Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said Sunday on CBS’s “Face The Nation” that Kash Patel, President-elect Trump’s pick to serve as FBI director, is “a very strong nominee” and will be confirmed by the Senate.
Partial transcript as follows:
MAJOR GARRETT: Kash Patel suggested by President Trump as the new leader of the FBI. How enthusiastic are you about that?
CRUZ: Listen, I think Kash Patel is a very strong nominee. I think the entire slate of Cabinet nominees President Trump has put forward is very strong. I believe every one of these Cabinet nominees is going to be confirmed by the Senate. I think Kash Patel is going to be confirmed by the Senate. You look at his background, he has a serious professional background. He was a prosecutor, he was a public defender. He was a senior intelligence staffer on Capitol Hill. He was a senior intelligence staffer in the White House. He was the Chief of Staff of the Department of Defense. He was the deputy director of national intelligence. And I got to say, all of the weeping and gnashing of teeth, all of the people pulling their hair out, are exactly the people who are dismayed about having a real reformer come into the FBI and clean out the corrupted partisans who sadly have burrowed into senior career positions at the FBI. The FBI and the Department of Justice are two institutions incredibly important to the rule of law in the United States. I revere both. And one of the most tragic consequences of four years of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is both the DOJ and the FBI have been politicized and weaponized, and I think Kash Patel is a very strong nominee to take on the partisan corruption in the FBI.
GARRETT: As you know, Senator, there isn’t a vacancy at the top of the FBI. What should become of Christopher Wray, appointed by President Trump?
CRUZ: Well, I think he’ll make a choice. I think either he will resign or President Trump will fire him. But it’s no secret to anybody, including Chris Wray, that he is not going to continue to serve as the head of the FBI under Donald Trump. Listen, if you look at James Comey and Chris Wray, there has never been a period in our nation’s history where the FBI has suffered a greater loss of respect, where more Americans doubt the fundamental integrity of the FBI, and it’s because James Comey and Chris Wray presided over allowing the FBI to become a partisan cudgel to be used to target parents at school board meetings, to be used to target people who chose not to take the COVID vaccine, to be used to target President Trump and to target the political opponents of Joe Biden the White House. It is tragic. That is not what the FBI is for. That is not what the DOJ is for. And I got to say Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, I think together, are a very strong slate of nominees to go and restore integrity to both institutions.
Follow Pam Key on X @pamkeyNEN
