Nearly all Republican presidential candidates have either vowed to reform the top ranks of the FBI upon assuming office, enact sweeping structural reforms or dismantle the bureau entirely.
Only one major GOP candidate — former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — has explicitly said he would not fire FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former President Donald Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott have all vowed to get rid of the director as part of their plans to overhaul the bureau. Two other candidates — North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez — told the Daily Caller that firing Wray could be on the table, while former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson has said he would be open to “reforms.”
Ramaswamy has floated the hardest position on the FBI. He would “dismantle the entire agency,” spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told the Caller.
Trump, DeSantis, Haley, Pence and Scott have pledged to fire Wray as well as the other “corrupt” officials at the bureau.
Under a second Trump term, the “weaponized” departments and agencies will be “completely overhauled” by “firing all of the corrupt actors in our National Security and Intelligence apparatus,” the former president said in a March campaign video. He has also vowed to purge the agents who have investigated him.
DeSantis said he would “clean out the upper echelons of both the DOJ and the FBI” and proposed moving the bureau’s headquarters out of Washington, D.C.
“We know the leadership has failed, and we know we need to have new blood in there. We also need an attorney general who’s going to have a backbone, who’s going to be willing to fight against the media, fight against the left, and do what’s right, to ensure equal justice under law,” DeSantis said during his last policy call on the issue.
Haley spokesman Ken Farnaso told the Caller that the former South Carolina governor “would fire Director Wray as part of a larger overhaul that would go after both senior and middle management at the FBI and DOJ.”
“The double standard of justice in our country will end in a Haley administration,” Farnaso added.
A Pence adviser told the Caller the former vice president “believes the FBI has lost the trust and confidence of the American people” due to, among other abuses, the “targeting of parents trying to reclaim control of what their kids are being taught in school and the targeting of Christians in Richmond, Virginia.” Pence has previously said he would pick a director of the FBI who is “respected on both sides of the aisle.”
WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 10: FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies hearing on Capitol Hill May 10, 2023 in Washington, DC. The hearing was a review of the fiscal year 2024 funding requests for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Scott said at an Iowa town hall that “the average person working in the rank and file of the FBI are good people” but that “the actual leadership of the FBI should be fired.”
“There is a culture that seeps down and distorts and destroys the integrity and competence of the American people, and that has to be uprooted,” Scott added.
Suarez, Burgum and Hutchinson have all said they would be open to enacting reforms aimed at restoring the bureau’s credibility, but the former Arkansas governor said he wouldn’t go as far as to “defund” the FBI. (RELATED: GOP 2024 Candidates Cautious About Committing US Troops To Taiwan)
“I don’t have a personal relationship with Director Wray. I do believe that if serious reforms to remove politics from the FBI at every level are to be effective and the image of the FBI is to be restored, new leadership in the next administration is required,” Suarez told the Caller.
Burgum spokesperson Lance Trover did not explicitly promise a change in bureau leadership, but said the candidate would “do what it takes” to rebuild trust in the FBI.
“Gov. Burgum believes that citizen’s [sic] faith in our institutions is the foundation of a free and just society and will not allow them to be a political enforcement extension of the party in power as we have seen in failed countries,” Trover said. “If Americans have distrust in the Justice Department when he takes office, he will do what it takes to restore the American people’s faith in the Department of Justice and other bedrocks of our democracy.”
Christie has taken a different line on the FBI compared, saying that he doesn’t believe the agency has been weaponized under President Joe Biden and that he would not fire Wray. The former governor recommended Wray for the job under Trump.
Christie has said, however, that “we need change at the Department of Justice,” and that if he were president, “you can be guaranteed that we’ll put an attorney general in there who will lead without fear or favor and clear out anyone who does show partisanship.”
The FBI told the Caller it had no comment on the candidates calling for Wray’s ouster.