FBI Director Christopher Wray made it easy on Donald Trump, announcing his retirement at the end of Joe Biden's term and saving the president-elect from the chore of firing him when he takes office next month.
Trump made his intentions perfectly clear when he nominated loyalist Kash Patel to lead the FBI, even though Wray was supposed to have a couple of years left in his ten-year term.
Is this the start of a dangerous politicization of the nation's top law enforcement agency?
Former FBI agent Josh Campbell, who now covers the Justice Department for CNN, joined KNX News’ daily political show Countdown 2024 to discuss.
Listen here:
Kash Patel, if confirmed, has promised to clean house at the Justice Department and turn the FBI headquarters into a “museum of the deep state.” Campbell said that while few believe Patel would be able to dismantle the agency to the extent he’s promised, Trump has signaled that he plans to change federal hiring practices to allow agency leaders to fire employees at will.
“Right now, if you're in the FBI or, you know, any government agency as a civilian employee, if you think something wrong is being done by your leadership, you can become a whistleblower, you can report that to Congress or to inspectors general without fear of retaliation against yourself,” he said. “That could all change if Trump actually does change these hiring practices, and you know, if someone wants to complain about something that the director is doing, that director could then fire them, send them on the street without a job. That's the big fear, not Kash Patel himself.”
Campbell said everyone in the FBI assumed Wray was on the way out, but some thought he should have stayed and forced Trump to fire him.
“The FBI director has a 10-year term that was set up in order to insulate the bureau from politics, to make sure that any director would naturally, you know, extend beyond any one administration,” he said. “And so there is a group of people there inside the bureau who say that, you know, if Trump is going to bust these norms and get rid of an FBI director and bring in a political loyalist, at least, you know, make him be the anomaly in order to make that move.”
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Only two FBI directors have been fired in the agency’s history – and one of them, of course, was fired by Trump. Campbell said Trump’s crusade against the FBI during the Mueller investigation was the beginning of what many see as a “full-on political campaign against the bureau.”
Listen to the full episode above to hear another perspective from former House Oversight Committee chief Trey Gowdy, and catch new episodes of Countdown 2024 every weekday at 2:30 p.m.
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