FBI Director Kash Patel testified Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee and defended recent changes to bureau hiring rules that no longer automatically disqualify applicants over past prostitution or bestiality.
The policy shift, reported earlier this year, replaces a categorical ban with case-by-case review in limited circumstances. Patel said the old rules treated anyone who “participated in either side” of those acts as automatically ineligible. He told senators the revision was intended to avoid blocking people who were forced into the conduct as trafficking victims or as children.
“We did not want to punish victims of bestiality, victims who were trafficked,” Patel said. “We did not want to make it an automatic disqualification for the FBI to consider you if you are a victim of these awful, heinous acts.” He added that applicants still face the same background checks and that voluntary criminal sexual conduct remains disqualifying. “If he voluntarily did it, sure,” Patel said when asked about someone who willingly engaged in bestiality. “But if he was trafficked into it… human traffickers don’t just traffic you for prostitution. They traffic you for degrading acts of all kinds.”
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the ranking Democrat, pressed Patel on the wording of the old ban, which targeted people who “engaged” in the acts rather than only those who committed them as perpetrators. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., followed with a series of questions about why the topic was in the policy at all. “Either side of bestiality? So you disqualified the animal?” Kennedy asked. Patel replied that the bureau has “great canines” but would not disqualify them. Kennedy later asked, “Why did you get into bestiality?” and whether a person who had sex with an animal as the human participant should be barred. Patel said yes if the act was voluntary.
Patel said the language predated his tenure and that he approved the change after staff showed him examples of trafficking victims who had applied and been rejected. The FBI has said it is not lowering overall standards and that criminal behavior remains disqualifying. Applications to the bureau are at record levels, Patel told the committee.
In Ohio, sexual conduct with an animal is a second-degree misdemeanor under Revised Code Section 959.21. Federal agents remain subject to state criminal law. The hearing covered other topics, including staffing and other policy changes, but the hiring-standards exchange drew the sharpest questions from both parties.
