WASHINGTON (AP) — FBI Director Kash Patel is defending the bureau’s loosening of hiring requirements regarding prostitution and bestiality, saying the changes were meant to enable victims of those acts to apply for employment without fear of automatic disqualification. The subject arose during a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which Patel clashed with Democrats over his firing of agents who participated in investigations of President Donald Trump, a spate of media leak probes, and whether employees would be dispatched to the polls on Election Day in light of the bureau’s ongoing election-related investigations and Trump’s repeated and false claims about the existence of pervasive voter fraud.