by DIANA GLEBOVA at dailycaller.com
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.”
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