OAN Staff Blake Wolf
4:38 PM – Thursday, January 16, 2025
The FBI officially closed its DEI office back in December, ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office.
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The agency reportedly “took steps to close the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI), effective by December 2024,” the agency announced on Thursday.
The move comes as DEI initiatives have been increasingly criticized following the recent New Orleans terror attack on New Year’s Day — which claimed the lives of at least 14 individuals and instilled fear in NOLA residents.
House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan previously sent a letter to Christopher Wray, the outgoing FBI director, criticizing the agency for prioritizing DEI initiatives over ensuring the safety of U.S. citizens.
“The law enforcement and intelligence capabilities of the FBI are degrading because the FBI is no longer hiring ‘the best and brightest’ candidates to fill the position of Special Agent of the FBI,” Jordan wrote.
“An increasing number of lower quality candidates–described by one source as ‘bread crumbs’ because they were rejected by other federal law enforcement agencies–are applying to become FBI Special Agents; and the FBI is selecting those candidates to become FBI Special Agents because they satisfy the FBI’s priority to meet Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) mandates,” the letter continued.
Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) also sent a more recent letter to Wray following the New Year’s Day attack, calling Wray’s leadership in question.
“I am deeply concerned that–under your leadership–the Bureau has prioritized Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives over its core mission of protecting the American people,” Blackburn wrote following the attack.
“Americans now feel increasingly unsafe because of incidents like the January 1 terror attack, and the FBI’s prioritization of diversity over competence shows that their concerns are well founded,” she continued. “Fortunately, the American people have spoken, and President Trump will soon bring law and order back to our nation.”
In addition, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) slammed the FBI’s commitment to filling DEI quotas, rather than hiring the best and brightest.
“Some of these agencies have gotten so wrapped up in the DEI movement. You know, call it wokeness, call it whatever you want,” Scalise stated earlier this month.
“But where their main focus is on diversity and inclusion as opposed to security. And they’re two very different things. And we’ve got to get back to that core mission,” he added.
Meanwhile, Trump’s nominee for FBI Director, Kash Patel, has previously called for reforming the FBI in his book “Government Gangsters,” which “pulls back the curtain on the Deep State, revealing the major players and tactics within the permanent government bureaucracy, which has spent decades stripping power away from the American people and their elected leaders,” according to the book’s description.
Patel, a former DOJ prosecutor, has yet to take part in his confirmation hearing, with senators planning on questioning his purported “enemies list,” a list of names working at the DOJ that Patel gathered in his “Government Gangsters” book. The list references “members of the unelected bureaucracy,” also known as “deep state” agents.
Patel has spent his career as a federal attorney and he has worked in U.S. intelligence positions during Trump’s first administration. He also played a key role in debunking the Democrats’ alleged “Russian collusion” conspiracy theory during the 2016 election.
“[Lawyer] Marc Elias invented the hoax that President Trump colluded with Russia. As lawyer for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign in 2016, Elias hired Fusion GPS to collect the phony opposition research on Trump that became known as the Russia dossier. It was debunked by the Mueller [DOJ] report,” according to the Ohio Senate’s official website.
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