Ron DeSantis: I’ll purge FBI on day one of my presidency
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Ron DeSantis has promised to fire the FBI’s director and reduce the agency’s footprint in Washington by “at least 50 per cent” on “day one” of his presidency if he wins the White House in 2024.
The Florida governor has reportedly been working for months on a plan to gut and then drastically reform the US Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Mr DeSantis, who remains Donald Trump’s strongest challenger for the Republican nomination, said if he won the 2024 election: “You have a new FBI director on day one. You have a house-cleaning on day one.”
The proposal has formed part of Mr DeSantis’s response to the criminal charges against Mr Trump for allegedly mishandling classified government secrets.
The 77-year-old Mr Trump holds a commanding lead – 53.4 per cent according to polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight – over the Republican primary field, despite his mounting legal quandaries.
Mr DeSantis is in second place at 21 per cent, according to the website.
By focusing his response to Mr Trump’s criminal case on attacking the DoJ, Mr DeSantis has struck a chord with Mr Trump’s base – allowing the governor to regain some of the media spotlight the former president has commanded since his indictment.
Polling by Reuters/Ipsos since the 49-page criminal indictment was published last Friday found that 81 per cent of Republican voters believe Mr Trump is being unfairly targeted.
The polling also found Mr Trump maintained a strong lead over Mr DeSantis, with the pair at 43 per cent and 22 per cent respectively.
Mr DeSantis elaborated further on his plans to revamp Washington in a series of press interviews this week, saying: “We will also reduce the footprint of all these [federal] agencies but particularly DoJ and FBI within DC by at least 50 per cent.”
The FBI employs more than 37,000 people around the country. It is unclear how many staff are located in its Washington headquarters, which is at the forefront of the FBI’s operation.
Mr DeSantis said there was a “politicised culture” that had developed within the headquarters of law enforcement agencies in the US capital which was “totally toxic to the rule of law”.
The 44-year-old has made no bones about his dislike of Christopher Wray, the FBI’s director, who was appointed by Mr Trump and kept on by Joe Biden, the current US president.
By contrast, Mr DeSantis has also mooted plans to expand federal law enforcement, in particular in major US cities controlled by Democrats such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
Mr DeSantis has promised that, if he wins the election, he will direct the DoJ to pursue a strong law and order message in crime-ridden cities, and hold progressive prosecutors who do not bring cases against violent criminals “accountable”.
The Florida governor is thought to have recruited a brain trust of advisers and like-minded Republican members of Congress to aid him in developing a plan to rebuild the DoJ and the FBI.
According to insiders, the “day one” strategy will seek to end what Mr DeSantis has framed as a weaponisation of the justice system by Washington-based bureaucrats and political appointees.
He is reportedly prepared to reorganise entire federal agencies if he wins the 2024 presidential election.
Mr DeSantis’s aim is to see the DoJ consider its mission in line with what the “Founding Fathers envisioned”, he has privately told advisers.
As part of his strategy, Mr DeSantis wants to relocate large swathes of the DoJ, including the FBI’s headquarters, from Washington, according to the website RealClearPolitics.
“We’re not going to let all this power accumulate in Washington, we’re going to break up these agencies,” Mr DeSantis told advisers during a private strategy session over the weekend, according to excerpts obtained by the website.
During the strategy call, Mr DeSantis promised that some parts of the DoJ would be “shipped to other parts of the country”.
He has consulted with Right-wing members of Congress, including Thomas Massie and Chip Roy, both of whom have expressed support for rebalancing federal power.
Steven Bradbury, of the Heritage Foundation, and Victor Davis Hanson, from the Hoover Institution, two Washington-based conservative think tanks, are also part of Mr DeSantis’s brain trust, according to RealClearPolitics.
Mr DeSantis’s advisers are thought to have suggested he has broad powers to lead a shake-up of federal agencies under Article Two of the US Constitution.
He has already demonstrated he takes a broad view of executive power as governor of Florida, where he has leveraged his office to secure political wins and punish his enemies.
The plans to overhaul America’s law enforcement leadership have been welcomed in conservative circles.
Joy Pullmann, the executive editor of The Federalist, said: “Any Republicans who think the security state wouldn’t frame others the same way it has Trump are in denial about the evidence repeatedly stampeded across their eyeballs for seven years.”
