GOP senator: Americans don’t care about FBI background checks for Trump nominees

Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), who was rumored to be on Trump’s shortlist to serve as Treasury secretary, said most American’s “don’t care” whether Trump uses the FBI to vet his nominees, something fellow Republican senators have demanded.

Hagerty argued over the weekend that it doesn’t make a difference to most Americans whether the FBI or an independent firm conducts a background check of a nominee, such as Pete Hegseth, Trump’s choice to serve as secretary of Defense, whom a woman accused of sexual assault in 2017. No charges were filed against Hegseth.

“I don’t think the American public cares who does the background checks. What the American public cares about is to see the mandate that they voted in delivered upon,” Hagerty told ABC’s “This Week” in an interview.

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“We need to get to work again. Making our military stronger is absolutely critical. And I think we’re — we’re looking at a chance to do this,” he said.

“If you look at the Cabinet that’s in place right now, that worst that we’ve ever seen,” he said, referring to President Biden’s Cabinet and singling out Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as “the worst Cabinet secretary in history.”

Other Senate Republicans, however, say the FBI should retain its leading role in conducting background checks, and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a member of the Armed Services Committee, says an FBI background check of Hegseth would be “helpful.”

Republican lawmakers who want the FBI to continue to play a central role in vetting nominees argue the nation’s top domestic law enforcement agency has access to criminal investigations on the federal, state and local levels that private firms can’t match.

“The FBI should do the background checks, in my judgement,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the incoming chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told The Hill earlier this month.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, argued that FBI should take the lead in investigating nominees, though he said private firms could help the bureau's work.

“If you wanted to supplement it with a private firm, I’d say OK. But the FBI does have access to information that probably a private firm wouldn’t have, even a really good savvy one,” he said.

The Trump transition team has not entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Justice to allow the FBI to conduct background checks of nominees, and it hasn’t sent the FBI the names of prospective national security personnel who would have access to classified information.