Trump's budget would severely hamper operations at leaderless FBI: report

The acting director of the FBI claims that President Donald Trump's proposed budget for the law enforcement agency will severely impact their ability to do their jobs and will result in cutbacks in operations at all levels.

According to Politico, Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe told the House Appropriations subcommittee this week that the budget proposal from the Trump White House will have a devastating impact on the agency that is still reeling  -- and leaderless -- since Trump fired former Director James Comey.

“It will certainly impact us in many ways. It is a broad and deep reduction that will touch every program. it will touch headquarters. It will touch our field offices,” McCabe explained to House members on Wednesday. “It is a reduction that is not possible to take entirely against vacancies. It’s a reduction that will touch every description of employee within the FBI. We will lose agent positions. We will lose analyst positions and, of course, professional staff.”

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who had a hand in the firing of Comey, pushed back at McCabe's assertion, saying, “I believe that if you look at the budget, we are not cutting the critical areas — violent crime, terrorism, the areas that you’ve raised are areas where there will be no cuts, cybercrime, all those areas. And so the effort in this budget, as I understand it, is to reduce only in areas that are not critical to those operations.”

The possible cuts to the department come at a time when the FBI is conducting multiple investigations into the Trump White House amid allegations that there was collusion between Trump staffers and Russian agent's during the 2016 election.