Policy change sparks heated Senate debate; critics question its timing amid challenges in attracting new FBI agents.

United States FBI Director Kash Patel has defended the bureau’s loosening of hiring requirements regarding prostitution and bestiality, saying the changes were meant to enable victims of those acts to apply for employment without fear of automatic disqualification.

The FBI quietly issued guidance this past spring lifting a categorical hiring ban on applicants who had previously engaged in prostitution, and said that it would instead consider the context of the behaviour in at least some cases. The bureau made a similar change regarding bestiality.

Pressed about the moves at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing, Patel on Tuesday denied that the changes reflected a lowering of employment standards and insisted they were designed to protect victims forced to engage in that conduct and to prevent automatic disqualification.

“We did not want to punish victims of bestiality, victims who were trafficked. We did not want to make it an automatic disqualification for the FBI to consider you,” Patel said.

The answer did little to satisfy Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, who grilled Patel on the rationale for a change the FBI director said subordinates proposed to him.

Kennedy asked Patel why, given the FBI’s current difficulty attracting new agents because of negative public sentiment, Patel would make these changes now.

“Why would you even get into bestiality?” Kennedy said.

Patel replied it was a way of supporting victims, and that some people who were “forced into” bestiality should not be disqualified.

The Republican-led panel tried to keep the focus on Patel’s efforts to combat violent crime, counter drug trafficking and pursue the Trump administration’s agenda from his perch at the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency.

But Democrats seized on the tumult inside the FBI over the last year, including sweeping firings of agents who participated in investigations into President Donald Trump, the bureau’s efforts to investigate Trump’s perceived political adversaries and Patel’s travel schedule, which has blended private leisure with professional responsibilities.

“Mr Patel is the least qualified and most partisan FBI director in our nation’s history,” Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the panel’s top Democrat, said in his opening statement at the hearing. He accused Patel of wielding the bureau’s law enforcement powers to seek retribution against Trump’s political opponents and pursue the president’s grievances, including his false claims that the 2020 election he lost was stolen.

Patel has made multiple appearances before Congress while serving as director, including to testify about the FBI’s budget, but this was his first time since last September before the Senate committee that has primary oversight jurisdiction over the bureau.

That hearing featured feisty and personal exchanges with Democrats, with Patel at one point shouting over Senator Adam Schiff of California, calling him an “utter disgrace” and a “coward”.

“You can make an internet troll the FBI director, but he will always be an internet troll,” Schiff shot back.

Tuesday’s hearing was expected to be no less contentious given Democrats’ fierce criticism of his leadership and conduct. Durbin called for Patel to be replaced as director in April following an article by The Atlantic magazine that raised allegations of excessive drinking.

Patel later filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit, calling the article false and a “malicious hit piece”. The Atlantic said it stood by its reporting and would vigorously defend against the “meritless lawsuit”.