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As\u00a0President Donald Trump\u2019s\u00a0top law enforcement officials were firing and forcing out waves of Justice Department veterans, Sen. Chuck Grassley denounced a \u201cpolitical infection\u201d that had\u00a0poisoned FBI leadership.<\/p>\n
The Iowa Republican was not criticizing\u00a0FBI Director Kash Patel\u00a0or\u00a0Attorney General Pam Bondi. In a July statement, he directed his ire at the FBI\u2019s \u201cextreme lack of effort\u201d in investigating Democrat Hillary Clinton\u2019s\u00a0use of a private email server\u00a0as secretary of state a decade ago.<\/p>\n
Trump loyalists have roiled the Justice Department,\u00a0shattering norms\u00a0and leading to a mass exodus of veteran officials, but the 92-year-old chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee has remained focused on the past.<\/p>\n
Critics say Grassley\u2019s reluctance to challenge the Trump administration has even extended to a defining issue: His support for whistleblowers making claims of fraud, waste and abuse.<\/p>\n
In an interview, Grassley insisted he has not abandoned his oversight role. He said he has felt compelled to investigate issues under earlier presidents to avoid a repeat of what he described as politically motivated prosecutions carried out against Trump and his allies.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolitical weaponization is being brought to the surface and being made more transparent because this administration is the most cooperative of any administration \u2014 Republican or Democrat,\u201d Grassley said.<\/p>\n
Grassley has acknowledged that Congress has ceded a great deal of power to the current administration, a concession he says makes his own oversight more crucial.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to enhance the necessity for it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Grassley, upon entering Congress in 1975, quickly developed a reputation for exposing corruption and waste. He once drove to the Pentagon in his orange\u00a0Chevy Chevette\u00a0to demand answers from officials about their purchase of $450 hammers and $7,600 coffee pots.<\/p>\n
He was among the chief proponents in Congress of laws to shield employees who revealed such waste and sponsored the landmark 1989\u00a0Whistleblower Protection Act. He also has played a key role in empowering inspectors general, internal watchdogs tasked with rooting out misconduct.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has been the conscience of the Senate on whistleblower protection rights for decades,\u201d said Tom Devine, legal director for the Government Accountability Project. In the current Congress, he has co-sponsored legislation boosting protections for whistleblowers in the FBI and CIA.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one is close to having his impact,\u201d Devine said. \u201cThat hardly means that we always agree with his judgment calls about policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump and Grassley are not always in alignment. This past week, for example, they tussled over the pace of confirmation of administration nominees.<\/p>\n
Even so, Democrats and good government advocates say Grassley has been conspicuously silent as the administration has\u00a0investigated\u00a0Trump\u2019s perceived enemies, fired agents who worked on politically sensitive cases and upended the Justice Department\u2019s longstanding post-Watergate independence.<\/p>\n
Some whistleblowers have been loath to trust him with revelations that might harm the administration, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former U.S. officials, or their attorneys, several of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of people concerned he\u2019s not the same old Chuck Grassley,\u201d said Eric Woolson, author of a 1995 biography of Grassley who once served as a Grassley campaign spokesman.<\/p>\n
Grassley rejected that criticism, saying whistleblowers call him regardless of who is in the White House. His office\u2019s online portal has received more than 5,300 complaints in 2025, about the same level as past years, staffers reported.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis entire career, he\u2019s the guy people will trust,\u201d said Jason Foster, a former chief investigative counsel to Grassley who founded Empower Oversight, a group that has advocated on behalf of FBI agents disciplined under the Biden administration.<\/p>\n
Many of Grassley\u2019s recent actions, however, suggest he has evolved from being a fiercely independent moderate eager to sniff out fraud to being a stalwart Trump ally, according to Democrats and whistleblower advocates.<\/p>\n
Some were particularly alarmed at Grassley\u2019s dismissal of witnesses who raised concerns about the June nomination of\u00a0Emil Bove, a high-ranking Justice Department official and\u00a0former Trump lawyer, to a lifetime federal appeals court seat.<\/p>\n
Among several officials who came forward was Justice Department lawyer Erez Reuveni, who said he was fired for\u00a0refusing to go along with Bove\u2019s plans\u00a0to defy court orders and withhold information from judges to advance the administration\u2019s aggressive deportation goals.<\/p>\n
Grassley said his staff tried to investigate some of the claims but that lawyers for one whistleblower would not give his staff all the materials they requested in time. Instead of delaying the hearing to dig further, Grassley circled the wagons behind Trump\u2019s nominee.<\/p>\n
The \u201cvicious rhetoric, unfair accusations and abuse directed at Mr. Bove,\u201d Grassley said in a speech, have \u201ccrossed the line.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stacey Young, a former Justice Department lawyer who founded Justice Connection, a network of department alumni mobilized to uphold the department\u2019s traditionally apolitical workforce, said she was disappointed Grassley has not used his influence to condemn firings at the department.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow is the congressional majority not screaming bloody murder? We are watching the near decimation of DOJ in real-time, and Congress is sitting by doing nothing,\u201d she said. \u201cDoes Sen. Grassley think it\u2019s OK that people get fired for doing their jobs?\u201d<\/p>\n
At a September oversight hearing, Grassley passed up a chance to\u00a0grill Patel on a series of terminations of line agents and high-level supervisors, including five whose abrupt and still-unexplained dismissals had generated headlines weeks earlier.<\/p>\n
When Democrats pressed Patel about his use of the bureau\u2019s plane for personal reasons, Grassley chided Senate colleagues for their disinterest in the travel practices of previous directors.<\/p>\n
Grassley has also been an eager conduit for an FBI leadership seeking to expose what it insists was misconduct and overreach in an investigation during the Biden administration into Trump\u2019s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.<\/p>\n
He has released batches of sensitive documents from that investigation, known as \u201cArctic Frost,\u201d that he says have been furnished by FBI whistleblowers or that have been labeled as \u201cProduced by FBI Director Kash Patel.\u201d The records are not the type of documents federal law enforcement would typically make public on its own.<\/p>\n
Whistleblower advocates said they were dismayed when Grassley failed to take a robust stance when Trump, within days of taking office, fired without cause some inspectors general.<\/p>\n
Even some Republican-appointed inspectors general accused Trump of violating a law requiring the White House to provide 30-day notice and rationale to Congress. If any Republican were going to stand up for them, some of the fired inspectors general said, they expected it to be Grassley.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has been uncharacteristically silent,\u201d said Mark Greenblatt, a Trump appointee at the Interior Department who was among those fired. \u201dIt is unimaginable that the Grassley of a few years ago, the man who held nominees and fired off blistering threats at the smallest provocation to protect inspectors general, would be so silent in the face of these assaults.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grassley responded to the purge by sending Trump a letter requesting officials \u201cimmediately\u201d spell out their case-by-case specific reasons for the dismissals.<\/p>\n
It took the White House eight months to respond. In a two-page letter, it reasserted presidential authority to fire inspectors general at will and made no attempt to explain its rationale other than to cite \u201cchanged priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Associated Press writer Ryan J. Foley in Iowa City, Iowa, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
#lot #people #concerned #hes #Chuck #Grassley #oversight #chief #Trump<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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