MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation serves a single term - 10 years. That is by law. Now, President-elect Trump has signaled that he intends to cut short the term of the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, who you may recall was Trump's own nominee appointed during his first term in office back in 2017. Trump wants to replace him with a long-time ally, Kash Patel. Well, to talk more about this, we have Andrew Weissmann on the line. He was the top lawyer at the FBI from 2011 to 2013, and he served as a lead prosecutor on the special counsel team headed by Robert Mueller. Andrew Weissmann, welcome.
ANDREW WEISSMANN: Thank you so much.
KELLY: So let's start with that 10-year term I just mentioned. It was designed this way by intent that the director of the bureau would span multiple administrations, would even span a two-term president. Remind us when and why it was set up that way.
WEISSMANN: So it was a law that was passed by Congress in 1976. And I think it had two primary purposes. One was in light of the very long tenure of the director of the FBI, Hoover.
KELLY: Very long - 48 years, right?
WEISSMANN: Exactly. This was to prevent that kind of sort of power hegemony. That's not at issue here. This is sort of the opposite issue - and the second reason for the 10-year term, which was to depoliticize that office and to make it clear that the FBI has one and only one presidential appointee.
Now, to be fair, a president can always fire the FBI director, but that's not the norm. The norm is that, you know, unless there's good cause, you don't do that. But Donald Trump will now be doing this twice, first very famously with James Comey, having fired him and, second, proposing now that Chris Wray essentially be removed. Whether he resigns or fired - that's sort of no moment but, again, breaking the norm of keeping the agency above the fray in terms of politics.
KELLY: And how far outside the norm is it? You mentioned precedent of President Trump has already fired one FBI director, Jim Comey. The only other time it was by a Democrat, by Bill Clinton.
WEISSMANN: Yeah, but that was very much for cause. So there really is no precedent for what we are seeing, and it really runs sort of antithetical to the reason or at least at one of the primary reasons that Congress passed this 10-year term. And having worked at the bureau, one of the things that was so palpable to me when I got there was just how apolitical the institution was. And you know, for people who live in Washington and work there, that's a remarkable thing.
KELLY: Let me focus us on the man who President-elect Trump would like to see run the bureau. Kash Patel says he would like to shut down FBI headquarters on Day 1 and, quote, "reopen it as a museum of the deep state" - good idea?
WEISSMANN: Let me give a version of what he might have said that could have engendered support, which is to say that he would like to reallocate or recalibrate the relationship of the main headquarters to the field and have more people working in the field. I think that's a policy choice. Elections have consequences. That is something that, you know, people could agree on and think was wise.
But let me just tell you the problem with saying, oh, I just think we should be anti-government and get rid of main justice and that it's really just a museum to the deep state. First, the FBI is not known as some liberal bastion. It is not the deep state. The FBI traditionally is heavily Republican. And second, the idea that you just want to send everybody into the field - well, who's going to deal with international relations? Who's going to be dealing with terrorism that involves talking to the Five Eyes, talking to our adversaries? Who's going to oversee and decide disputes between FBI offices that are spread out all around the country?
So the idea of having a balkanized system is one that simply cannot work. It seems not particularly thoughtful as a strategy in terms of running the preeminent law enforcement agency in this country.
KELLY: Chris Wray, the current sitting director - his term runs through 2027. He now appears to face a choice. He can resign, or he can be fired. What should he do?
WEISSMANN: I can't really answer for him.
KELLY: Of course.
WEISSMANN: What I would say - what I might do in that situation is I think that I would stay on because it sort of signifies to the public, to Congress and to the White House that the FBI director position is supposed to be apolitical and that if he's going to remove, make the president have to exercise that power instead of showing capitulation in advance.
KELLY: Andrew Weissmann, former general counsel at the FBI. Thanks for joining us.
WEISSMANN: My pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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