(Headline USA) FBI Director Kashyap Patel on Tuesday defended the bureau’s loosening of hiring standards regarding an applicant’s past experience with prostitution and bestiality, insisting that the changes were meant to enable victims of those acts to be considered for employment without fear of automatic disqualification.
The subject arose during a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which Patel clashed with Democrats over his firing of agents who participated in investigations of President Donald Trump, a spate of media leak probes, and whether employees would be dispatched to the polls on Election Day in light of the bureau’s ongoing election-related investigations and Trump’s repeated and false claims about the existence of pervasive voter fraud.
Patel was pressed on the FBI’s hiring standards
The FBI quietly issued guidance this past spring lifting a categorical hiring ban on applicants who had previously engaged in prostitution. The bureau made a similar change with regard to past experience in bestiality as a child.
Under questioning, Patel denied that the changes reflected a lowering of employment standards and insisted they were designed to prevent victims who’d been forced to engage in that conduct from being automatically disqualified.
Please Mr. FBI Director, give us some specific examples of these courageous Americans who were once "forced" into committing acts of bestiality (forced by who — the beast?) and have since become valued members of the federal law enforcement community pic.twitter.com/mEESPUVZgV
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) September 15, 2026
“We did not want to punish victims of bestiality, victims who were trafficked. We did not want to make it an automatic disqualification for the FBI to consider you if were a victim of these awful, heinous acts,” Patel said. “We are not going to target victims and prevent them from serving in their capacity to serve this country.”
The questioning spanned partisan lines, with Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, grilling Patel about the rationale for a change that the FBI director said was proposed to him by subordinates.
“When you saw bestiality, I say this with respect: The person who recommended it, why didn’t you just say what planet did you parachute in from?” Kennedy asked. Patel conceded that that was his initial reaction.
The FBI still intends to disqualify some applicants who are revealed to have previously engaged in prostitution, including if they’ve done so for the last 10 years.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
