No committee Democrats supported Patel, a 44-year-old lawyer and MAGA firebrand who has vowed to end what he says are abuses of power at the bureau.

A source familiar with the voting schedule told the Washington Examiner Patel’s final vote “is a priority” and will be brought to the floor “as early as next week.”

Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has stood by Patel in the face of Democrats’ vehement opposition to him and reiterated praise for him in remarks ahead of the vote.

“Mr. Patel has spent his whole career fighting for righteous causes,” Grassley said, adding that Democrats’ criticisms of Patel amounted to “harassment.”

Patel worked as a defense lawyer, a federal prosecutor, and in national security roles in the first Trump administration. However, Patel first garnered praise from the president for his investigative work on the House Intelligence Committee in 2018. At the time, Patel drafted a widely circulated memo highlighting alleged flaws in the FBI’s investigation into alleged Trump-Russia collusion. Two inspector general reports later corroborated a portion of the memo, and Trump used it to undermine the bureau’s efforts.

The committee vote came later in the month than expected after Democrats used a delay strategy to prolong it. They again employed those tactics Thursday, as each Democratic committee member used speaking time to voice their dissatisfaction with Patel’s nomination.

Ranking member Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said, after significant vetting, he was certain Patel had “neither the experience, the judgment, nor the temperament to lead the FBI.”

Durbin recently brought to light anonymous whistleblower allegations that Patel was improperly coordinating with the bureau, where morale has dampened after Trump and his Justice Department appointees ousted several top FBI executives and warned more firings were forthcoming because of perceived mishandling of Jan. 6 riot cases and other matters.

Durbin alleged Patel was “personally directing the ongoing purge,” while Grassley characterized the claim as a desperate attempt to “throw everything at the wall and hope something sticks.”

Durbin and other Democrats also repeatedly accused Patel of lying under oath during his confirmation hearing, including when he denied knowing Stew Peters, a conspiracy theorist and antisemite whose podcast Patel appeared on eight times.

The ranking member also reiterated his concerns with Patel’s book Government Gangsters, in which Patel calls members of the so-called deep state “criminals.”

“Whatever the hell that is,” Durbin said in reference to the term “deep state.”

Committee Democrats also highlighted how Patel has promoted conspiracies during his more than a thousand media appearances in recent years. Patel once falsely accused the FBI of planning the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and said there was “a lot” of truth to QAnon.

Patel said during his confirmation hearing that he interacts with people who promote outlandish claims “to take on people who are putting on conspiratorial theories and to disavow them of their false impressions and to talk to them about the truth.”

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) said in his 11 years on the committee, he found Republicans had, in his view, a preordained decision to move forward with Patel and that it was one of the most “perplexing” nominations he had seen.

“I’m surprised that there’s not more people who are calling some of this out,” Booker said.