under previous administrations, including spying on parents and school board meetings, targeting Catholics, censoring Americans, targeting people who shop at Cabela’s or buy Bibles and cooking the books on crime data.

He asked Patel if the FBI was currently engaged in any of those practices, to which Patel repeatedly responded “No, sir,” and “Nobody is targeted for their faith.”

In addition to the things Patel said the FBI isn’t doing, it has also achieved some impressive stats thus far into Patel’s term, according to the director. It has arrested 23,000 violent criminals, seized 6,000 illegal guns and found 4,700 child victims – all up tremendously from the previous year.

Patel also said the U.S. is on track to achieve “the lowest murder rate in modern U.S. history by double digits,” which he attributed to the skill of FBI agents but also to relocate agents from the nation’s capital to other cities across the country.

“In just a few short months, we have already unleashed 1,000 FBI personnel across this country. Every single state across this country is getting a plus up,” Patel said. “They do not need to be in Washington, D.C., so we’re sending them into the field to each and every one of your states. Because of that, crime is at an all time low.”

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., called Patel a “breath of fresh air” at Wednesday’s hearing.