Senate Republicans are rejecting a proposal floated by some advisers to President-elect Trump to take the job of conducting background checks for high-level nominees away from the FBI and give it to private investigators.
Doing so could make it easier for some nominees to win Senate confirmation, but GOP senators say the FBI should retain its leading role in conducting background checks. They argue its agents have access to criminal information that private investigators simply can’t match.
And while many Trump allies don’t trust the FBI, many GOP senators think the agency sets the gold standard for professionalism and credibility in law enforcement.
The FBI also leads the nation’s domestic counterespionage efforts, serving as the lead agency for investigating and preventing foreign intelligence gathering activities in the United States. Republican senators think that role puts it in a good position to vet nominees who would have access to the nation’s most sensitive secrets.
“The FBI should do the background checks, in my judgement,” said Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), who serves as the ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense and as a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, argued that the FBI has access to information gathered by law enforcement on the federal, state and local levels that private firms don’t.
“If you wanted to supplement it with a private firm, I’d say OK. But the FBI does have access to information that probably a private firm wouldn’t have, even a really good savvy one,” he said.
Cramer said a private firm could help the FBI in its background investigations, but he “sure wouldn’t leave it” entirely outside the FBI’s hands.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) argued “it’s just been routine” for the nation’s top law enforcement agency to handle background checks for high-level appointments.
“It is important to do these background checks, and the FBI has done this” for decades, she noted. “It’s just been routine that they have been the one that has handled it. You don’t go to an outside private investigator, right?
“It’s not just for the [executive branch] positions. If you’re a Senate staffer seeking to get that security clearance you go — we all go through — that same process,” she said.
“I get there is distrust by some of different agencies and the FBI is not immune from that, but I do think it is vitally important, particularly from a national security perspective, that you have a level of vetting that is thorough,” Murkowski added.
“What agenda does the private investigator have?” she asked.
CNN reported Friday that Trump’s transition team has bypassed traditional background checks for some of his Cabinet nominees, using private companies to vet the choices instead.
Trump’s team has circumvented the FBI because of concerns it would move too slowly and bog down the president-elect’s push to confirm his Cabinet quickly.
The New York Times reported in late October that Trump’s advisers circulated a memo suggesting that if Trump won, many of his appointees should gain security clearances immediately without having to go through time-consuming FBI background checks.
The proposal was pushed by Boris Epshteyn, among others, according to the Times.
Epshteyn was one of the Trump advisers who supported the president-elect choosing former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) to serve as attorney general, despite a House Ethics Committee investigation of alleged sexual misconduct and illicit drug use by the former Florida lawmaker.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said not having the FBI conduct background checks for high-level nominees by the time Trump formally appoints them next year “would come under scrutiny at the congressional level.”
He said lawmakers “would want to know the validity of those individuals doing the background checks.”
“Just because the White House doesn’t request a background check out of the FBI wouldn’t then mean perhaps some committees might not ask for it,” he said.
Gaetz is among Trump’s most controversial nominees. He came under new scrutiny Monday after an attorney representing two women who testified before the House Ethics Committee told ABC News that Gaetz paid two of his clients for sex.
One of those women testified to the panel that she saw Gaetz having sex with her friend, who was 17 at the time, according to the attorney.
Another bombshell dropped over the weekend when The Washington Post reported Pete Hegseth, whom Trump will nominate to serve as secretary of Defense, paid a woman who accused him of sexual assault as part of a nondisclosure agreement.
A lawyer for Hegseth told The Post the incident was consensual.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Trump will nominate to head the Department of Health and Human Services, has been accused by a former Harvard University classmate of selling cocaine when they were students.
Kurt Anderson, a best-selling author, claims that Kennedy poured out a line of cocaine for him to sample in a dorm room, and he paid $40 for a gram of powder.
Another Trump pick who might be headed for a lengthy background investigation is former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii), who is slated to serve as director of national intelligence.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers want to know more about Gabbard’s secret four-day trip to meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2017. Syria is on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who has jurisdiction over the Justice Department and FBI, argued the FBI brings a level of credibility that private firms can’t match.
“The notion that we’re going to eliminate FBI background checks, we’re going to have recess appointments, no questions asked, is to ignore a body of experience in Congress and law that suggests that’s the height of irresponsibility,” he said.
“The bottom line is the FBI has been doing this for decades, and they’re credible, they’re an important part of the process. You pick a private firm, and I’ll tell you you’ll find a conflict of interest,” he said.