Kash Patel grilled about 'bestiality' within the FBI during bizarre Senate hearing

This story originally appeared on Out.On Capitol Hill, we expect to hear dry policy discussions and heated debates about the latest group Republicans have decided to strip of their rights, but there is one word most Americans probably didn’t think would ever be uttered in he halls of Congress: bestiality. That changed today when Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) questioned FBI Director Kash Patel about a recent policy change involving having sex with animals. During a Senate committee hearing, Kennedy grilled Patel about his agency lowering its hiring standards to allow people who have engaged in sex work or bestiality to be selected as new trainees. The FBI argued that the recent shift in hiring policy is meant to stop victims of human trafficking from being unfairly penalized if they had been forced into those acts.“It automatically disqualified any individual who participated on either side of it. Obviously we were never going to hire the criminal,” Patel explained to Kennedy.“This side of what? The bestiality? So you disqualified the animals?” This logic seemed to stump Kennedy, known for his deadpan, folksy demeanor. The Republican from Louisiana also went viral back in 2023 for reading out explicit gay sex scenes from George M. Johnson's All Boys Aren’t Blue and Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on book banning.“Well, we have great canines, but we’re not going to disqualify…” Patel said, before Kennedy asked, “I’m trying to understand why you did this. Why would you even get into bestiality?” “We are not into bestiality,” Patel replied with a smirk.“I know you’re not, but you changed the qualifications and mentioned bestiality,” Kennedy said. “If Joe participated in bestiality, not as the animal but as the human, don’t you think he ought to be disqualified?”“If he voluntarily did it, sure, but if he was trafficked into it,” Patel said, then Kennedy replied, “How do you involuntarily do it