FBI Director Kash Patel and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) got in a fury-filled fight in the Senate Judiciary Committee during its hearing on oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with Durbin pressing Patel on why two agents were fired and Patel responding by noting that they were disgraces who hadn’t upheld their constitutional duties.
For reference, the two agents whose firings upset Sen. Durbin and caused the freakout were Chris Meyer and Walter Garidina. Garidina, in particular, seemed to have a friend in Durbin, who repeatedly berated Patel over Garidina’s firing, claiming that it was nonsensical and baseless, punishing a patriot who had loyally served his country.
In reality, Garidina was one of the agents involved in former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s witch hunt against President Donald Trump, which mainly consisted of using vicious rumors spread by the Clinton campaign in a desperate attempt to connect Trump to Russia. Further, Garidina was involved in the arrest of Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro, something that many conservatives pointed out was a nonsensical spectacle meant only to show the FBI was attacking Trump’s allies.
So, Garidina was fired for his involvement in those Deep State attempts to weaponize the federal law enforcement apparatus against MAGA, and it infuriated Durbin. Pressing Patel on the matter during the mid-September hearing in the Senate, Durbin asked, referencing the firings of Chris Meyer and Walter Garidina, “It appears that you terminated these two agents. Why?”
Firing back, Patel told him that the FBI’s internal personnel decisions weren’t the sort of thing he was going to review with a fine-toothed comb in the Senate Judiciary Committee, whatever the senator wanted, snapping, “I’m not going to get into personnel decisions that we made.”
Durbin then let rip with a nonsensical ramble about how Garidina was fired for no reason after loyally serving America, ignoring his involvement in some of the most horrific lawfare schemes of the century, schemes that seriously eroded the public’s faith in the FBI. He said, “So you’re not accountable for your decisions to take people who’ve served our country so admirably and terminate them without any cause?”
Responding, Patel noted that Durbin was pushing nonsense and that those fired from the FBI were fired because they did not uphold their oath of loyalty to the US Constitution, and instead engaged in awful lawfare schemes that were utterly disgraceful, ending his clapback by snapping that Durbin’s attempt to discredit the firing of agents who deserved it was “disgraceful.”
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Doing so, Patel snapped, “That’s a one-sided story. Anyone that has been terminated from the FBI…failed to meet the needs of the FBI and uphold their constitutional duties…And your attack on the current leadership of the men and women of the FBI is equally disgraceful.”
Durbing then tried to get in an insult of his own, but lacking creativity ended up just trying to throw Patel’s words back at him. He said, “It’s disgraceful when Mr. Meyer and Mr. Garidina, who served our country so well, are terminated apparently because of the rants of a podcaster.”
Watch their spat here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video