Sen. Mitch McConnell falls in Capitol hallway

(WASHINGTON) — FBI Director Kash Patel is set to begin two days of questioning on Tuesday from congressional committees about his tenure leading the Federal Bureau of Investigation so far. He’s also sure to get questions about the assassination of conservative activist and influencer Charlie Kirk last week.

Patel will first be in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee in its oversight role of the agency before he faces its House counterpart on Wednesday.

Patel has been criticized for his handling of the Kirk investigation — sharing on social media at one point that a suspect was in custody but having to backtrack an hour and a half later — but Patel has stood by his performance, touting the fact that the FBI caught the Kirk’s suspected shooter in less than 36 hours.

Kirk was killed in Utah on Wednesday and the suspect, Tyler Robinson, was caught after his father turned him in to authorities on Friday. Patel contends this only happened because he ordered “against all law enforcement recommendations,” as he said on X on Saturday, the release of video and enhanced photos of the suspect.

“For comparative sake, the Boston bombing, the FBI didn’t release images for three days,” Patel told “Fox & Friends” on Monday morning. “I made an executive decision on an investigative and operational need, and it turned out to be the right move.”

He also addressed the criticism that he has faced for how he handled the investigation.

“I was telling the world what the FBI was doing as we were doing it. I continue to do it. I challenge anyone out there to find a director who has been more transparent and more willing to work the media with high profile cases or any cases that the FBI [is] handling.”

For his part, President Donald Trump is standing behind Patel, telling Fox News on Saturday that “I am very proud of the FBI. Kash — and everyone else — they have done a great job.”

Patel is also set to face questions on a host of other issues during his tenure at the FBI, including the firing of three senior agents who sued for reinstatement last week.

Brian Driscoll, who formerly served as the acting director of the FBI during the early days of Trump’s second term, Steven Jensen, former acting director of the FBI’s Washington field office, and former director in charge of the FBI’s Las Vegas field office Spencer Evans all joined in the lawsuit represented by Abbe Lowell, an attorney who has represented other high-profile figures ousted or otherwise targeted by the Trump administration.

The three former officials, whose careers collectively spanned over six decades of law enforcement experience across the ranks of the FBI, allege that the firings violated their due process rights as well as their First Amendment rights to free association and speech.

“Patel not only acted unlawfully but deliberately chose to prioritize politicizing the FBI over protecting the American people,” the lawsuit alleges. “As explained herein, his decision to do so degraded the country’s national security by firing three of the FBI’s most experienced operational leaders, each of them experts in preventing terrorism and reducing violent crime.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., a member of the Judiciary Committee, told ABC News that the lawsuit “contains pretty damning allegations that are now sworn to as part of a court proceeding.”

The director is also set to face questions about his so-called “enemies list,” a campaign promise to root out who he saw as bad actors in government, as well as his use of the FBI plane.

Whitehouse told ABC News that Patel “brings a genuinely political motive to the repeated instances of political decision making at the FBI.” He said it is “really, really, really, really ironic about the people who are supposedly so irate about weaponization is now doing weaponization at an unprecedented scale.”

He is also expected to face questions over the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

The Trump administration has been dealing with blowback it received from MAGA supporters for its decision to not release more materials related to the investigation into Epstein, the wealthy financier and convicted sex offender who died by suicide in jail in 2019.

Epstein, whose private island estate was in the U.S. Virgin Islands, has long been rumored to have kept a “client list” of celebrities and politicians, which right-wing influencers have baselessly accused authorities of hiding.

Trump promised during the 2024 presidential campaign to release the files in their entirety and Patel before taking the FBI job had pushed unsubstantiated claims about who was in them.

The Justice Department and FBI announced in July that they had found no evidence that Epstein kept a client list after several top officials like Patel, before joining the administration, had themselves accused the government of shielding information regarding the case.

Last week, the House Oversight Committee released what it said was a note from Trump to Epstein on his birthday, which the White House and Trump deny was written by him.

On Sept. 2, the committee released more than 33,000 pages of Epstein-related records after it subpoenaed the Justice Department for them, but Democrats on the committee said that most of the files are already public.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) President Donald Trump welcomed Hungary’s autocratic leader Viktor Orban to the White House on Friday, praising him repeatedly as a “great leader” as met sat to discuss trade and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“I like and respect him,” Trump said as he and Orban sat for lunch with their teams in the Cabinet Room, specifically applauding Orban’s views on immigration and crime.

Orban in turn celebrated what he said will be a “golden age between the United States and Hungary” with Trump’s return to office.

Orban is in Washington seeking an exemption to new U.S. sanctions targeting Russia’s largest oil companies and their subsidiaries that will go into effect later this month.

President Trump was asked if he would grant Hungary’s request.

“We’re looking at it because it’s very difficult for him to get the oil and gas from other areas,” Trump replied, expressing sympathy for Hungary’s geographic reliance on Russia for energy resources.

“It’s a big country. But they don’t have sea. They don’t have the ports. And so they have a difficult problem,” Trump said before turning to criticize European countries he said don’t have that issue but continue to buy Russian oil.

Orban called the issue “vital” for Hungarians.

Orban was recently going to play host to a summit between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, before Trump called the proposed meeting off amid frustration with the lack of progress in peace talks.

Trump said they had picked Budapest, Hungary, as the location because both he and Putin liked Orban.

On Friday, Trump reiterated that if he and Putin were to meet, he would like to do it in Budapest. Trump said he and Orban would be discussing a potential summit with Putin.

“We were talking about that with Viktor, he understands Putin and knows him very well,” Trump said, adding: “I think that Viktor feels we’re going to get that war ended in the not too distant future.”

As Orban gave his view on the war, Trump turned to him and asked, “So you would say that Ukraine cannot win that war?”

“You know, a miracle can happen,” Orban replied. 

Trump previously welcomed Orban to the White House during his first term, in 2019, breaking from his predecessors who had shunned Hungary’s prime minister from Washington.

The two men met several times when Trump was out of office at his Florida estate, including during the summer of the 2024 campaign and after Trump became president-elect.

Orban has been embraced by many prominent American conservatives over his positions on immigration and LGBTQ issues, and has spoken several times at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Orban hosted a CPAC event in Hungary earlier this year.

Trump on Friday said it was an “honor to have a friend of mine here” at the White House.

“He’s done a fantastic job. He’s a very powerful man within his country … He’s run a really great country, and he’s got no crime, he’s got no problems, like some countries do,” Trump said.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) The United States has conducted its 17th lethal strike against a suspected drug vessel, killing all three on board, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on X overnight.

The strike took place in international waters in the Caribbean on Thursday, Hegseth said.

“As we’ve said before, vessel strikes on narco-terrorists will continue until their the poisoning of the American people stops,” said Hegseth in his social media post. “The vessel was trafficking narcotics in the Caribbean and was struck in international waters. No U.S. forces were harmed in the strike, and three male narco-terrorists — who were aboard the vessel — were killed.”

Separately, six individuals were arrested and more than seven tons of cocaine were seized in the Atlantic Ocean “without fatalities,” Colombia President Gustavo Petro said in a post on X Friday morning.

Petro called it “one of the largest seizure days in my government, with the collaboration of our public security forces and the French authorities.”

The seizures were carried out on land and at sea, according to Petro. The nationalities of those arrested are unknown, Petro said.

President Donald Trump has called Petro an “illegal drug dealer” who “does nothing to stop” drug production.

At least 70 people have now been killed in strikes on vessels since Sept. 2.

On Sunday, the Trump administration gave more than a dozen Senate Republicans a secret target list for its ongoing military campaign in the Caribbean Sea, suggesting it is preparing for sustained operations against drug cartels and that it believed the military strikes could withstand potential legal challenges.

“To all narco-terrorists who threaten our homeland: if you want to stay alive, stop trafficking drugs. If you keep trafficking deadly drugs — we will kill you,” said Hegseth.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.