Prioritizing The Protection Of Public Safety

Ordered liberty is at risk when our citizens lack physical safety, when career criminals do not fear the law, when foreign cartels move narcotics and illegal aliens into our nation at will, and when political leaders call citizens “domestic terrorists” for exercising their constitutional rights. The Department of Justice—in partnership with state and local partners—must recommit in both word and deed to protecting public safety.

The overwhelming majority of crimes in the United States are properly handled at the state and local levels,19 but the DOJ can provide critical technical support for local law enforcement and play a critical agenda-setting role. With respect to the Department’s core responsibilities—enforcing our immigration laws, combating domestic and international criminal enterprises, protecting federal civil rights, and combating foreign espionage—the federal government has primary authority and, accordingly, accountability.

The evidence shows that the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice has failed to protect law-abiding citizens and has ignored its most basic obligations. It has become at once utterly unserious and dangerously politicized. Prosecution and charging decisions are infused with racial and partisan political double standards.20 Immigration laws are ignored.21 The FBI harasses protesting parents (branded “domestic terrorists” by some partisans) while working diligently to shut down politically disfavored speech on the pretext of its being “misinformation” or “disin- formation.”22 A department that prosecutes FACE Act cases while ignoring dozens of violent attacks on pregnancy care centers and/or the coordinated violation of laws that prohibit attempts to intimidate Supreme Court Justices by parading out- side of their homes23 has clearly lost its way. A department that has twice engaged in covert domestic election interference and propaganda operations—the Russian collusion hoax in 2016 and the Hunter Biden laptop suppression in 2020—is a threat to the Republic.24

Restoring the department’s focus on public safety and a culture of respect for the rule of law is a gargantuan task that will involve at minimum four overriding actions: lRestoring the FBI’s integrity. lRenewing the DOJ’s focus on violent crime. lDismantling domestic and international criminal enterprises. l Pursuing a national security agenda aimed at external state and non-state actors, not U.S. citizens exercising their constitutional rights.

RESTORING THE FBI’S INTEGRITY

The FBI was founded in 1908 to “tackle national crime and security issues” when “there was hardly any systematic way of enforcing the law across this now broad landscape of America.”25 It best serves the American people when it dedicates its resources and energies to attacking violent crime,26 criminal organizations,27 child predators,28 cyber-crime, and other uniquely federal interests.29 Revelations regarding the FBI’s role in the Russia hoax of 2016, Big Tech collu- sion, and suppression of Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020 strongly suggest that the FBI is completely out of control. To protect the Constitution, fight crime effectively, and protect the nation from foreign adversaries, the next conservative Adminis- tration should begin to restore the FBI’s domestic reputation and integrity and enhance its effectiveness in meeting actual foreign threats. To do so, the next con- servative Administration should: l Align the FBI’s placement within the department and the federal government with its law enforcement and national security purposes. DOJ veterans often opine that the FBI views itself as an independent agency—accountable to no one and on par with the Attorney General in terms of stature—but the fact remains that “[t]he Federal Bureau of Investigation is located in the Department of Justice.”31 It is not independent from the department ( just as Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not independent from the Department of Homeland Security) and does not deserve to be treated as if it were. The next conservative Administration should direct the Attorney General to remove the FBI from the Deputy Attorney General’s direct supervision within the department’s organizational chart and instead place it under the general supervision of the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division and the supervision of the Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division, as applicable.32 This can be accomplished

Conduct an immediate, comprehensive review of all major active FBI investigations and activities and terminate any that are unlawful or contrary to the national interest.30 This is an enormous task, but it is necessary to re-earn the American people’s trust in the FBI and its work. To conduct this review, the department should detail attorney appointees with criminal, national security, or homeland security backgrounds to catalogue any questionable activities and elevate them to appropriate DOJ leadership consistent with the new chain of command (discussed below). The department should also consider issuing a public report of the findings from this review as appropriate.

through a simple internal departmental reorganization and does not need to be approved by Congress.

Such a structure would allow the FBI to play an important role in advising the department’s leadership on emerging threats and updating notable investigations through daily briefings conducted with the Criminal Division and National Security Division leadership, but it would also place the FBI under a politically accountable leader with fewer things to manage than the Deputy Attorney General or the Attorney General have. All notifications and approvals that currently run to the Deputy Attorney General or the Attorney General should be evaluated and redirected in the first instance, where appropriate, to the relevant Assistant Attorney General. Such a move would better align the FBI with the mission of the divisions with which it most often interacts and emphasize the need for the areas on which it should focus. In general, however, under no circumstances should the FBI ever be able to go around the Attorney General or the department’s leadership on any matter within its area of responsibility.

Prohibit the FBI from engaging, in general, in activities related to combating the spread of so-called misinformation and disinformation by Americans who are not tied to any plausible criminal activity. The FBI, along with the rest of the government, needs a hard reset on the appropriate scope of its legitimate activities. It must not look to or rely on the past decade as precedent or legitimization for continued action in certain spaces. This is especially true with respect to activities that the FBI and the U.S. government writ large claim are efforts to combat “misinformation,” “disinformation,” or “malinformation.” The United States government and, by extension, the FBI have absolutely no business policing speech, whether in the public square, in print, or online. The First Amendment prohibits it. The United States is the world’s last best hope for self-government,33 and its survival relies on the ability of our people to have healthy debate free from government intervention and censorship. The government, through its officials, is certainly able to speak and provide information to the public. That is a healthy component of an informed society. But government must never manipulate the scales and censor information that is potentially harmful to it or its political leadership. This is the way of totalitarian dictatorships, not of free constitutional republics.

The DOJ needs a hard firewall between its legitimate activities (monitoring online activity for potential threats in its mission space, looking at social media profiles for evidence of intent or other criminal activity, etc.) and those in which it must not engage (asking or demanding public forums or publishers to remove material based on the content and/or viewpoints expressed or itself censoring speech).

Emphasize, fund, and reward field offices while shrinking headquarters staff. While the FBI has essential headquarters functions that must be fulfilled and should likely be fulfilled by a team in Washington, D.C., the next conservative Administration should make a priority of deploying, funding, and rewarding the work of the field offices to the greatest extent possible. The Department of Justice must value badges over bureaucracy, must rethink its internal reporting structures, and should aim to realign the FBI’s resources accordingly.

Submit a legislative proposal to Congress to eliminate the 10-year term for the Director. After J. Edgar Hoover’s decades-long term as FBI Director came to an end following his death in 1972, and in light of oversight conducted by Congress into alleged Intelligence Community and FBI abuses in the 1970s, Congress limited the Director’s tenure to one “ten- year term.”36 The realities of the FBI’s abuses and overreach in recent years demonstrate that further reform is still necessary.

Streamline the non–law enforcement functions within the FBI, such as its Office of General Counsel, and obtain those services from other offices within the department. The next conservative Administration should eliminate any offices within the FBI that it has the power to eliminate without any action from Congress.34 For example, few Americans know that the FBI maintains a core of approximately 300 attorneys within its Office of General Counsel, an office that has been involved in some of the FBI’s most damaging recent scandals.35 These attorneys are not necessary to the functioning of the FBI in their current capacity. Legal advice should come from attorneys at the DOJ, whether those attorneys are within the Criminal Division, the National Security Division, the Justice Management Division, or the Office of Legal Counsel. Moving legal review outside the FBI would serve as a crucial check on an agency that has recently pushed past legal boundary after legal boundary. Similarly, the FBI does not need its own Office of Congressional Affairs separate and apart from the DOJ Office of Legislative Affairs, nor does it need its own Office of Public Affairs. The Director of the FBI must remain politically accountable to the President in the same manner as the head of any other federal department or agency. To ensure prompt political accountability and to rein in perceived or actual abuses, the next conservative Administration should seek a legislative change to align the FBI Director’s position with those of the heads of all other major departments and agencies.