WASHINGTON — When Speaker Kevin McCarthy suggested recently he might stop the FBI from relocating its downtown headquarters to a new facility planned for the Washington suburbs, it was more than idle thinking about an office renovation.
The nod from the Republican speaker is elevating a once-fringe proposal to upend the FBI in the aftermath of the federal indictment of Donald Trump over classified documents and the Justice Department’s prosecution of his allies, including some of the nearly 1,000 people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
Moving from far-right corners into the mainstream, the emerging effort to overhaul the nation’s premier law enforcement agency is rooted in increasingly forceful conservative complaints about an overly biased FBI that they claim is being weaponized against them.
The shifting attitudes among Republican members of Congress toward the FBI underscore the way Trump’s personal grievances have become legislative policy.
Once the party of law and order, Republicans are now antagonists of federal law enforcement, undermining a storied institution and attacking Justice Department officials whose work is foundational to American democracy.
While political criticism of the FBI has followed the bureau since its founding with Hoover, who famously wiretapped civil rights leaders and orchestrated the infiltration of left-wing political organizations, the right-flank campaign against federal law enforcement had mostly simmered at the margins of party politics.
But the Justice Department’s indictment of Trump, who has pleaded not guilty to 37 felony counts over storing and refusing to return classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club, and the ongoing prosecution of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol, have fueled conservative anger.
The Justice Department is also investigating Trump and his allies over the effort to challenge President Joe Biden’s election in the run-up to the 2021 Capitol attack.
Conservatives criticize the federal law enforcement on multiple fronts; among them, its work with social media companies to flag potentially dangerous postings.