FBI director Kash Patel wears Liverpool FC tie to US Senate hearing

FBI director Kash Patel appeared for a hearing in front of the US Senate judiciary committee wearing a tie featuring the logo of English Premier League side Liverpool on Tuesday.

The tie drew questions across social media. For one thing, it’s extremely unusual for a government official to wear a tie featuring the logo of any business, let alone a sports team. For another, Patel has not publicly expressed fandom for Liverpool in the past – at least not in words. He has previously been photographed wearing Liverpool ties on at least two separate occasions, though. The first, on 12 December 2024, came when Patel was visiting various lawmakers on Capitol Hill after Donald Trump’s victory in that year’s election, with Patel at the time being rumored to be a part of the administration. The second came about five months later, on 9 April 2025, at a press event touting the US authorities’ capture of narcotics. By that time, Patel had been confirmed as director of the FBI.

Notably, Patel wore the same thick-striped tie featuring the Liverpool logo on the bottom at both those events, while the one he wore for Tuesday’s hearing is different, with thinner stripes and a more prominent logo (the “heritage tie,” currently available on Liverpool’s official club shop for £15). His apparent ownership of multiple Liverpool ties would indicate that his wearing of them is not a fluke.

On Tuesday, Patel’s hearing in front the judiciary committee turned contentious at various points. The FBI director got into a shouting match with US senators Cory Booker and Adam Schiff, defending his leadership of the agency, his firing of longtime employees involved in investigations into the attacks on the Capitol on 6 January 2021, and his tweet announcing that law enforcement had a “subject” in custody for the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, which turned out to be premature.

“I don’t see it as a mistake, I see it as something – working with the public to identify that there was a subject in custody,” Patel told senators.

If Patel does support Liverpool, it would represent a stark clash of political allegiances. As one of the US’s foremost law enforcement officers, Patel has been a public face of a second Trump administration that has used authoritarian tactics to impact multiple areas of public life in the United States. This includes raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in public places that have resulted in the arrest of hundreds of immigrants regardless of residency or citizenship status and the dispatching of federal agents to left-leaning US cities in response to supposed higher crime rates (claims of which have been disproven).

Liverpool, by contrast, is known to be one of the more left-leaning clubs in Europe from one of the most left-leaning cities in the UK. Legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly defined the club’s identity during his hugely successful tenure by saying: “I believe the only way to live and to be truly successful is by collective effort, with everyone working for each other, everyone helping each other, and everyone having a share of the rewards at the end of the day. That might be asking a lot, but it’s the way I see football and the way I see life.”

Though the business of Liverpool is markedly different these days in keeping with the financial juggernaut that is the Premier League, elements of socialist ideology are still present in the club. Jürgen Klopp, who managed Liverpool to great success from 2015 to 2024, summed up his own politics to biographer Raphael Honigstein by saying: “If I am doing well, I want others to do well, too. If there’s something I will never do in my life it is vote for the right.”

The club’s supporters also have a considerable opposition to law enforcement authorities in their history. Much of it stems from the Hillsborough disaster that killed 97 fans of the club in 1989, and police’s pinning of the situation on the supporters themselves, blaming hooliganism and drunkenness. Many years later, it was found in separate investigations that the crowd crush which killed the 97 was in fact due to gross negligence on the part of police and that the authorities misled the public in order to shift blame on to the fans.

Patel rose to prominence after the events of 6 January 2021, promoting a legal defense fund for those arrested for the attack on the Capitol building. A career prosecutor and legal aide under multiple right-wing politicians before that, Patel parlayed an association with the first Trump administration to several business ventures and a media career. In both capacities, he promoted several conspiracy theories, including debunked claims of fraud in the 2020 US presidential election, debunked claims of the dangers of Covid-19 vaccines, and the presence of the “deep state” in US politics.

Liverpool open their Champions League campaign on Wednesday at home against Atlético Madrid.

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