Top Trump administration officials have made it abundantly clear from Day One just how little regard they have for Congress, including and possibly especially its constitutional oversight duties.
Just look at former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s “burn book” and her riff on the Dow at her February hearings, or Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s over-the-top combative testimony of late. The general strategy seems to revolve around attacking lawmakers to avoid answering even straightforward questions about dicey subjects — even if the questioner is a fellow Republican.
But rarely has an appearance epitomized the administration’s utter disdain for accountability like FBI Director Kash Patel’s congressional hearing on Tuesday.
Members of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee pressed Patel on a number of questions about his stewardship of the FBI, including a recent report in the Atlantic that he has alarmed colleagues with his excessive drinking (he has denied these claims and sued the publication) and his exorbitant celebrating with the US hockey team after its Olympic win in Italy.
Things got particularly testy with Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who read an opening statement particularly critical of Patel and his alleged drinking habits.
When Patel got the chance to respond, he wasn’t content to deny the reporting. He tried to flip it back on the Maryland Democrat.
“The only person that was slinging margaritas in El Salvador on the taxpayer dollar with a convicted gangbanging rapist was you,” Patel told Van Hollen. “The only person that ran up a $7,000 bar tab in Washington, DC, at the Lobby Bar was you. The only individual in this room that has been drinking on the taxpayer dime during the day is you.”
Allies of President Donald Trump’s administration gobbled up the exchange and shared it far and wide on social media.
But there’s a problem with that Patel quote — four of them, in fact, all of which the FBI director managed to squeeze into just 20 seconds of testimony.
Patel’s allusion was to Van Hollen’s visit last year to El Salvador to check on the welfare of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Abrego Garcia is the undocumented immigrant from Van Hollen’s home state whom the Trump administration illegally deported to a brutal El Salvador prison.
Except:
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Abrego Garcia has not been convicted of being in a gang.
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He has not been convicted of rape.
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The “margaritas” that were placed in front of Van Hollen and Abrego Garcia during a photo op were apparently staged by El Salvador government officials. President Nayib Bukele is a close Trump ally.
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There’s no evidence of Van Hollen day-drinking using taxpayer funds in either the El Salvador or the Lobby Bar incident.
Patel on X soon posted an image from Van Hollen’s campaign finance reports showing a $7,128 bill from December 2025 at the Lobby Bar. But the bill was for general “catering,” which can mean food as well as alcohol, and Van Hollen said Tuesday that it was for a staff holiday party.
And regardless of what the money was spent on, it wasn’t “on the taxpayer dime”; It was campaign money.
(Lawmakers commonly host fundraising or staff events at restaurants or bars that can rack up large tabs and charge it to the campaign. That might be problematic, but not for the reasons Patel suggested.)
Even if Patel’s “taxpayer dime” reference was to the Abrego Garcia meeting rather than the campaign event, there is no evidence Van Hollen drank what was placed in front of him in El Salvador. In fact, he said back then, “Neither of us touched the drinks.”
Van Hollen at the hearing accused Patel of spreading an “urban legend in right-wing media.”
These are the kinds of facts the administration has butchered many times over, as they’ve sought to argue Abrego Garcia is a bad guy and that Democrats were too anxious to defend an undocumented immigrant. They’ve repeatedly suggested it was proven that Abrego Garcia was in a gang and had committed non-immigration crimes, even though it still hasn’t been.
(Abrego Garcia has been indicted for alleged human trafficking, but he hasn’t even been charged with alleged rape.)
But Patel isn’t just any administration official in this context. He’s the FBI director, and he’s testifying to Congress under penalty of perjury. But he’s saying things that could logically be understood to impugn others — both Abrego Garcia and Van Hollen.
All of which is contrary to Justice Department ethics, which state that officials aren’t supposed to make false statements about people or prejudge someone’s guilt.
(Bondi, too, has quite arguably violated these standards. When Abrego Garcia was indicted in June, she in a press conference cited claims Abrego Garcia had committed other heinous crimes that weren’t even included in the indictment.)
And it’s pretty evident that Patel didn’t just trip over his words in labeling Abrego Garcia a “convicted gangbanging rapist.” Later in his testimony, he again cited Van Hollen supposedly “drinking margaritas with felons,” even though Abrego Garcia, again, has not been convicted of a felony.
In a typical administration, testimony like this would lead to questions about Patel correcting the record and withdrawing his claims. Even shy of Patel fearing criminal prosecution, Republicans might insist on it to assert Congress’ role in overseeing the executive branch.
But nobody has any illusions about any kind of accountability for Patel. And the GOP-controlled Congress seemingly gave up on protecting its prerogatives and status as a powerful, separate branch of government when Trump was inaugurated a second time.
Indeed, Patel isn’t even the only top administration official to make false statements in congressional testimony over the past week.
Hegseth did so last Wednesday and Thursday, when he claimed that the Biden administration had sent the military to polling places in 15 states in 2024.
The government’s revered system of checks and balances has apparently broken down so much now that officials can say whatever they want in testimony, as long as it’s combative and pleases Trump.
