FBI Director Kash Patel has gone viral over an apparent self-help note he wrote to himself while testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee last week.
During the hearing, Patel repeatedly clashed with Democrats over his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and response to the Charlie Kirk assassination.
The note, photographed and then shared online, has since gone viral, with one post racking up over five million views.
Highlights
- FBI Director Kash Patel went viral for writing a handwritten pep talk to himself during a tense House Judiciary Committee hearing.
- Patel clashed with Democrats over Epstein files and Charlie Kirk’s assassination, with heated exchanges involving Swalwell and Schiff.
- The note urged Patel to 'hold the line' and 'brush off attacks,' sparking mockery and social media backlash questioning his self-encouragement.
Kash Patel has gone viral for writing a note to himself
Image credits: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The list, written on a custom-made FBI notebook, with “Director Patel” at the top, reads: “Good fight with Swalwell. Hold the line. Brush off their attacks. Rise above the next line of partisan attacks.”
Patel was mocked online for writing the list, with some questioning why he was writing words of affirmation to himself during the hearing.
“This is so pathetic. He's writing words of encouragement to himself? Also, ‘brush off their attacks’? Because you don't have real answers?” one person wrote on social media.
Another added: “Those are the things he probably conveyed to Trump as wins as he begged to keep his job as FBI director.”
Image credits: Win McNamee/Getty Images
While a third posted, “I mean…who hasn’t written ‘hold the line’ to themselves at a congressional hearing while covering for the largest pedophile sex traffickers of modern times??”
“He has to give himself a written ‘pep talk’ .... now that's humiliating,” another user wrote.
The Trump administration has been grappling with the fallout over Epstein after the FBI and DOJ concluded there was no client list and that Epstein died by suicide in jail in 2019.
Calls to release the Epstein files from both sides of the political spectrum continue to grow.
Following Kirk’s murder on September 10, Patel also posted on X that the FBI had a subject in custody, who was not the alleged gunman.
The FBI had to announce that the two people arrested were not suspects, and authorities then arrested alleged shooter Tyler Robinson one day later.
Image credits: Win McNamee/Getty Images
Robinson, 23, has been charged with aggravated murder and faces the death penalty.
At the hearing, Ranking Member Jamie Raskin asked why Patel hadn’t “released the names of Epstein's co-conspirators in the rape and sex trafficking of young women and girls,” ABC News reported.
In response, Patel told Raskin, "we have released more material than anyone else before,” and added that the FBI had released "everything the court has allowed us."
As referenced in Patel’s note, he had a fiery clash with Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell, who told the FBI director he called “bulls**t” on his claims that the courts had prevented any further release of documents related to Epstein.
Swalwell also repeatedly tried to get Patel to answer yes or no to whether Attorney General Pam Bondi had told U.S. President Donald Trump that his name was in the Epstein files.
Patel refused to give a straight answer to the question, ABC News reported.
"I'm going to borrow your terminology and call bulls**t on your entire career in Congress, which is a disgrace to the American public," Patel said to Swalwell.
The clash came after Patel had several fiery exchanges with Democrats at the Senate Judiciary Committee last Tuesday.
Senator Adam Schiff had asked Patel why Epstein associate and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell was moved to a minimum security prison camp.
The pair then clashed, shouting over one another, as Patel described Schiff as a “coward” and a “fraud,” going on to say he was a “political buffoon at best.”