POLITICAL VIOLENCE Rep Brandon Gill Question Ilhan Omar s Humanity During Kash Patel s Hearing

The gentleman from Texas is recognized. Thank you again for taking the time, Director Patel, and Chairman Jordan for holding this hearing. Thank you for depoliticizing the FBI and getting it back to its original mission as well. Director Patel, do you agree that we have a problem in the United States with politically motivated violence? Absolutely. And I very much agree. I think we can all agree that political violence is wrong, it's evil, regardless of which side it comes from, and that we can all adamantly and vehemently reject it, or we certainly should. But one of the things that we've noticed recently is that affinity and tolerance for political violence is not equally distributed on both sides of the aisle. In fact, right now, social media is filled with leftists who are cheering on the murder of an iconic conservative political figure, Charlie Kirk. And it's not just random people on Twitter doing this now. There's a YouGov poll released just a few days ago, which stated that 25% of those who identify as very liberal believe that political violence can sometimes be justified. That's far too many, is it not? It is. One is far too many. That's right. Only 3% of very conservative said the same thing, and we can agree that 3% is far too many. But there's an astounding difference between 25% on the left accepting and tolerating political violence and 3% on the right. I would hope that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle would also recognize that there is a systemic problem on their side of the aisle with tolerance for violence against people with whom they politically disagree, that there is a cultural rot on their side of the aisle that needs to be addressed desperately. Would you agree with that? Yes. One of the more astounding aspects of this is that it's not just people. This comes from the very top, from their political leaders. Just a few days ago, a member of Congress of this body, Ilhan Omar, shared a video on her social media account about Charlie Kirk's murder, and I'll quote what it said. It said, Charlie Kirk was Dr. Frankenstein, and his monster shot him through the neck. In other words, Charlie had it coming to him. The words that he said naturally led to his assassination. That is a reprehensible thing for a member of Congress to say, to suggest, to promote in any capacity. There are people across this country who are losing their jobs for far less than this. And that, by the way, is a just response to acceptance and tolerance of political violence. It's amazing to me that the political left today, who were the originators and the cheerleaders of cancel culture, now have the backbone to attack conservatives for defending their assassinated friend. But there's a key difference here. Democrats want to silence conservatives for speaking obvious, self-evident, ontological truths like that men aren't women and men can't get pregnant. That seems pretty basic. That seems like a basic truth that we should all be able to agree on. Republicans, by contrast, are recognizing that a constitutional republic depends on the free and open exchange of ideas that we can debate without violence. And that assassinating a political rival is evil, it's wrong, and it should not be glorified or promoted or justified in any way, including in the way that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar did. So Mr. Patel, thank you again for being here. I'd like to, with the remainder of my time, just get your opinion. Does the FBI recognize the rising threat of political violence in America, and what can you guys do to address it? Yes, we do. And what we can do to address it, Congressman, is we need to get online partnerships with these companies in the public space, on these gaming sites, and on these social media sites. As I was saying earlier, there is no way to triage the amount of information generated on these sites by the FBI alone, and we need the public-private partnership. And there's another law that's expiring, I think, at the end of this month, which I believe we need renewed, that allows private sector companies to report into the FBI without liability for criminal and investigatory purposes, and that's the kind of stuff we need to keep going. Got it. Thank you, Director Patel. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Gentleman yields back. Mr. Chairman? Gentleman from Arizona? I have some UCs. Gentleman in the state, his... What stood out most in this exchange was not the statistics or the back and forth, but the willingness to say something that Washington too often dances around. Political violence does not emerge in a vacuum, and rhetoric matters. When public figures blur the line between condemnation and justification, they don't just cheapen debate, they legitimize danger. The lawmaker's argument cut to an uncomfortable truth about modern political culture. Tolerance for political violence is not evenly distributed, and pretending otherwise does not make the problem go away. A democracy cannot function when violence becomes emotionally excusable as long as it targets the right people. Once that threshold is crossed, ideology replaces morality, and the guardrails that keep disagreement civil begin to collapse. What made the commentary resonate was its refusal to engage in false equivalence. Acknowledging that any tolerance for violence is unacceptable does not require ignoring scale, frequency, or cultural reinforcement. When violent rhetoric is echoed, excused, or softened by influential voices, it sends a signal, intentional or not, that some lives are more expendable than others. Equally important was the implicit defense of free expression as a stabilizing force, not a threat. Democracies survive disagreement because words are allowed to replace force. Once speech itself is framed as violence, actual violence becomes easier to rationalize. The commentary pushed back on that inversion, arguing that true. Director Patel's remarks grounded the conversation in reality. The threat is real, growing, and increasingly digital. But the deeper takeaway was cultural, not technical. Law enforcement can respond to violence, but it cannot repair a political culture that rewards outrage, excuses brutality, or treats assassination as commentary rather than atrocity. The moment served as a reminder that condemning political violence cannot be selective, performative, or partisan. It must be absolute. Anything less erodes the moral authority of leaders and weakens the republic they claim to serve. Civil discourse is not a courtesy, it is a requirement. And defending it, loudly and unapologetically, is not divisive, it is necessary.