Kash Patel says he was called 'Sand N*gger' after J6, says America will be safer when there are less fentanyl overdoses

President Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI director Kash Patel faced questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, where he was pressed on matters regarding the president’s decision to pardon participants of the January 6 riot.

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin asked Patel to explain if Americans would be safer now that J6ers had been pardoned. His question pertained specifically to the case of Matthew Huttle, 42, who was shot by a sheriff's deputy after resisting arrest and getting into a physical altercation with an officer. Huttle was among the 1,500 people pardoned by Trump on the first day of his second term.

“America is safer because the 1,600 people have been given an opportunity to come out of serving their sentences and live in our communities again? 

“Senator, I have not looked at all 1,600 individual cases, I have always advocated for imprisoning those that caused harm to our law enforcement and civilian communities,” Patel said. “I also believe America is not safer because President Biden’s commutation of a man who murdered two FBI agents,” referring to FBI Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams were murdered by Leonard Peltier at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. President Biden commuted the life sentence of the man responsible, Native American activist Leonard Peltier, who was convicted in the 1975 killings of two FBI agents.

“Agents Coler and Williams families deserve better than to have the man who point-blank range fired a shotgun into their heads and murdered them, released from prison. So it goes both ways."

“Leonard Peletier was in prison for 45 years, he’s 80 years old and is sentenced to home confinement,” Durbin responded. 

“He killed two FBI agents” Patel said before Durbin asked the question again, “do you think America is safer because President Trump issued these pardons to 1,600 of these criminal defendants, many of whom violently assaulted our police in the Capitol?”

“America will be safe when we don’t have 200,000 drug overdoses in two years,” Patel responded. Patel said that he rejects all violence against law enforcement, including among J6ers. “I don’t agree with the commutation of any sentence of any individual who committed violence against law enforcement,” Patel stated clearly during the hearing. 

Later in the hearing, Patel was questioned by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, where he discussed some of the racist verbal abuse he experienced after his personal information was released by Congress.

“If you look at the record, from January 6, where I testified before that committee, because of my personal information being released by Congress, I was subjected to a direct and significant threat on my life and I put that information in the record. I had to move. In that threat, I was called a ‘detestable… sand n*gger, who had no right being in this country.’ ‘You should go back to where you came from,’ ‘you belong with your terrorist friends.’ That's what was sent to me, that's just a piece of it. But that’s nothing compared to what the men and women in law enforcement face every day, and that’s why they have my support,” Patel said.