Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans all voted favorably to send Patel’s nomination to the full Senate for a final vote that could take place as early as next week. No committee Democrats supported Patel, but as evidence of how deep the partisan divide runs, each also took a moment to criticize their Republican colleagues for ignoring what they viewed as red flags.

“I’ve just never seen something like this for a candidate, and I’m surprised that there’s not more people who are calling some of this out,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) said ahead of the vote, adding that Patel’s confirmation “seems like it’s a fait accompli.”

“Mark my words, this Patel guy will come back to haunt you,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said. “Every piece of evidence shows that.”

Durbin’s whistleblower

Democrats were vehemently opposed to Patel’s nomination from the outset, but days before the committee was set to vote on it, ranking member Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) revealed that unnamed whistleblowers claimed Patel was improperly arranging for FBI employees’ firings behind the scenes.

The accusation centered on acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove’s recent order that the FBI force out eight of its top executives and create a list of the thousands of FBI employees who ever worked on a Jan. 6 case for Bove to review for possible “personnel action.”

Durbin said the anonymous whistleblowers told him that the directive had actually come from Patel. According to Durbin, the whistleblowers learned that Patel gave Trump adviser Stephen Miller recommendations regarding the firings and that Miller then ordered Bove to carry them out. Durbin did not specify how the whistleblowers learned that information.

The accusation would be scandalous if it were true because it would mean Patel was surreptitiously skirting the confirmation process, but Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who has advocated whistleblowers across several administrations, has said Durbin’s claim lacks credibility.

“The purpose of this campaign is obvious, throw everything at the wall and hope something sticks,” Grassley said Thursday.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said he felt “it sure certainly fits comfortably into a narrative,” adding he believed Patel has been treated unfairly and that allegations against him were unverified.

Patel spokeswoman Erika Knight blamed the media for elevating a claim cloaked in anonymity.

“Once again, the media is relying on anonymous sources and second-hand gossip to push a false narrative,” Knight said in a statement.

Durbin had led Democrats in prolonging the committee vote on Patel, and his whistleblower account surfaced during that extended time frame. Durbin told the Washington Examiner the timing of the allegation was out of his hands.

“We don’t set the schedules for whistleblowers,” Durbin said.

Patel’s investment in Shein’s parent company

Patel’s financial disclosures, which became public only recently, prompted another round of scrutiny. Among his sprawling personal financial endeavors, the disclosures revealed the prospective FBI director had at least $1 million in stock in Elite Depot, a parent company to popular retailer Shein, which manufactures its clothing in China through a dubious supply chain.

The revelation was brought to light last week by independent reporter Roger Sollenberger, who noted the lack of detail surrounding the consulting work Patel did for Elite Depot, which is based in the Cayman Islands.

Patel said the Office of Government Ethics did not ask him to divest his investments in the company.

“The agency determined that it is not necessary at this time for me to divest my interests in Elite Depot, Ltd., because the likelihood that my duties will involve any such matter is remote,” Patel wrote in response to a question about whether the investment was foreign.

Republicans have shown no signs of concern with Patel’s financial disclosures and lauded his level of transparency.

“All of these people are going to have a life in the private sector, so there’s nothing that I view as disqualifying,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told the Washington Examiner.

In response to finance-related criticisms, Knight said Patel “has gone above and beyond with the advice and consent process including having countless meetings with senators, disclosing and reporting all sources of income, submitting hundreds of pages of documents and questions and completing a 6 hour hearing with multiple rounds of questioning for the committee, who has evaluated all potential conflicts and concerns.”

‘Democrats were asleep at the switch’

Patel, 44, served as a public defender for more than seven years before joining the Justice Department as a lawyer in the National Security Division for three years. He went on to lead the House Intelligence Committee Republicans’ inquiry into the FBI’s investigation of alleged Trump-Russia collusion, where Patel earned bona fides with Trump for helping to discredit aspects of the bureau’s work.

Patel’s good graces with Trump earned him top national security posts in the president’s first administration. And while his ascension to those roles was relatively fast-paced, it has been Patel’s lucrative work on Trump’s 2020 campaign, his numerous Trump-aligned business endeavors, his promotion of misinformation and mingling with provocative racists, and his more than 1,000 mostly right-wing media appearances that have shaped him into a brash MAGA firebrand. Patel’s highly partisan background has made him a nontraditional and controversial choice to lead the nation’s premier law enforcement agency.

Cornyn said he felt Republicans simply wanted a disruptor to what he viewed as a problem-riddled status quo.

“Democrats were asleep at the switch for many years when the corruption at the FBI and the Department of Justice was occurring, and now they are up and up in arms at somebody who I hope and trust will try to change that,” Cornyn said.

Top issues for Republicans in recent years have included the FBI submitting a couple high-profile but faulty foreign intelligence surveillance court applications in the Trump-Russia investigation, monitoring school board meetings for violent behavior, taking a heavy-handed approach to anti-abortion activists who have breached the law, executing a warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, aggressively targeting the large portion of Jan. 6 participants who were nonviolent, and suspending security clearances of embattled employees for many months or years at a time while senior officials investigate them, which an inspector general report found deprived the employees of due process.

Retired FBI agents frequently note that many of these actions have been taken in close coordination with or at the direction of Justice Department officials.