While many of President Trump's nominees have been confirmed by the Senate at a breakneck pace,

Cash Patel, his nominee to lead the FBI, will have to wait another week for a key Senate committee vote.

That's because Democrats on the Judiciary Committee forced a delay over objections to Mr. Patel's plans for mass firings at the FBI.

The FBI director's loyalty must be to the American people, to the Constitution, and to the rule of law.

But Mr. Patel has made it clear that his loyalty is to the president.

He has threatened to come after, those are his words, in the past, the president's critics.

Even without Patel in place, acting leadership at the Bureau is moving ahead on a plan to remove as many as 4,000 employees who investigated the Capitol attack and President Trump's handling of classified documents.

That effort for now is tied up in court.

For a Republican perspective, we're joined tonight by Missouri

Senator Eric Schmidt, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Thanks for being with us.

Good to be with you, Joe. So you heard Senate Democrats again today make the case that FBI

director nominee Cash Patel is unqualified, they say, that he's a partisan political actor or worse, a conspiracy

theorist who would turn the FBI into a tool of Donald Trump's retribution.

What about his background, his past work, his past public comments suggest to you that

Democrats are wrong?

Well, he was a prosecutor, he was a public defender. He was chief of staff

at the Department of Defense. He's held high-level government positions before. And I think,

interestingly, he was a victim of lawfare himself. I think the FBI is ripe for real reform.

It's been weaponized in ways we've never seen before under the Biden administration and Christopher

Ray. The FBI went after Catholics.

The FBI went after parents who showed up to school board meetings.

The FBI pre-bunked the Hunter Biden laptop story.

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