Give Dick Durbin the Brass Neck Award for making this a topic of questioning at all in the Senate confirmation hearing for Kash Patel. Democrats want to use these hearings to shriek about January 6, much as they have spent the last four years shrieking about it, even after a national election when it became crystal clear that Americans aren't terribly concerned about it. And it comes after a sequence of corrupt and incompetent blanket pardons from Joe Biden that had even Democrats demanding answers.

Give credit to the nominee for FBI Director for preparation, too. Patel took Durbin's question and shoved it right back down his throat, making himself the champion for the FBI's rank and file:

Durbin: Do you think that America is safer because the J6 defendants have been pardoned?

Kash Patel: America is not safe because of President Biden's commutation of a man who murdered two FBI agents.

Durbin: He's 80 years old.

Kash Patel: He killed two FBI agents. That's… pic.twitter.com/dJby3W35OQ

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) January 30, 2025

First off, why is this a question for Patel? He doesn't have the authority to issue clemency actions, nor the power to review such petitions. The FBI might weigh in on those, but review of those petitions takes place at the Attorney General level, not at the level in which Patel would be operating. This is a cheap shot by Durbin, as evidenced in Patel's initial answer, in which he makes clear that he and Durbin had already discussed this privately. 

Second: Durbin got the sound bite he wanted, but just couldn't help himself. Patel had declared himself opposed to the clemency actions involving violent actors on January 6, putting him publicly at odds with Trump. Durbin and other Democrats could wave that sound bite around to continue to attack Trump on that point, although fat lot of good it will do them. If voters gave a damn about a riot four years ago, they wouldn't have elected Trump to a second term, a point that continually eludes Democrats to this moment. 

So Durbin decides to press Patel on whether America is "safer" when presidents release violent criminals, even though Joe Biden just got done doing the exact same thing. Patel seizes on the release of Leonard Peltier, who executed two captured FBI agents in the most cowardly manner, during an act of political terrorism 50 years ago. Christopher Wray strongly and repeatedly objected to the commutation during his term as FBI Director, the latest instance coming just ten days prior to Biden's 11th-hour commutation:

Wray sent a letter to the White House on Jan. 10. In it, the FBI director expressed "vehement and steadfast opposition to the commutation of Leonard Peltier's sentence."

"I hope these letters are unnecessary, and that you are not considering a pardon or commutation," he wrote. "But on behalf of the FBI family, and out of an abundance of caution, I want to make sure our position is clear: Peltier is a remorseless killer, who brutally murdered two of our own–Special Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams. Granting Peltier any relief from his conviction or sentence is wholly unjustified and would be an affront to the rule of law."

Durbin clearly got caught off-guard by this riposte, arguing that Peltier "is 80 years old." So? He murdered two FBI agents in cold blood as an act of political terrorism, and got sentenced to life in prison for it. Wray is entirely correct that Biden undermined the "rule of law" by turning that into a ticket home, and the appeasement of leftist terrorism makes America less safe. And, I suspect, it makes the rank and file of the FBI somewhat happy to see Biden and his team get the heave-ho, too.

But that's not the only example, either. In his rush to issue a blanket pardon for supposedly non-violent felons with drug offenses, Biden freed Adrian Peeler, a drug dealer that murdered a witness and her 8-year-old son before she could testify. Senate Democrat Richard Blumenthal objected to Peeler's commutation a week ago:

Adrian Peeler, a reputed drug dealer who was convicted, along with his brother, Russell Peeler Jr., in the fatal shootings of 8-year-old Leroy "BJ" Brown and his mother, Karen Clarke, was one of hundreds of people who had their sentences commuted.

"It seems to me that someone dropped the ball here to let this person get released," Blumenthal, who was Connecticut's attorney general at the time of the killings, said in a statement. "This was a really vicious murder that changed our laws. It also highlights how we need to take a look at the pardon system to see how it can be improved." ...

On Jan. 7, 1999, Clarke and Brown had just gotten home from shopping when police say Adrian Peeler burst into their home on orders from his brother. Brown had witnessed Russell Peeler Jr. shoot Clarke's boyfriend, and both mother and son were scheduled to testify in his trial.

Clarke was found lying face-up on the floor of her son’s room, the telephone inches from her outstretched hand, police said, while her son was in the hall with a bullet wound to the back of the head.

Biden's clemencies over the last few days of his presidency had a body count of at least four. Trump's clemencies had a body count of zero. So which president has made America less safe? And which party?