Madeleine Dean accuses Trump’s FBI director of exacting revenge with ‘childlike giddiness’

In a heated exchange, U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean called President Donald Trump’s FBI director “unfit” for office and asked when she should expect the FBI at her door.

Dean, a Democrat from Montgomery County, questioned FBI Director Kash Patel when he testified Wednesday before a House committee on his budget request. She called his book Government Gangsters a “blueprint for revenge” and accused him of committing perjury during his Senate confirmation hearing earlier this year.

“The FBI cannot be weaponized, but under your leadership it has been nothing but a weapon,” Dean said.

Patel insisted Dean was twisting the truth for her own gain.

Patel, Dean said, had carried out Trump’s revenge with “childlike giddiness” and had provided an enemies list to the president in the form of his book.

Dean, a four-term congresswoman who served as an impeachment manager against Trump in 2021 in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, asked Patel when the FBI would target her for that work.

Patel responded that he had been targeted by a weaponized FBI and said his book called out people who violated the Constitution.

“You should give that book to every one of your constituents,” he said.

Patel has a history of promoting Jan. 6 conspiracy theories and had started a foundation that helped Capitol riot defendants pay their legal bills before Trump’s blanket pardon for participants.

Later on in questioning, he said Dean was “lying” in an effort to create video that could be used in her campaign materials.

As Dean ended her line of questioning, she told Patel that the employees of the FBI deserved better.

“This is an unserious moment, sadly, for the FBI,” she said.

“More so for you,” Patel shot back.

Dean said in an interview Thursday that she was gravely concerned about the FBI under Patel’s leadership.

“If I expose nothing else,” she said, “I want people to know the men and women of the FBI deserve so much better.”