UPDATE (Feb. 11, 2025, 3:48 p.m. ET): Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has asked the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate whether FBI director nominee Kash Patel perjured himself during his confirmation hearing last month when he said he was not aware of plans to fire FBI officials. Durbin said Tuesday that “multiple whistleblowers” indicated Patel “has been personally directing” the firings. A spokesperson for Patel dismissed the allegation as a “false narrative.”
Sen. Durbin has asked DOJ’s Inspector General to investigate potential perjury by Kash Patel, I want to add that in addition to his live testimony at his 1/30 hearing, Patel submitted written answers to questions posed by more than a dozen senators on the Judiciary Committee after that hearing. Those questions includes multiple variations of inquiries about his knowledge/awareness of and participation in the FBI firings—and Patel’s answers were not received by the Committee until Feb. 3.
In the wake of FBI director nominee Kash Patel’s confirmation hearing last week, senators of both parties posed written questions to him to further explore his past comments, particularly with respect to the 2020 election and Jan. 6, 2021, and, perhaps more significantly, assess his response to a slew of recent firings within the FBI.
MSNBC has obtained those questions — known as “questions for the record” or “QFRs” — and Patel’s answers, which comprise 174 pages and reflect inquiries from a dozen members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. According to a source familiar with Patel’s nomination process, his responses were provided to the committee on Monday.
In his responses, Patel repeatedly denied any involvement in or direction of any of the FBI firings that have taken place since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, including those that have occurred since Patel’s Jan. 30 confirmation hearing.
Asked more broadly whether, for example, he discussed with anyone on the Trump transition team or in the current administration the demotion or removal of officials who were still with the FBI as of Trump’s inauguration, Patel responded, “Not that I recall.” Similarly, when asked whether he knew before his Jan. 30 testimony that “scores of senior FBI officials and rank-and-file agents assigned to the federal cases against President Trump and the Jan. 6 defendants have been told to resign or be fired,” Patel replied, “Not that I recall.”
Patel’s responses remained the same — “Not that I recall” — when asked whether, at the time of his Jan. 30 testimony, he was aware of personnel decisions impacting specific, named individuals or “any other plans to dismiss any FBI personnel” or conduct evaluations or reviews of those FBI personnel who worked on Jan. 6 cases or those related to Trump.
Asked to comment on these responses, a spokesperson for Sen. Dick Durbin, the Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, referred MSNBC to a Feb. 3 letter from Durbin and other committee Democrats to Patel. That letter — which recounts Patel’s pledge, during his hearing, to protect all FBI employees against political retribution — requests that Patel provide records of his communications since Election Day with the transition team, the White House, and/or both acting and nominated DOJ and FBI leaders regarding the “removal, resignation, or reassignment” of career civil servants in DOJ, including the FBI.
The letter also calls on Patel to provide the requesting senators with any communications he has had with that group over the same time frame regarding investigations or prosecutions relating to Jan. 6 case or the Mar-a-Lago documents case.
The QFRs contain a handful of other questions to which Patel also responded, “Not that I recall.” Those questions include:








