(Bloomberg) -- A Republican senator said Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Wray is unobjectionable, though Donald Trump’s pick to head the FBI will get the “benefit of the doubt” if he’s formally nominated.
Kash Patel, a prominent critic of the FBI’s investigation into whether Trump’s 2016 campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in that year’s presidential election, is Trump’s choice for the agency, the president-elect said. If confirmed by the US Senate, Patel would replace Wray, a Trump appointee who still has years left in his term.
“It doesn’t surprise me that he will pick people that he believes are very loyal to himself,” but Trump also “picked a very good man” in Wray, Senator Mike Rounds, a Republican from South Dakota, said Sunday on ABC’s This Week.
“Normally these are for a 10-year term,” Rounds said. “We’ll see what his process is and whether he actually makes that nomination.”
As the leading US law enforcement agency, the bureau has been at the center of the highest-profile investigations related to the president-elect. After Trump left the White House in 2021, FBI agents raided his Florida resort to seize classified documents, probed his efforts to overturn the 2020 election result and investigated people who stormed the US Capitol in his support.
Trump has pledged a drastic overhaul, claiming the FBI carried out politically motivated probes against him and his allies. Patel has criticized US government agencies for actions that he says unfairly target Republicans and has endorsed calls to fire government employees who undermine the president’s agenda.
Rounds said that once nominees are presented, “the president gets the benefit of the doubt on the nomination, but we still go through a process and that process includes ‘advice and consent’ — which for the Senate means advice or consent sometimes.”
Trump chose Wray to lead the FBI in 2017, calling him “impeccably qualified.”
Yet speculation has been mounting that once inaugurated, Trump would remove Wray, if he doesn’t resign beforehand.
“I think he’ll make a choice,” Senator Ted Cruz said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “I think either he will resign or President Trump will fire him.”
Senator Chuck Grassley said Wray “has failed at fundamental duties” of FBI director and “showed disdain” for congressional oversight. “Kash Patel must prove to Congress he will reform & restore public trust” in the agency, Grassley said in a social media post.
Grassley and Cruz are on the Senate Judiciary Committee, whose oversight roles include the FBI.
Wray remains focused on his job, the FBI said in a statement after Trump’s announcement on Patel Saturday.
“Every day, the men and women of the FBI continue to work to protect Americans from a growing array of threats,” according to the statement. “Director Wray’s focus remains on the men and women of the FBI, the people we do the work with, and the people we do the work for.”
Rounds — who also warned that negotiating a trustworthy Ukraine settlement with Russian President Vladimir Putin will be “very difficult” — said he had “no objections” to how Wray handled himself in closed-door meetings with senators.
“So I don’t have any complaints about the way he’s done his job right now,” Rounds said.
Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois whose party will be in the minority starting January, called Patel an “unqualified loyalist.”
“The Senate should reject this unprecedented effort to weaponize the FBI for the campaign of retribution that Donald Trump has promised,” Durbin said in a statement.
Middle East Envoy
Separately, Trump named Massad Boulos, the father-in-law of Trump’s youngest daughter, Tiffany, as senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs. In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump called the businessman and lawyer “a dealmaker” and “an unwavering supporter” of peace in the Middle East.
Boulos, born into a Christian family in Lebanon, was a conduit to Arab Americans, including in swing-state Michigan, as Trump ran for reelection this year and President Joe Biden’s administration faced a backlash over its military support for Israel.
Trump said Sunday that Boulos has been “an asset to my Campaign, and was instrumental in building tremendous new coalitions with the Arab American Community.”
--With assistance from Chris Strohm.
(Updates with comments from senators starting in 10th paragraph and Trump’s new Middle East envoy.)
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