{"id":224382,"date":"2026-09-16T12:13:40","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T12:13:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/kash-patel-defends-fbis-new-policy-on-bestiality-at-senate-hearing-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T12:13:40","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T12:13:40","slug":"kash-patel-defends-fbis-new-policy-on-bestiality-at-senate-hearing-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/kash-patel-defends-fbis-new-policy-on-bestiality-at-senate-hearing-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Kash Patel defends FBI\u2019s new policy on bestiality at Senate hearing – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Morning Rundown: What we know about the NBC L.A. chopper crash victims, Fed and Trump on collision course, and support acts quit Ed Sheeran tour<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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FBI Director Kash Patel on Tuesday found himself defending a new policy at the bureau that does not immediately disqualify potential hires who have engaged in bestiality.
At a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing<\/a>, some senators grilled Patel about the new standards, which he said were established so as not to discriminate against potential victims of sex trafficking who were forced to perform acts of bestiality.
His explanation elicited curious responses, including one from Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., who asked Patel why he would \u201ceven get into bestiality.\u201d
Patel quickly emphasized that \u201cwe\u2019re not into bestiality,\u201d to which Kennedy said, \u201cI know you\u2019re not,\u201d prompting a chuckle from Patel, who said he was trying to explain the policy.
Kennedy asked, \u201cIf Joe participated in bestiality, not as animal but as the human, don\u2019t you think he ought to be disqualified?\u201d
\u201cIf he voluntarily did it, sure. But if he was trafficked into it …,\u201d Patel responded.
Kennedy went on to ask how a person would \u201cinvoluntarily do it.\u201d Patel said human traffickers forced people into types of conduct like bestiality and \u201cdegrading acts of all kinds\u201d in \u201ca lot of cases.\u201d
He said people at the bureau who suggested the policy change \u201cexplained to me and showed me cases in which people were forced into it and had applied to the FBI, and so I thought they should be considered. It\u2019s not an automatic disqualification.\u201d
Patel said that the previous policy addressed prostitution, trafficking and bestiality and that for bestiality, the rules \u201cautomatically disqualified any individual who participated on either side of it.\u201d
\u201cEither side of what? The bestiality?\u201d Kennedy asked. \u201cSo you disqualified the animal?\u201d
\u201cWell, I don\u2019t think \u2014 we have great canines, but we\u2019re not going to disqualify them,\u201d Patel said.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., also inquired about the policy change, asking Patel whether he believed applicants who had engaged in bestiality were qualified candidates whom the FBI was losing.
\u201cApplicants who have engaged in bestiality means they were victims of bestiality because they were forced to do so. And at this FBI, we are not going to criminalize and prevent victims from serving the United States of America and the premier law enforcement agency in the world,\u201d Patel responded, adding he had \u201celiminated the bureaucracy that prevented these great Americans from serving, or at least being considered to serve.\u201d
The oftentimes tense hearing included Democrats\u2019 pressing Patel on broader topics about his leadership at the bureau and grilling him about his suit against a reporter<\/a> for The Atlantic and firings and departures at the FBI since he took over.
While Patel was mostly praised by Republicans in the room, he drew heat from Kennedy over the change in hiring practices.
\u201cYou\u2019re not telling us today that if a human being had sex with an animal that they can still be an FBI agent, are you?\u201d Kennedy asked. \u201cThey can\u2019t be, can they?\u201d
\u201cThey cannot,\u201d Patel responded.
\u201cIn fact, they ought to be in jail, right?\u201d Kennedy said.
\u201cThey all are,\u201d Patel said.
Raquel Coronell Uribe is a politics reporter for NBC News.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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Morning Rundown: What we know about the NBC L.A. chopper crash victims, Fed and Trump on collision course, and support acts quit Ed Sheeran tour news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeFBI Director Kash Patel on Tuesday found himself defending a new policy at the bureau that does not immediately disqualify potential hires […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":224383,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}