Democrats have voiced serious concerns about Patel’s nomination, claiming that the Trump ally frequently peddles conspiracy theories and misinformation, has close associations with notable racists, and has vowed to weaponize the justice system to investigate the president’s political enemies.

But Patel’s hearing, outside of one minor verbal scuffle and a pair of expletives voiced by Republicans, went more smoothly than hearings for some of Trump’s other Cabinet nominees, including health and human services secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Patel at times sought to assuage worries about his loyalty to Trump and brash rhetoric. He declared that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and said he disagreed with the president’s pardons of violent Jan. 6 defendants. He vowed that if confirmed, he would only open investigations when there was a “constitutional factual basis” to do so amid concerns he would target political adversaries.

“I am fit to be the director of the FBI,” Patel said.

1. Clear partisan divide

Based on the hearing, Patel appears primed to clear the committee along strict partisan lines.

Trump’s FBI nominee faced strident questioning from the committee’s 11 Democrats, but their inquiries appeared to yield little fruit, as Patel earned glowing support from the 12 Republicans.

“You’re going to get confirmed, and you’re going to lead this agency back to what it always should be,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO), a former Missouri attorney general, told Patel. 

Some Republicans seemed more interested in directly rebutting their Democratic colleagues than pressing Patel on his past statements or political beliefs.

“Why are the Democrats so afraid of you?,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) opened during her line of questioning. “They know that you’re going to go in and you’re going to clean up that political cabal that has been over there for years. You are going to reposition the FBI to its core mission.”

2. Wandering focus

Lawmakers on at least two occasions took a pause in questioning Patel to argue amongs themselves.

The first incident came less than two hours into the hearing following Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s (D-MN) first round of questions. Klobuchar ran over her allotted seven minutes, which led to a testy exchange between the committee’s 91-year-old chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA).

“If we’re going to start this, I want an extra three minutes,” Kennedy complained.

“So what you’re saying is the chairman wasn’t a very good chairman by not shutting her up,” Grassley snapped back. “But I’ve gone through this before, and I think I know how to handle it.”

“I think you’re star-spangled awesome,” Kennedy continued. “But if you’re going to let someone over there go three minutes over, I want my three extra minutes.”

Later, following a lunch recess, ranking member Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Blackburn engaged in a blame game centering on past, failed attempts by the Senate to publish a list of passengers who flew with Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and serial sexual predator, to his private island in the Caribbean. 

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a long-standing political foe of Patel’s, let a line of questioning focusing on Patel’s promotion of a song recorded by Jan. 6 defendants devolve into a semantic debate involving the proper use of the word “we.”

3. Plans for FBI headquarters

One of Patel’s more controversial proposals came during a podcast interview in September, when he said that if he were FBI director, he would shut down the headquarters building in Washington, where roughly 7,000 bureau employees work, and turn it into a “museum of the deep state.”

Patel said he would “send [the employees] across America to chase down criminals.” Several Democrats confronted Patel about the suggestion during the hearing.

“How is that possibly a serious proposal?” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) asked.

Patel responded by walking back the idea, saying he was, in fact, making a “significantly greater point” about the several thousand FBI employees working in the greater Washington region.

“I am fully committed to having that workforce go out into the interior of the country, where I live, west of the Mississippi, and work with sheriffs’ departments and local officers, and having one agent prevent one homicide, and having one agent in Washington prevent one rape,” Patel said. “And I will do that over and over and over and over again, because the American people deserve the resources, not in Washington, D.C., but in the rest of the country.”

Patel’s remarks are in tension with the FBI’s current efforts to secure funding to transfer its headquarters from the deteriorating J. Edgar Hoover Building to a planned multibillion-dollar complex in Greenbelt, Maryland. They also could run contrary to Trump’s stated desire to revitalize the workforce in Washington.

4. Wide range of attendees

Interest in the next FBI director was apparent at the hearing after Trump forced out Christopher Wray before his 10-year term limit expired.

Patel’s parents traveled from India to attend. They joined a packed audience of supporters and detractors seated behind Patel as he testified, including MAGA-hat wearers and gun control advocacy group Moms Demand Action. Also present were former FBI Director William Webster, who opposes Patel’s nomination, and Olivia Troye, whom Patel has threatened to sue.

Troye, a onetime intelligence adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence, said on television appearances that Patel repeatedly lied about national security and “put the lives of Navy SEALs at risk,” prompting Patel’s attorney to demand a retraction.

Watch Patel’s hearing in full below.