Republican New York Rep. Mike Lawler called out how the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) have been weaponized politically on Sunday on CNN after guest host Kasie Hunt asked whether Kash Patel plans to go after “political enemies.”
President-elect Donald Trump announced his Patel on Saturday as his pick to lead the FBI, writing in a statement that the former Trump administration official plans to lead the agency into a new era. On “State of the Union,” Hunt pressed the Republican lawmaker on whether he had “reservations” about Patel allegedly planning on “going after” Trump’s political enemies, noting that Patel had a “list” of names in his book.
“Look, I don’t think the American people are interested in a revenge tour, but obviously if people did wrong in their official capacities, then that’s something they should be concerned about. But if they didn’t do anything wrong, if they upheld the law, then there shouldn’t be a problem,” Lawler said. “The objective here obviously is to reform the Department of Justice and the FBI and get it back to its mission of going after criminals.”
“Obviously in recent years we’ve seen the FBI and the Department of Justice weaponized in a way that has become completely political. That’s not good for the American people. It’s not good for our system of justice. The lack of confidence that Americans have in the Department of Justice and the FBI is terrible. So obviously we want a system that is reformed, that works for the American people, and that prosecutes criminals. And that should be the objective and the goal of every American. Obviously that’s what my hope is as the Department of Justice moves forward under Pam Bondi and the FBI under Kash Patel.”
Hunt continued to push back on Lawler, asking whether Patel would be the best to accomplish the goal of “partisan neutrality” under a second Trump administration. The guest host also highlighted how the new Trump nominee would be replacing FBI Director Christopher Wray, who was nominated by the former president during his first administration.
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“Right, and Christopher Wray’s FBI then went and investigated Donald Trump. These charges have since been dropped by the special prosecutor,” Lawler responded. “But again, Kasie, these issues have been litigated in this election that we just had. Donald Trump talked about this for two years, so I don’t know why anybody is surprised. The American people voted for Donald Trump overwhelmingly, despite him campaigning on these issues.”
“I’m not concerned about partisanship here. I think we’ve seen a DOJ and an FBI that have been weaponized. You look at the New York State Attorney General Letitia James. She literally campaigned on prosecuting Donald Trump. I didn’t see many in the media objecting to that. The fact is that our system of justice needs to be depoliticized,” Lawler said. “Unfortunately, under the Biden administration, we have seen it weaponized, and it’s wrong.”
Trump has long called for investigations into the FBI, accusing the agency of being led by corrupt officials who have coordinated against him. During the Republican presidential primaries in 2023, the former president, along with every GOP candidate except former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, stated they would plan to fire Wray.
Trump said in a March campaign video that his second administration would bring an end to the “weaponized” departments, with agencies being “completely overhauled” through the “firing all of the corrupt actors in our National Security and Intelligence apparatus.”
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