FBI’s Kash Patel defends hiring policy change on bestiality, prostitution

Policy change sparks heated Senate debate; critics question its timing amid challenges in attracting new FBI agents.United States FBI Director Kash Patel has defended the bureau’s loosening of hiring requirements regarding prostitution and bestiality, saying the changes were meant to enable victims of those acts to apply for employment without fear of automatic disqualification.The FBI quietly issued guidance this past spring lifting a categorical hiring ban on applicants who had previously engaged in prostitution, and said that it would instead consider the context of the behaviour in at least some cases. The bureau made a similar change regarding bestiality.Pressed about the moves at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing, Patel on Tuesday denied that the changes reflected a lowering of employment standards and insisted they were designed to protect victims forced to engage in that conduct and to prevent automatic disqualification.“We did not want to punish victims of bestiality, victims who were trafficked. We did not want to make it an automatic disqualification for the FBI to consider you,” Patel said.The answer did little to satisfy Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, who grilled Patel on the rationale for a change the FBI director said subordinates proposed to him.Kennedy asked Patel why, given the FBI’s current difficulty attracting new agents because of negative public sentiment, Patel would make these changes now.“Why would you even get into bestiality?” Kennedy said.Patel replied it was a way of supporting victims, and that some people who were “forced into” bestiality should not be disqualified.The Republican-led panel tried to keep the focus on Patel’s efforts to combat violent crime, counter drug trafficking and pursue the Trump administration’s agenda from his perch at the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency.