Patel explains proposal to move more FBI employees throughout the country

FBI Director nominee Kash Patel told the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday that his comment about turning the FBI’s Washington headquarters into a museum was meant to convey his belief that more employees should be deployed across the U.S.

Mr. Patel made the comments, to the shock of the Washington, D.C., establishment, in a past online podcast interview.

When pressed about the remark by Sen. Christopher Coons, Delaware Democrat, Mr. Patel said that his statement about closing the agency’s Hoover Building was intended to highlight a larger point about where the 38,000 FBI employees should be working.

He said that “7,500 FBI employees work in the Washington Field Office in Hoover Building alone, if you increase that aperture just slightly to encompass the national capital region, that is 11,000 FBI employees work in the national capital region.”

“A third of the workforce for the FBI works in Washington, D.C.,” Mr. Patel said. “I am fully committed to having that workforce go out into the interior of the country, where I live, west of the Mississippi and work with sheriff’s departments and local officers, and having one agent prevent one homicide, and having one agent in Washington prevent one rape, and I will do that over and over and over again, because the American people deserve the resources, not in Washington, D.C., but in the rest of the country.”

Mr. Coons responded, “Mr. Patel, frankly, if that had been your statement, that would be something that would be defensible.”

The lawmaker told him,  “It’s the rest of it saying you’re going to turn it into a museum of the ‘deep state’ that causes repeated questions and concerns from people like myself.”