President Trump is visiting the FBI on Friday for a graduation ceremony.
Yuri Gripas/AFP/Getty Images
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Yuri Gripas/AFP/Getty Images
President Trump is visiting the FBI on Friday for a graduation ceremony.
Yuri Gripas/AFP/Getty Images
President Trump is traveling to Quantico, Va., on Friday to speak with an unlikely audience: the latest graduating class at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
It’s not unusual for a president to shower love on his FBI agents and intelligence analysts. President Obama famously visited bureau headquarters a few months after he took office in 2009, donning an FBI baseball cap and sharing “the thanks of a grateful nation.” A year earlier, then-President George W. Bush praised “the character and courage of those who carry the badge.”
Then-President Barack Obama wears an FBI hat given to him by then-FBI Director Robert Mueller before speaking to employees at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C., in April 2009.
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Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
But the appearance of Trump at the Bureau’s training center promises to be complicated, given his record of derogatory public statements and negative tweets about the FBI this year.
Recently, Trump tweeted that the FBI’s reputation was in “Tatters – worst in History!” He called popular former FBI Director James Comey, whom he fired in May, “a liar” and “a leaker.” Trump also accused the FBI, without providing any evidence, of illegally wiretapping Trump Tower in 2016. And he continues to cast doubt on a conclusion by the Bureau and other intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in last year’s presidential election.
After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters – worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017
Not to mention: the FBI’s longtime former leader, Robert Mueller, is the man running the ongoing special counsel probe into election interference — and into whether anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign took part. So far, Mueller’s team has secured indictments against Paul Manafort, Trump’s onetime campaign chairman, and won guilty pleas from a campaign foreign policy official and Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
That last development, on Dec. 1, prompted a new wave of attacks from Trump and his supporters on the integrity of the FBI and the Justice Department, fueled by the disclosure that the Justice Department Inspector General had uncovered text messages in which a senior agent working on the Russia probe had called Trump an “idiot” during the campaign.
While Mueller removed the agent from the investigation months ago, one of Trump’s lawyers, Jay Sekulow, has cited the matter to call for a second special counsel to investigate conflicts of interest at the Bureau.
In response to a stream of harsh criticism this month, the FBI Agents Association mounted a rare public defense.
“Every day, FBI special agents put their lives on the line to protect the American public from national security and criminal threats,” President Tom O’Connor tweeted. “Agents perform their duties with unwavering integrity and professionalism and a focus on complying with the law and the Constitution. This is why the FBI continues to be the premier law enforcement agency in the world.”
Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, former Justice Department official Christopher Wray, also raised his voice to defend the work force in congressional testimony on Dec. 7. “Let me start by saying that it is for me the honor of a lifetime to be here representing the men and women of the FBI,” Wray said. “There is no finer institution than the FBI and no finer people than the men and women who work there and are its very beating heart.”
Soon, Trump is scheduled to appear on stage with Wray to welcome a new class of agents and analysts into the ranks of the FBI. Nearly 10 years ago, then-Director Mueller told the graduating class at Quantico, “For the past 100 years, the FBI has stood for the best of America.”
It remains to be seen whether the new president agrees.
Article source: https://www.npr.org/2017/12/15/570868360/after-months-of-withering-criticism-trump-prepares-to-visit-fbi?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news