House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) attacked Patel during his opening remarks at a hearing on the FBI, accusing the director of sharing unflattering similarities to J. Edgar Hoover, who led the agency for decades.
“You shared J. Edgar Hoover’s dangerous obsession with blind loyalty over professionalism and effective public policy,” Raskin told Patel, suggesting Patel holds “blind loyalty” to Trump. “For you, it’s blind loyalty to Donald Trump in keeping his secrets. During your confirmation, it was widely noted on all sides that your primary qualification was your unwavering loyalty to Trump.”
Raskin also congratulated Patel “on being a breakthrough in this sense and being a beneficiary of the civil rights movement that opened up the FBI and the Federal workforce to lots of people who never would have been hired in its first decades.”
