(The hill) – Senate Republicans are rejecting a proposal made by some of President-elect Trump’s advisers to strip the FBI of the job of conducting background checks on high-profile candidates and give them to private investigators.
That could make it easier for some candidates to win Senate confirmation, but Republican senators say the FBI should retain its leading role in conducting background checks. They argue that his agents have access to criminal information that private investigators simply cannot do with.
And while many Trump allies don’t trust the FBI, many Republican senators believe the agency sets the gold standard for professionalism and credibility in law enforcement.
The FBI also leads the country’s domestic counterintelligence efforts and serves as the lead agency for investigating and preventing foreign intelligence activities in the United States. Republican senators believe this role puts them in a good position to vet candidates who have access to the country’s most sensitive secrets.
“In my opinion, the FBI should be doing the background checks,” said Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), who serves as the ranking Republican on the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee and ranking 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 collected by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies that private companies do not.
“If you wanted to supplement it with a private company, I would say OK. But the FBI has access to information that a private company probably wouldn’t have, even a really shrewd company,” he said.
Cramer said a private firm could aid the FBI with its background investigation, but he “certainly wouldn’t” leave it completely out of the FBI’s hands.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) argued that it is “simply routine” for the nation’s top law enforcement agency to conduct background checks on high-level appointees.
“It’s important to do these background checks, and the FBI has been doing this for decades,” she noted. “It was just routine that they were the one who took care of it. You don’t go to an outside private investigator, do you?
“It’s not just for them [executive branch] positions. If you’re a Senate staffer who wants to get a security clearance, we all go through the same process,” she said.
“I understand that there is distrust among some different agencies, and the FBI is not immune to that, but I think it is extremely important, particularly from a national security perspective, that you have a thorough level of vetting,” Murkowski added.
“What plans does the private detective have?” she asked.
CNN reported Friday that Trump’s transition team bypassed time-honored background checks on some of his Cabinet nominees and instead used private companies to vet the decisions.
Trump’s team has bypassed the FBI because it fears it would move too slowly and hamper the president-elect’s efforts to quickly confirm his Cabinet.
In tardy October, The New York Times reported that Trump advisers had circulated a memo saying that if Trump won, many of his nominees should immediately receive security clearances without having to undergo time-consuming FBI background checks.
According to the Times, the proposal was pushed by Boris Epshteyn, among others.
Epshteyn was one of the Trump advisers who helped the president-elect choose former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) as attorney general despite the House Ethics Committee’s investigation into alleged sexual misconduct and illegal drug apply by the former Florida lawmaker .
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said it would be “tested at the congressional level if the FBI does not conduct background checks by the time Trump formally appoints high-level nominees next year.”
He said lawmakers “want to know the validity of the people doing the background checks.”
“Just because the White House isn’t asking the FBI for a background check doesn’t mean some committees might not ask for it,” he said.
Gaetz is one of Trump’s most controversial candidates. He came under renewed scrutiny Monday after a lawyer representing two women testifying before the House Ethics Committee told ABC News that Gaetz had paid two of his clients for sex.
One of those women testified before the panel that she saw Gaetz having sex with her then 17-year-old friend, the attorney said.
Another bombshell dropped over the weekend when the Washington Post reported that Pete Hegseth, whom Trump will nominate as defense secretary, had paid off a woman who had accused him of sexual assault as part of a nondisclosure agreement.
An attorney 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, was accused by a former Harvard University classmate of selling cocaine as a student.
Kurt Anderson, a best-selling author, claims Kennedy gave him a line of cocaine to try in a dorm and paid $40 for a gram of powder.
Another candidate chosen by Trump who may face a lengthy background investigation is former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii), who will 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 Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), who oversees the Justice Department and the FBI, argued that the FBI brings a level of credibility that private companies cannot match.
“The idea that we’re going to get rid of FBI background checks, that we’re going to have no-questions-asked recess appointments, is to ignore a body of experience in Congress and in the judiciary that suggests this is the pinnacle of “Is irresponsibility,” he said.
“The bottom line is that the FBI has been doing this for decades and they are credible, they are an essential part of the process. “You choose a private company and I’m telling you, you’re going to find a conflict of interest,” he said.
