BREAKING🚨 Kash Patel told the Senate he's unsure whether federal law bars the FBI from sending armed agents to polling places — a crime punishable by five years in prison.
At a Senate Judiciary oversight hearing Tuesday, Sen. Peter Welch pressed the FBI director on whether agents would be dispatched to the polls in the midterms. "I don't know that we can't legally do it," Patel answered.
He said the FBI will house agents and intelligence analysts in its field offices for election security, and that monitoring elections is mainly the Department of Homeland Security's job.
The law he says he's unsure about is 18 U.S.C. § 592. It makes it a crime for a federal official to order or keep "troops or armed men" at any place where an election is held, punishable by up to five years in prison and disqualification from federal office. The single exception is force needed to "repel armed enemies of the United States."
The Justice Department's own longstanding election-crimes guidance spells it out further: federal prosecutors have "no authority to send FBI Special Agents or Deputy U.S. Marshals to polling places," and agents cannot run investigations inside a polling place on Election Day.
Sen. Peter Welch asked Patel directly: "Do you pledge that you will not in any way interfere in the will of the American people when they go to the polls in November?"
"I pledge unequivocally that I will not participate in your charade of lies," Patel replied. He later called Welch a "total fraud."
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said two weeks ago that ICE agents could walk into a polling place to serve a warrant, telling reporters, "If we're serving a warrant we will be where we need to be."
Then-acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has also declined to rule out agents at voting sites, saying, "I am not sure of the uproar.
