Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s pick for FBI director, claimed he would not go after his political enemies Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), despite Patel’s previous claims that he would.
In an interview with Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “This Week,” Fetterman said Patel told him he would use the FBI to go after Trump’s enemies, despite his comments promising to go after Trump’s political enemies .
“So I’m not going to go into details, but he will absolutely — that will never happen,” Fetterman said when asked about Patel’s previous comments vowing to go after Trump’s enemies. “It’s not… that’s what he’s saying.”
Fetterman, one of the few Democratic senators to meet with Trump’s Cabinet picks, said he has no regrets about meeting with some of the controversial selections. He added that he learned a lot about Patel during his meeting, including that he was a public defender and his own family’s immigration story.
“There must be a few [nominees] that I will vote yes, and there are some, maybe I will vote no,” Fetterman said. “But no one can accuse me of just saying I was closed-minded, or just saying no because Trump picked this person, or whatever.”
Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah), who will be sworn into Sen. Mitt Romney’s Senate seat in the new year, said he talked about Patel being blind to political preferences in his new role.
“For me, one of the most important things I needed to hear from Kash is that he would be blind to political beliefs because I know some of the things he said that have been attributed to him,” Curtis also said. in an interview with Karl on ‘This Week’.
He added: “And I don’t care if they’re Republicans or Democrats, and we’ve had some very specific conversations about that. And I wanted to make sure he would be blind to that.”
When asked about Republicans who argue that every senator should side with Trump and support his Cabinet picks because he has a mandate, Curtis said his son raised a similar issue on Thanksgiving.
“I got more votes than him in Utah. Does that give me a mandate?’” Curtis said he told his son.
“I think people forget the ‘advice’ part of advice and consent. “I can’t advise the president if I haven’t talked to these people thoroughly, if I haven’t researched everything about them, if I haven’t learned their strengths and weaknesses,” Curtis said. “And I think I owe that to the president. And I think the better my job is, the better president he will be.”
