President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, was confirmed by the Senate today, Thursday, February 20. The final vote was 51-49. Patel has been one of Trump’s more controversial nominees – along with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, and Pete Hegseth – but, as with each of these other examples, the Republican majority proved sufficient to the task.
The Controversial Kash Patel
As was the case with the rest of the previously named controversial nominees, the confirmation went mostly along party lines. Notably, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) voted “aye” in the cloture vote just before 11 a.m. Eastern, which ended 51-47. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Liza Murkowski (R-AK) were the only Republicans to vote “no.” John Boozman (R-AR) and John Fetterman (D-PA) didn’t vote on cloture.
When the confirmation vote itself came around just after 2 p.m., Collins and Murkowski joined the Democrats once again in opposing. McConnell, on the other hand, repeated his “aye” vote from the cloture. He had previously voted against the confirmations of Hegseth, Gabbard, and Kennedy – the only Republican to do so for the latter two, in fact, though Collins and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined him in opposing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s confirmation.
Outcome Inevitable?
Sen. Fetterman, who didn’t vote on cloture, unsurprisingly joined the rest of his fellow Democrats in voting against Mr. Patel. Boozman, the other non-voting senator in cloture, joined with the majority of Republicans. And thus, though Democrats and a couple of anti-Trump Republicans tried their hardest to shut down this confirmation – including by invoking a procedural rule in committee to “hold over” the vote a whole week – Kash Patel was confirmed, as expected, thanks to the weight of the GOP majority.
