Amy Klobuchar
Role at the time: United States senator for Minnesota, questioning the witness
Statement summary
Klobuchar put it to Patel that Justice Department guidance bars FBI agents from conducting investigations inside polling places and gives federal prosecutors no authority to send agents or marshals there, and asked him to commit to following that law and policy. Patel said he was aware of the guidance and that the FBI would always follow the law and the guidelines.
“Are you aware of the Justice Department’s longstanding guidance that states that FBI agents cannot conduct investigations inside polling places on election day and that federal prosecutors have no authority to send FBI special agents or deploy US marshals to polling places?” … “And so will you commit to following clear federal law and DOJ policy and not deploy federal agents to polling places?”
Official U.S. Senate video archive of the September 15, 2026 Senate Judiciary Committee "Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation" hearing. This single video covers both this case and the related FBI hiring-standards case.
Why we used this label
Relative to the FBI having a presence at polling places, Klobuchar asserts as a proposition that existing law and Justice Department guidance forbid it, then asks the director to commit to that limit. An assertion that the conduct under scrutiny would be unlawful is a substantive criticism of it, which is why this is a condemnation rather than a challenge to the characterisation: she is not disputing how the plan has been described, she is saying it may not lawfully happen.