‘You have no timeline?!’ Senator gobsmacked by FBI director Kash Patel showing up at budget hearing without a budget
During a Senate hearing to review the FBI’s FY2026 budget request, Director Kash Patel was forced to admit that, despite the law requiring it, he had no such request ready to review.
This surprising development came during an awkward back-and-forth with Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), the ranking Democrat and Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which oversees and approves budget requests.
Senator Murray reminded the FBI Director that the budget request was legally required “last week,” and after the director responded, she surprisedly added, “And your answer is you just understand you’re not going to follow the law?”
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/you-have-no-timeline-senator-gobsmacked-by-fbi-director-kash-patel-showing-up-at-budget-hearing-without-a-budget/Open linkView original on lemmy.world840
Comments128
Hold him contempt or stop clutching your pearls.
I'm sure Schumer will move quickly to form a search committee to form a task force with plans to complete a strongly worded letter by late 2027.
that strongly worded letter will contain upwards of 12 strong questions. that way you'll know he's taking this serious
He's super-cereal!
After a prolonged investigation taking many months and costing the taxpayer millions, the search committee regretfully concludes that they have been unable to find their balls.
As opposed to what? Asking DOJ to issue a warrant for the director of the FBI?
I’m so tired of the theatrical outrage and shock and surprise. Of fucking course they’re working in bad faith. But no - let’s give all the fucking fascists the benefit of the doubt. You’re not allowed to be fucking surprised by this. It was all in the playbook. The playbook has been published openly on the internet since early 2020.
Its not tin-foil hat, it's Putin. Its always Putin, using Skum and HitlerPig as his muscle.
When will people truly internalize that the two biggest foreign Sociopathic Oligarchs, have partnered up with the most prolific traitor in American history? None of them have any loyalty or patriotism toward America, and only see us as a big, rich, fat, lazy target to be ruthlessly exploited and looted, and it's happening in real time before our eyes.
All they care about is money, and either Putin is paying them directly out of the Russian Treasury (HitlerPig would rape and murder his own mother for far less than a billion bucks, and Putin could order a lot more than that), or they've cut a deal to split the booty like the pirates they are.
When it's not working, it's working.
I feel like, if this were true, wtf are literally all the other countries' intelligence and agencies doing to prevent such a thing?
I'd like to think China, while mostly on Russia's side, would not want Putin having control over the U.S.
ofc most of NATO wouldn't want that either.
Is every other country incompetent, complicit, or is the U.S. just becoming its own oligarchy?
The US was warned about Russian influence before Trump’s 2016 election by intelligence agencies in Great Britain, Germany, Canada, France, Estonia, Poland, and Australia- and those are just the ones that spoke out publicly.
They were called “fake news” and “DNC operatives.”
Don’t pretend the rest of the world was surprised by this.
Well, I'm glad they spoke out publicly. Maybe they (World Governments) can put in a bit more elbow grease next time to prevent one of the world's largest militaries from being bought by an authoritarian country at discount prices.
The CIA can destabilize governments across the world.
Russia can take over U.S. "Democracy" right in front of the world.
I guess nobody has inside men anymore. Does Germany, France, Britian not have a CIA of their own?
My point is that these World Governments have kinda gotten soft if this is where we're at. Hell, the fact that Ukraine is still at war and not being physically backed is proof enough (though stepping in w/ Russia holding U.S. means that ship has sailed).
So.. the fault lies with rest of the world who should have worked harder to save the US from itself while Americans plugged their ears and gave them the finger?
Oh they’re exceptional, all right
I mean, the fault lies with everybody - as we've expressed, the writing was on the wall the whole time.
I don't expect the ignorant children to prevent the adults from driving the car off the bridge (that's a metaphor for most Americans).
Are you proposing more election interference...?
I mean...if it prevents a fascist takeover...
I think respecting another country's sovereignty is better.
china is frenemies with russia, they are definitely not on thier side. China does have russia by the balls though, since they bought up some of siberia.
It's not Putin. Plenty of home grown idiocy in the US. At the most, the Trump admin is a loosely bribed bunch of useful idiots.
Of course it's Putin, and denying it marks you as an unserious person.
America (amd the Democratic world) has been at war with Russia since 1918, whether you want to admit it or not. This was an unarguable fact by EVERYONE ON THE PLANET for the entire 20th century. It was only when HitlerPig came along with his close ties to Putin that it became a controversial opinion.
Grow up and get some Critical Thinking Skills.
Lib qanon.
Except that its all documented history. Just because its a conspiracy doesn't mean it isn't true. Plenty of conspiracies have been true, and Russia's long-term targeting of America has long been documented. It's not like it's a secret.
Trump has had an ongoing relationship with Russia going back to the Soviet days. He's a filthy traitor, and the Putin and Skum aren't even American. The only people who are denying it are idiotic MAGA Nazi traitors.
I doubt a single one of our Democratic party elected officials actually sat down and read all of Project 2025.
Don't you remember all the stuff that Biden did to prevent this? \s
I think some of the young progressives probably did, but I still think the count is probably in the single digits.
That’s not what Israel is paying them to do
It's not just AIPAC that's the main problem (although it absolutely is a problem); the Democrats and Republicans both get massive amounts of "donations" from large PACs (including AIPAC), corporations, billionaires, etc. that they choose to represent them by any means necessary, since that's who they get their paycheck from.
The only way to fix corruption for good is to permenantly make it so that corruption can never happen to begin with. Few individuals/stock traders shouldn't be allowed to own/influence these massive corporations; they need to all be forcibly converted to worker-owned coops (which will also abolish the stock market), and we also need a hard wealth cap (something like $50 million tied to inflation in both liquid and non-liquid assets). Imagine if you got to both vote for who your manager is and also vote to fire them if they do a bad job.
Any system that is still capitalist by nature (like social democracy) will still have an elite few who are able to buy influence. Capitalism actively encourages this to occur by its very nature (as pro-capitalists would say: "greed is good")
AIPAC is more of a symptom of a larger problem.
The fucking clownshow continues.
This is you going in to your Professor's office hours to ostensibly turn in your final paper for a course, it is half your grade in the class, and you actually just sit down and explain you are 'still working on it' and 'can i get it to you maybe by the end of next academic quarter?'
I am honestly so, so relieved by this high level public idiocy.
I really am not kidding.
I've struggled with impostor syndrome much of my life.
All gone. Done. No more.
I am legitimately more competent than almost everyone in this administration at their own jobs, despite the fact that I hardly have any relevant credentials to most of their positions.
Don't sell yourself short. I bet you're more competent than everyone in this administration.
I am only hesitant to agree because:
1: I have terrible social anxiety (yay autism and trauma)
2: I assume, at least, some of them are competent people... at... at least something.
That being said, I also cannot think of a single one who falls into category 2.
Hrmm.
There are a couple evil yet competent people in the administration. Russell Vought is one, a hire direct from the Heritage Foundation. Another is Stephen Miller. Heritage seems to be full of actually competent yet completely evil men. But I guess that what happens when a majority of your funding comes from oil, gas, and now tech barons.
Peter Thiel might be the most competent of the bunch. He built the Palantir surveillance network, and seems content being in the distant background while the other oligarchs act in the open. Hopefully, he isn't forgotten if we have a French Revolution.
Not only are you personally more competant than anyone in this administration, but you're also not a Nazi (I'd imagine), which alone already makes you better than any Republican politician.
The fact that you think you might not be competant at the job is one of the things that makes you more competant (because you actually think before you act/speak).
Its the age old problem of government:
Anyone who strongly desires to be in a position of power likely is not the kind of person you would want in a position of power.
I appreciate you saying that though. =D
Impostor syndrome is basically the inverse of the Dunning Kruger effect, as it is known in popular culture.
If you actually read the actual studies by Dunning and Kruger, and subsequent work based off of it:
Idiots consistently wildly overestimate their correctness.
... But people who actually are quite correct, quite competent... well they actually tend to self evaluate themselves as somewhat less competent than they actually are.
Because humility and a fundamental idea of 'i could be wrong' are foundational to a rigourous system of critical thinking that can actually allow for that true, detailed knowledge to be gained.
So, ironically, Dunning Kruger effect also describes more or less impostor syndrome, its just that that isn't the aspect of those kinds of studies that pop culture focuses on...
So we now have a situation where understanding of the 'Dunning Kruger effect' itself is subject to the 'Dunning Kruger effect.'
You can recognise your own weaknesses, that already makes you more competent than most government officials in most countries.
My work involves emptying dog shit bins in public parks, and I'm also pretty sure I could do a better job than this guy. We could swap roles - except that I couldn't bring myself to kiss trump's flaccid saggy butt. I'll stick with the dogshit bins - I've got standards.
I'm saving your comment because this was my exact experience, too, and I'm glad to see this silver lining occurred for others.
These people truly are mentally children, running around playing grown-up. Meanwhile, when I was an actual child, I was expected to be held to the same standards as grown-ups by Boomer parents (and as you likely know, autism + adults not explaining their social expectations = very difficult childhood.)
It's been a trip to see high-level government absolutely sucking at skills that I struggled with for ages, skills that I have been made to feel bad about for lacking. I work harder any day that I go out into public, even if it's my day off, than any of these privileged losers ever seem to. I have to be extremely mindful of myself - my posture, my tone of voice, my volume, my face (can't have resting bitch face), on top of whatever other tasks I have to do, every second of every minute that I'm around other people. I'm also expected to be aware of and mindful of the feelings of those around me, so I have to also accurately rate their posture, tone, etc. Fail any of these things, and anything I say or do has a chance of being misinterpreted poorly. It's fucking exhausting, and I wish there were more understanding and acceptance that allowed us to relax.
These are part of a whole set of skills - situational awareness, social awareness, self awareness - that the modern GOP appears to completely lack. They were raised without needing to apply them, and we can see evidence of their privileged backgrounds whenever they pull some tone-deaf stunt and still expect approval. Whenever I'm feeling down, I can remind myself that I may not be perfect, but at least I'm not as out-of-touch as they are.
... And I am saving this comment, as you have well voiced the madness of all of this experienced in particular by high-functioning / highly-intelligent Autistic children.
A short summary of how Ive felt much of my life would be: constantly being mocked and belittled by hypocritical idiots who are too stupid to realize they are hypocritical and have totally logically inconsistent worldviews, and inconsistent applications of them... as well as just that they are idiots in the sense of just being objectively wrong about most things.
...
Yeah, it is quite cathartic to realize that masses of the general public are themselves, and voted into power officials who... are just literally schoolyard bullies, absurd, malignant, anti-social narcissists who literally cannot concieve that they could ever have any flaws or ever be in error, who are actually incapable of empathy, of mirroring emotions of others experiencing or describing something that did not happen to them personally.
...
I no longer mask.
There is no point, and it is too exhausting to be expected to be some kind of mind reader.
If people can't actually succinctly verbalize their thoughts, or express them in writing, that's their problem, not mine.
Just say what you actually mean.
Use your words, and know what those words actually mean.
I am done learning how to be an interpreter for every different person I meet.
Idiots and the uninformed love bullies, they assume they must be bullying people that deserve it, instead of just whoever makes them feel stronger.
It is why I wear a mask all the time now. I don't have to remember how to emote correctly, which is very helpful since I am autistic.
This has been my experience... forever.
Not autistic, but light sensitivity, tinnitus and chronic pain make me look angry basically all of the time. And since I've had all of those since I was a kid, I've been hearing variations of "what's wrong", "are you OK" and "are you angry" for the past 45 or so years.
I now just describe it as resting bitch face and let people do with that as they will.
Also, "empaths" fucking suck. Spare me your vast insights gleaned from dodgy authors. I just don't care.
EDIT: Wow, my internet dropped or something as I was posting this, duplicated a few times, and my clipboard has now just lost the text I tried to copy paste out of it... derp.
I think we might have a Anacyclosis situation going on here. It is an hypothesis that posits that civilizations are like animals - they are born, mature, age, die, and replaced by their children. Hopefully, you, I, and others who suffer from the Regime, will recreate the United States into something worthy of pride.
Children, in this context, would mean new institutions that arise after the prior generation has fallen. Such as the American government after British rule had been destroyed in the colonies, the assorted dynasties in China, or the conquest of Constantinople by a caliphate. In any case, the scale isn't particular important. The gist is that institutions become increasingly corrupt and ineffective over time, until fresh blood topples the power structure and replaces it with something that has vitality. Over time, the new becomes old and is replaced in turn. It could be decades or centuries, but eventually stratification simply weighs down a society too much for establishment leadership to continue. The loss of failing leadership is rejuvenating to the people, even if culture is lost in the process.
Obviously not everything would track cleanly, but that is fundamentally the case for anything that involves human action. Be it cults, empires, or households, deterioration tends to be a thing. It is just that the biggest of these have the most research and records, because they are too big and obvious to miss.
You're right, there are definitely individuals who do it all as performance, like how Boris Johnson purposely made himself look shabby as part of his image.
I don't believe that's the case for every politician. I do, however, believe there are more "men behind the curtain," so to speak, who we don't see but who know exactly what they're doing. Even if those on camera are fools, the people making up "the face" of the organization aren't necessarily the same people making up "the brain." Which brings us back to your point - it's important to pay attention to more than the façade these people express. The oligarchs pulling the strings are well-practiced in this game.
In fairness, neither do they.
...yeah. Honestly, this is simultaneously disturbing and encouraging.
On one hand, Random Joe is more competent than Trump Regime officials. On the other, Rebellious Joe is more competent than Fascist officials. It is weird for the venn diagram to be a circle like this.
The "education" system is almost entirely based on privilege and indoctrination. Politicians are the cream of the crop.
Why would any of Trump's administration care? None of them have been held accountable for anything, except to Trump.
They aren't even held to account, they're mostly abused for trying to survive the abuse.
Hey us poor whites get screwed over too! It’s not a race war (only) - it’s a class war.
Yes agreed, non whites suffer from racism and structural inequality no doubt and have it harder. I had actually read the other person’s post wrong - they had meant that poor was covering all poor of any color. I had thought they were adding up the descriptors to describe one subset (poor and disabled and non white)
yeah, Trump was accountable af, given that he ia now thw president again
I meant his henchmen are accountable only to Trump, not that Trump was the only one held accountable.
my bad
Why aren't we deporting this law breaker?
Who is "we"?
I'm not deporting people to foreign concentration camps for "breaking the law" because that's extremely wrong.
As far as the fash, they don't deport their own... yet.
Soooooo, zero budget for the FBI then.
No, they get a contigency budget of 20 bucks and this pallet of expired lunchables.
Sorry, due to 'gestures vaguely' whatever, they're expired, moldy Feastables, brought to you By Mr Beast Burger
Those expired lunchables will be worth a fortune when there's nothing left at walmart!
Pallet of Mr. Beast Lunchly
Does that mean they won't be able to notice people organizing against the Trump administration? Or is ICE the new FBI (do they have the capabilities)?
They're already trying their best to ignore it.
By organizing, I mean to do things that would materially affect economic life, such as strikes, mass protests, road blockades etc.
How does worsening economics help defeat Trump? His campaign was basically only things that destroy the economy and he is following through on it.
His campaign are things that destroy the economy for the majority, not for the oligarchs that surround him. The oligarchs live off the labour of the many. Americans need to deny these oligarchs their labour.
So then shouldnt any effective economic protest/sabotage be specifically targeting thise oligarchs and not the broad general populace?
There's no way to avoid the latter for large scale protests. Strikes are the most effective form of protest known to humanity and obviously cause some disruption. But on top of that, they could target oligarchs, say, by blockading their mansions.
Fascists are inefficient.
He's probably waiting for orders on how to do it, like everyone waiting for Hitler to wake up before countering the Normandy invasion.
And when Hitler woke up his first order was for breakfast and he chilled a bit before finally having his meeting. He misread the situation so fucking bad it is a miracle that even the enlisted men guarding him didn't scream at his face.
BTW. The Allies took into account Hitler's sleeping habits when timing their invasion. No joke.
I want to say he even habitually hanged/demoted/sent people who woke him to the Eastern Front.
President Xi, I am sending you Trump's golf schedule by way of TikTok coded message.
Please, President Pooh-Bear, you're our only hope.
Wait, didn't this guy quit by not showing up to work for a few weeks? Am I thinking about another person?
He quit his second job by not showing up.
A guy living in an oligarchs mansion in Vegas was appointed director of 2 federal law enforcement agencies.
You are thinking of someone else, this is the guy who writes deranged children's books where Trump is the king.
Nah, he was removed from his position as head of the ATF. They just tried to make light of it.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/kash-patel-removed-acting-atf-director-replaced-by-army-secretary-sources-say-2025-04-09/
Shit, I missed that.
"flood the space" is their goal. Hit you with 1,000 shit things, and hope 100 stick. We will miss a lot. Banon said it is was their goal and they cherish it. Problem is that if they were opposed by such an enemy they would say there is one solution, end them. Most everyone in this country left of MAGA is against slaughtering criminals. Hence the criminal and his thugs in the white house. A man who commits 32 felonies is looked at by a base as better than a person who commits 1 misdemeanor. The misdemeanor, trying to exist, the felonies, stealing from the banks we paid out of pocket to bail out of bankruptcy. The "criminals" paid 94 billion in taxes or some shit in 2022, we are paying more than that to remove them from this country, to get no returns. 94 billion is more than we paid out defense companies to build new weapons to replace old weapons we wanted to retire and sent to Ukraine to defend against our worst enemy for the entirety of our existence. Not even 2% of our defense budget went towards it. Yet the most senile old man that has ever stepped foot in the white house is ordering us to stop following up sanctions on the people HE OWES MONEY too.
Make America Great Again should clearly mean to remove him from the white house, as well as Johnson and Vance. Tax the rich and actually build back the middle class. Anyone who believes in capitalism should never believe in Johnson
In the photo, the fucker looks like a little kid who didn't do his homework and got caught in the lie.
Hardly the brightest and the best.
My dog ate the budget!
I feel like he always looks like that. He always looks like he's guilty and looking for an exit or coming up with the next lie. I can't imagine living like that
I'm going to guess drugs or alcohol.
Reminds me of the Office: "I thought this was a meet and greet".
Exactly what I immediately thought of.
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/06a73aad-0ef6-4664-8247-25c19d84cae9
Well this doesn't boad well for the branch.
You let's Tusli get away with her shit, maybe I should have fucked her too!
Okay, so $0 for the FBI. Done!
That's what Trump wants. Take note of the military and ICE budgets, however..
It's win-win. Either Dems don't sign a blank check, and Trump uses this as an excuse to hand more power to the DHS. Or Dems do sign a blank check, and Trump uses it to fund an FBI dedicated to further dismantling the democratic state.
Right now we are seeing a power struggle between at least two groups of plutocrats in the US.
The FBI is not on Trump's side. They're not exactly our friend, but their defunding would give more power to Trump
The director of the FBI is absolutely on Trump's side. And anyone downstream of him who isn't is getting weeded out.
His name is Kash but he doesn't have any...
Dismantling the FBI seems like a good idea to me anyway. It's not like their mission is a good one. Maybe in the next government the FBI can be brought back as a federal agency that is narrowly focuses on investigating/punishing local/state level law enforcement.
But of course the Dems will just approve whatever budget the republicans come up with and facism will continue unabated.
It's actually a worse idea. There will still be, nominally, federal control, centralized in him. Other than that, every local and state FBI branch will act as, effectively, a terror cell - they work their own leads, make their own arrests on their own recognizance, and generally conduct business as they see fit. This makes for an incredibly dangerous form of secret police - they have no leaders above the local level, no real command and control, and they're all tasked with only one thing: make less crime.
Imagine the Cheka, but they're organized like al-Qaeda.
If their budget was zero'd out on the federal level where would the local FBI officers get their funding?
Get real, homie. The state will never defund itself.
Guess who is in charge of auditing and investigating local cops and police stations?
::: spoiler click to reveal answer: NOBODY ANYMORE! :::
Not if it means giving all their funding to the military and ICE...
This is what mediocrity looks like
Mendacity.
He knew. He didn't care. He just put out his hand and dared the Senate not to give him a blank check.
And he's going to get that check, because Democrats more are terrified of looking obstructionist than of looking like they can govern.
I'm going to upvote just from the great usage of the word Mendacity
never trust someone with a crazy eyes.
Why are they surprised?
His name is Kash but he doesn't have any...
I wonder if they’re advising agency heads to do this so they can fuck with the budget for their wealthy tax break bill?
No, I think he's that dumb. Look at the lies the Bush Jr. team came up with before the Iraq invasion. Those were great lies; handcrafted with Old World dedication and aged in oak barrels until they were perfect.
These clowns are just incompetent.
People need to drop the "they're incompetent" shtick if they beat you every time. Because if you get beat by people you think are incompetent, what does that make you?
It implies nothing because it is not competence that is evaluated here.
Republicans beat Democrats because:
#1 A sizeable core of the American demographic cannot tell the difference between their elbow and a chair (too stupid) and are fearful of their own shadow
#2 The alternative, the Democrats, are almost as incompetent as the Republicans making the distinction moot.
The side that isn't willing to shoot up schools
You can be great at one thing and an idiot at everything else.
What does "legally required" here mean? I assume there's supposed to be a punishment?
I've not read the laws, nor am I a lawyer, but I suspect that the budget laws say something like "The [FBI] shall provide a budget by [date]", but there is no following section attaching a penalty as there are in criminal laws, so there is likely no recourse.
I imagine that this is the same as when you don't have that report ready for the big meeting, or skipped out early before your end-of-shift duties were done: a reprimand from your boss and potentially getting fired.... but his boss is, I think, Pam Bondi, the AG, in this case.
Theoretically Kash could be impeached or censured, as could Pam if she doesn't act. But we know how well that will go. Until then, his inaction is illegal, but unlike some of trumps actions, which can be stayed or reversed via court, I don't think you can stay inaction.
Maybe it means Kash isn't the FBI director since he didn't provide the budget. Whoever provides the budget first wins the title!
Fascists gonna fasc.
"I thought this was just a meet and greet"
This is PROOF that DEI is BAD! WHY did Trump appoint a BROWN man?
-LITERALLY EVERY CONSERVATIVE who isn't Racist!
From recent article detailing POTUS47 silent attack on educational institutions by simply going "radio silent" on paperwork front I can't help but draw parallels. With Patel's stated mission of dismantling FBI I wouldn't be surprised he follows the same playbook, but this time making Dems choke finances for FBI for the lack of budget
Reference to Edu cuts: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-nih-funds-ghosting-a-follow-up-report
Well yeah, what did you expect from a partisan, incompetent fuckwit?
He’s too busy running his clothing brand Based.
Why would he follow the law? He can get insta pardoned if the mean lawmakers act like adults.
The only thing saving this country from full on state-sponsored ethnic cleansing is the fact that they keep appointing the stupidest motherfuckers imaginable to key positions or power.
He kept repeating he’s following the law as if he could just make it up as he goes along. Such an absolute turd.
He’s like the kid who is trying to do a book report presentation on a book he didn’t even read.
He's moving the FBI to Kash accounting.
Meh. Congresspeople always pretend to be upset about something to posture for their base.