The new Trump administration choice for the CodeEputy Director of the FBI, Andrew Bailey, brings more legal and managerial experience than the current deputy director Dan Bongino. Bailey, who was flatly re -elected as the Missouri attorney’s last autumn, says that his approach is to “enforce laws as written” and “protect the Constitution.”
But a main Senate Democrat and other critics say that Bailey’s two -year mandate as Missouri attorney was too political and has a history of helping President Donald Trump politically while he was in office.
“President Trump is appointing a partisan politician,” said Senator Dick Durbin in Illinois, the main democrat of the Judicial Committee, in a statement to NBC News. “Mr. Bailey is another Trump’s loyal who has continually sold the ‘great lie’, that the 2020 elections were stolen.”
“This appointment also shows that President Trump will not stop at anything to politicize and arm himself with the most prestigious and powerful law of the federal government to protect his allies and punish his critics,” he said.
Attorney General Pam Bondi praised Bailey, a veteran decorated from the Iraq war, for her “experience and dedication to service” in a statement to Fox News after his appointment last week. “His leadership and commitment to the country will be a tremendous asset while we work together to advance the mission of President Trump,” he said.
But the Democrats and the Editorial Board of St. Louis Post-Dispatch have accused Bailey of filling demands that highlighted the cultural war problems that had little to do with the police in Missouri.
“For more than two years, the main lawyer of the State has routinely used that hanger to follow frequently discounted frivolous legal actions designed to inflame its magician base,” the editorial board wrote last month. “He has incorrectly inserted his office in several controversies of the War of National Culture.”
The Bailey office in Missouri sent questions to the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice, the FBI and the White House did not respond to requests for comments.
Trump had considered Bailey as a potential candidate for the Attorney General or the director of the FBI, said the New York Times, citing the people informed about the meetings at that time.
Bailey, who is expected to assume his new role in early September, was previously general advisor to Missouri governor and the Missouri corrections department. He was also an assistant and fiscal prosecutor of the County in Missouri.
A new position
The appointment of Bailey as a dependency director was a surprise, partly because the position did not exist before. The FBI leadership structure has been a single director, with a single deputy director who was a career agent. Now, Bailey and Bongino are ready to divide work number 2.
Durbin criticized the appointment of Bongino and Bailey of Trump, who have no previous experience in the FBI, calling him “an unprecedented movement.” He said that a career FBI official should be a deputy director. “Before the current Trump administration, the FBI deputy director has always been a professional agent,” Durbin said.
A former official of the Superior Department of Justice supported the idea of two attached directors, citing previous reviews that said the deputy director supervised too many people.
But the former senior official, who asked not to be appointed, citing the fear of the reprisals of the Trump administration, said that both should be professional FBI agents with a deep knowledge of the organization, something that Bongino and Bailey lack.
“I could have two deputies, perhaps one about the administration and one on operations,” said the former official of the Department of Justice. “Both should be highly experienced career FBI officials.”
Bongino’s future
The change to two attached directors has also led to speculation among the current and previous members of the FBI staff that Bailey’s appointment is a sign that Bongino will soon leave, he told NBC News to NBC News.
Bongino, a former secret service agent who had been a Pro-Trump podcaster before Trump chose him to be a deputy director, faced Bondi on how the Department of Justice has recently handled Jeffrey Epstein’s investigation.
In July, Bongino considered to renounce the issue after a heated confrontation with Bondi about his frustration with the way in which the Department of Justice has handled Epstein’s archives, according to a person who has spoken with Bongino and a source familiar with the interactions that Bongino and the director of the FBI KASH Patel have had with Bondi.
“All retired people think he shows Bongino” could be dating, said a former high -ranking official of the FBI, who spoke on anonymity. A federal official of application of the current law said that it seems “clear as the day” that Bongino, who has publicly talked about the toll that the work has assumed to his family, “transition” out of the office.
The former Department of Justice and FBI officials say the Trump administration is reversing radical reforms promulgated in the 1970s to make the office independent, not partisan and apolitical. The changes were stimulated for decades of abuse by director J. Edgar Hoover, who entered politics, surveyed political groups and provided dirt to the rivals to the presidents.
The Trump administration has eliminated FBI officials from the race whom they apparently considered loyal enough to Trump of the high leadership positions. They requested the names of thousands of FBI agents who investigated on January 6 of the protesters and expelled the official of the race to protect them. And they have breached the rules of an official designed to make the office not partisan and protect the agents from political reprisals.
Same of Missouri
In his time in office in Missouri, Bailey has been politically aligned with Trump and his Maga base, according to local news reports. Bailey was appointed Attorney General in 2023 after her predecessor was chosen for the Senate, and was easily chosen for a period of four years in November, defeating her Democratic opponent from 60% to 40%. Critics accused Bailey of presenting cultural war demands focused on issues outside Missouri.
Last year, Bailey asked the Supreme Court to stop a judge in New York to sentence Trump after he was convicted of falsifying commercial records. “New York is working to kidnap our national election and the president of the Trump prison,” Bailey published in X. “Missourians have any interest in ensuring that this does not happen.”
He demanded to block the student loan aid program of the Biden Administration. He sued Starbucks to block his efforts to expand the diversity of his workforce. And demanded Facebook to force him to allow Missouri residents to have access to third parties moderation to avoid what Bailey argued that Facebook was a politically biased moderation.
And last year he demanded Planned Parenthood based on a video obtained surreptitiously for the Veritas Law Group project. Planned Parenthood said Bailey distorted the incident captured in the video and asked a judge to throw the case, which is still pending.
Some of Bailey’s legal actions that are more related to the application efforts of the law in which it will participate in the FBI have also been criticized. Last year, he tried to block the release of Sandra Hemme’s prison, then 64, who spent 43 years in prison before a judge annuls his conviction for murder.
The judge in the case criticized the Bailey office, which allegedly told the corrections officials not to release her. Hemme spent an additional month in jail, but was released after the highest court of the State ordered his release.
Separately, the state NAACP demanded Bailey after he stopped including a “disparity index” ordered by a state law in an annual state report. The law was promulgated after the data showed that the police arrested black drivers at a higher rate than white drivers and registered their vehicles more frequently, despite the fact that white drivers have smuggling more frequently.
The NAACP also affirmed in the lawsuit, that it is still pending, that Bailey violated the state law of Sol by retaining documents that would shed light on how the decision was made.
Patel dismissed Bailey’s criticism in a statement to Fox News last week. He said the FBI “will always bring the greatest talent that this country has to offer to achieve the established objectives when an overwhelming majority of American people chosen President Donald J. Trump again.”
