The Patriot Post® · Who Will Replace Wray at the FBI?

“Just spoke to President Trump regarding Mike Rogers going to the FBI. It’s not happening — In his own words, ‘I have never even given it a thought.’ Not happening.”

So said¹ Trump Senior Advisor Dan Scavino on Friday in response to a question about who’d fill one of the leading posts for which the president-elect has yet to announce a nominee: FBI director. In doing so, he put to rest a deep-state pipe dream and dashed the hopes of every Trump-hater hoping to place a Trojan Horse into the FBI directorship to replace the current director, the soon-to-be-unemployed Chris Wray.

Rogers, who today would be the junior senator-elect from Michigan had he merely performed as well among his fellow Great Lake Staters as Donald Trump did at the top of the Republican ticket, is a former U.S. congressman and chair of the House Intelligence Committee and a former special agent in the FBI’s Chicago office. Indeed, Rogers was interviewed by the Trump administration in 2017 as a potential replacement for disgraced leaker and Russia collusion hoaxer James Comey, but Trump chose Wray instead. And we suspect he deeply regrets it.

Perhaps Trump’s refusal to consider Rogers this time around has something to do with the way he harshly criticized² Trump in the intervening years.

CNN says Mike Rogers is under consideration for FBI Director

This snake has gone on TV for years trashing Trump

He’s a card-carrying Never Trumper in love with the war machine pic.twitter.com/42UfGRJEM2³

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) November 22, 2024⁴

Despite this, Fox News reported⁵ 10 days ago that Rogers was “in consideration for FBI chief after meeting in Mar-a-Lago with Trump transition team.” Alas, Fox News’s sources must not have been very reliable.

Said⁶ former Michigan Republican-turned-independent Congressman Justin Amash about Rogers’s potential candidacy for the FBI post, “Mike Rogers is one of the chief architects of the surveillance state. He’d be just about the worst choice in the country.” Amash, who has a strong libertarian-constitutional streak, also kept the receipts⁷.

During the 2024 campaign, Trump acknowledged that one of the things he’d do differently this time around would be to make better personnel picks. As he told Joe Rogan during his three-hour weave-fest⁸, “I picked some great people, you know, but you don’t think about that. I picked some people that I shouldn’t have picked. I picked a few people that I shouldn’t have picked.”

We suspect Chris Wray, who has presided over an era of stunning FBI weaponization — to the point that even former FBI agents have called for the dismantling of the bureau⁹ — is at the top of that list of Trump’s regrettable hires. This is the same FBI, after all, that in recent years concocted and carried out the Russia collusion hoax; that lied on a FISA warrant application¹⁰ so it could spy on Donald Trump and his entire campaign team; that entrapped¹¹ a bunch of “pro-Trump” rabble in a phony kidnapping plot against Michigan’s Democrat governor less than a month before the 2020 election; that sat on Hunter Biden’s laptop¹² for nearly a year before the 2020 election; that colluded¹³ with Facebook and pre-Musk Twitter to censor the New York Post’s laptop bombshell¹⁴ two weeks before the election; that helped push the Gang of 51’s “Russian disinformation¹⁵” letter even though it had already authenticated the laptop; that targeted parents¹⁶ who attended school board meetings because they were concerned about CRT and other hard-left ideologies being taught in their children’s schools; that targeted “radical-traditionalist Catholics¹⁷” in their churches; that repeatedly targeted peaceful pro-life activists; that unlawfully seized the cellphone¹⁸ of a Trump-allied congressman and retired brigadier general; that gave two Republican senators a phony “defensive briefing¹⁹” about Russian disinformation when they were investigating Hunter Biden’s business dealings with Ukraine and other countries; that placed²⁰ numerous agents provocateur at the January 6 protest-turned-riot and continues to stonewall²¹ Congress about it; that conducted an armed raid²² of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and rifled through the first lady’s underwear drawer because of a documents dispute²³ with the National Archives; that intentionally screened out conservatives and Trump supporters in its hiring practices; and that cracked down²⁴ on pro-Trump agents and patriotic whistleblowers within the bureau.

And most recently, we learned²⁵ from Georgia Republican Congressman Barry Loudermilk, who chairs the Committee on House Administration’s Oversight Subcommittee, that cellular carriers “have told Congress they possess intact phone usage data from the vicinity where two pipe bombs were planted during the Jan. 6 incident, directly disputing FBI testimony that agents couldn’t identify a suspect because the phone data was corrupted.”

Nearly four years hence, the FBI’s failure to identify the person who planted those pipe bombs at both the Democrat and Republican Party headquarters in one of the most heavily surveilled areas in the entire world — even though the bureau released video footage²⁶ of the suspect sitting on a bench in front of the DNC headquarters while using his cellphone — is, shall we say, deeply mysterious.

Ask yourself: Does this²⁷ sound like an FBI director who’s playing it straight with the American people? Or does this²⁸?

Who might Trump pick? Former DOD chief of staff Kash Patel is reported to be on his shortlist. Remarking on the rogue nature of the DOJ and the FBI in recent years, Patel told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo yesterday: “I don’t want any more Washington-speak about how ‘We can’t talk about this’ or "We can’t talk about that.‘ The American people deserve courage and commitment and constitutional oversight, and that’s what President Trump is going to deliver. And I just want people to show up to the United States Senate, unequivocally, whoever is named to whatever position, and say, 'We work for you, and you work for the American people.’”

Patel, incidentally, is also making all the right enemies. Disgraced former FBI Director Andrew McCabe is sounding the alarm about a potential FBI Director Patel. As McCabe told²⁹ CNN last week: “No part of the FBI’s mission is safe with Kash Patel in any position of leadership in the FBI, and certainly not in the deputy director’s job.”

McCabe, though, called Rogers “a totally reasonable, logical selection.” Uh-huh.

All this comes amid two cowardly cancellations³⁰ of scheduled appearances before Congress last week — one by Wray and the other by impeached³¹ Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

On top of Republican denunciations of the duo, Senate Homeland Committee Chairman Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, called it “a shocking departure from the custom of transparency,” adding³², “Americans deserve transparent, public answers about the threats we face. Secretary Mayorkas and Director Wray’s refusal to speak publicly about their department’s work will only increase the concerns that many Americans have about our nation’s security at a challenging time … and will deal a serious blow to trust in our government.”

He’s telling us. But good on the chairman for calling these bums out. And good on Donald Trump for recognizing that the FBI is in need of some serious reform.