Senior Republicans have signaled they may use a third-party agency to conduct background checks on Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees.
The FBI will not be able to withhold clearances from Trump’s Cabinet nominees, a former FBI assistant director has said.
Frank Figliuzzi was reacting to news that Trump’s Cabinet is examining third-party security firms for background checks, to avoid what the president-elect believes is a politicized and Democrat-controlled FBI.
Figliuzzi is the former assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI, where he served 25 years as a special agent and directed all espionage investigations.
„The FBI does not have the authority to deny clearances for White House Cabinet-level nominees“, Figliuzzi told Newsweek.
„However, the FBI does conduct extensive background investigations of nominees and provides those reports to the White House, which traditionally provides copies to the Senate Judiciary Committee“, he said.
The Senate is responsible for approving Cabinet members and may be influenced by any scandals or convictions in the backgrounds of Trump’s nominees. The names of the Cabinet nominees first go before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
On Wednesday, the outgoing Democratic chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dick Durbin, said that hiring an outside agency to rubber-stamp Trump’s Cabinet picks was the equivalent of „speed dating.“
„You can’t do a speed-dating process for the Cabinet of the president of the United States without ending up embarrassed“, he told reporters gathered at the Senate.
Senior Republicans continued to discuss the possibility of using third-party security agencies for background checks even as the Justice Department reached an agreement with Trump on how the FBI’s background checks would occur.
