Every FBI director has been a white Republican male — complicating Trump’s grudge match
Donald Trump is attacking one of the most traditionally conservative institutions in America by lashing out at the Federal Bureau of Investigation following the search of Mar-a-Lago.
"Of all the weird and historically discordant moments and news stories of the Donald Trump era, few seem stranger than watching the former president and his allies demonize the F.B.I. as some sort of rogue “woke” Democratic deep state mob," historian Garrett Graff wrote in The New York Times.
Some Republicans have even called to "defund the FBI."
"Historically, though, the F.B.I. has been arguably the most culturally conservative and traditionally white Christian institution in the entire U.S. government. It’s an institution so culturally conservative, even by the standards of law enforcement, that Democratic presidents have never felt comfortable — or politically emboldened — enough to nominate a Democrat to head the bureau," Graff explained. "That’s right: Far from being a bastion of progressive thinking, every single director of the F.B.I. has been a Republican-aligned official, going all the way back to its creation. Such history suggests that the issue here is Mr. Trump and not institutional bias."
Graff was interviewed about his column on Friday evening by CNN's Anderson Cooper.
"How do you square the former president's allies accusing the FBI as being either the Gestapo or a woke mob, with the reality, as you write, is it's one of the most conservative institutions that there is?" Cooper asked.
"Absolutely," Graff replied. "And that's true even with this current director. Let's remember that Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI who approved the search of Mar-a-Lago last Monday, in coordination with Attorney General Merrick Garland. Christopher Wray was appointed by Donald Trump, Christopher Wray came to this job with sterling Republican credentials. He was the head of the criminal division at the Justice Department under George W. Bush, he was a member of the Federalist Society, he clerked for Judge Michael Luttig and even was Chris Christie's personal lawyer during New Jersey governor's bridge-gate scandal."
RELATED: Anderson Cooper recounts — in disbelief — all of Trump’s debunked excuses for Mar-a-Lago documents
"The FBI, you know, it has very strong roots in protecting 'America from radicals and subversives'," Graff explained. "That was set for many decades by J. Edgar Hoover, who prosecuted and persecuted black activists and artists, they amassed an 1,800 page file on author James Baldwin, they surveilled and harassed Martin Luther King, Jr., the FBI tried to arrest John Lennon. This is not an agency that is woke by any standard of modern politics."
"As part of my research for this piece this week, I determined that actually the FBI is the last of the dozen top federal law enforcement agencies, that has never had a leader who is a woman or person of color," Graff said. "Every FBI director has been a white male, a white Republican male."
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