BURSTSen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Sunday that conservatives don't trust the FBI anymore when asked about his remarks from 2017, pushing for President-elect Trump to select an FBI director who was "beyond reproach."
“He has a duty and obligation to pick somebody beyond reproach outside the political lane. I think he'll do that. I hope he'll do that. I would encourage the president to pick somebody we can all rally around, including those who work in the FBI,” Graham said in a 2017 interview.
Asked in an interview on NBC News's "Meet the Press" whether Trump's current pick to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, is "beyond reproach," Graham said he was "talking about what he should do the last time."
“Look, what's happened since the last time. The FBI, in the eyes of conservatives, has become sort of a very biased organization,” Graham continued, mentioning concerns that law enforcement suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story and the Steele Dossier.
"So the FBI we talked about then has changed. So what do I want in an FBI director now? Somebody that can clean it up, get back to the job of fighting crime. Don't have your thumb on the political scale. Make sure it's not used as a political weapon against people that you have a beef with. We don't want to go back to the days of J Edgar Hoover. What we want to do is have an FBI that's going to call balls and strikes, and it's going to take somebody to clean out the place," Graham said.
“None of us trust these people anymore,” he added.