President Donald Trump’s pick to run the FBI, Kash Patel, downplayed his past promotion of right-wing conspiracy theories and his pledges to pursue retribution against Trump’s opponents on Thursday at his combative Senate confirmation hearing.

FBI nominee Kash Patel said in his 2023 book that Adam Schiff was one of Washington’s “corrupt actors of the first order.” Thursday, Schiff, now a U.S. senator and member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was given the opportunity to grill his detractor. And he did so, relentlessly.

On Thursday, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, endured hours of questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee, in what seemed mor