Washington, D.C. (April 2, 2025)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Jasmine Crockett, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Oversight, led subcommittee Democrats in a hearing where Republicans made clear they would rather relitigate stale conspiracies about the Biden Administration than pursue real oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under the Trump Administration, which is purging qualified agents and pursuing an agenda of retribution, corruption, and lawlessness.
The hearing included testimony from: Dr. Luke Hunt, Former FBI Agent & Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama; Nicole Parker, Former FBI Agent & Fox News Commentator; Richard Stout, Former FBI Agent & Director of Reform the Bureau; and Stuart Whitson, Former FBI Agent & Senior Director of Federal Affairs at the Foundation for Government Accountability.
Republicans held this hearing to rehash old grievances instead of investigating the obvious corruption and lawlessness that Donald Trump’s cabinet and allies are engaged in almost daily.
Ranking Member Jamie Raskin said: “We are already 10 weeks into the Trump Administration and still, the Republicans are recycling the most tiresome, vacuous and debunked stories, conspiracy theories, about the Biden Administration, while demurely declining to conduct any oversight at all of the current administration.”
Ranking Member Jasmine Crockett said: “Here we are again, talking about Biden, Biden, Biden. Today is nothing more than a dog and pony show for Republicans to avoid facing the American people for their trash policies that are killing the economy and our democracy.”
Ranking Member Raskin said: “What are DOJ and FBI doing to investigate [Signalgate, a] stunning, dangerous episode of incompetence or recklessness, at the very least, that undoubtedly violates all kinds of federal criminal and civil laws? Nothing. In fact, when asked about the Signal chat, Attorney General Bondi changed the subject to Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Sound familiar? That’s what we’re doing today.”
Ranking Member Raskin later asked the Republican witnesses whether they thought the Trump Cabinet’s reckless use of Signal to share sensitive national security information—if it were standard practice—would be a problem. After witnesses affirmed that it would be a problem, Ranking Member Raskin highlighted the breaking news that the Trump Administration “set up at least 20 Signal group chats for crises across the world. So it was, as one might expect, a very standard practice with [National Security Advisor Michael] Waltz.”
The Trump Administration’s “reforms” at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Justice (DOJ) are designed to turn the FBI into the personal shake-down arm of the gangster state—focused on retribution at the expense of investigating crimes.
Ranking Member Raskin said: “The current FBI leadership is diverting the FBI’s resources away from public safety and national security and towards MAGA conspiracy fixations and obsessions.”
Dr. Hunt explained that under the Trump Administration, “Prominent cases of political corruption have been dropped suddenly for reasons unrelated to the legal merits of the case. Investigation of corruption under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has been paused. The FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force and DOJ’s Kleptocracy team have been disbanded. A lack of transparency into this sort of selective enforcement of corruption could politicize the FBI, undermining the rule of law.”
Ranking Member Raskin said: “Already stories of intimidation and pressure in this DOJ in this FBI are trickling out. Seven veteran prosecutors were forced to resign rather than take part in a corrupt bargain to dismiss charges that were brought by a grand jury in New York against the Mayor of New York, Eric Adams. The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, Danielle Sassoon, who clerked on the Supreme Court for Justice Scalia and was active in the Federalist Society, resigned, saying nothing had changed in the facts of the case, nothing had changed in the law of the case, nothing had changed in the evidence. It was simply this political deal that Donald Trump had cooked up with the Mayor of New York who traveled down to Mar-a-Lago.”
In response to a question from Ranking Member Raskin on how Trump is weaponizing the FBI as an instrument of partisanship, including by orchestrating a corrupt quid pro quo with Mayor Adams, Dr. Hunt explained: “I felt the men and women that I worked with, they base their investigations on facts and law. […] The worry I have is with respect to corruption today, and there is selective enforcement […] When I see a high-level politician and charges are dropped, and there’s no reason, I as an American citizen don’t understand why that’s the case.”
Ranking Member Crockett, in rebuking the Trump Administration’s retributive attempts to silence the constitutionally protected speech of Democratic Members of Congress, including Ranking Member Crockett, said“The fact that there are other sitting Members that have received letters of threats from this new DOJ tells me that they are about retribution and they are not about following the law.”
Ranking Member Raskin said: “We’re not going to stand idly by while this administration tries to turn the FBI into an arm of a pay-to-play gangster state.”
Republicans claim to be the party “that backs the blue” but they refuse to actually support law enforcement—which puts Americans in danger.
Ranking Member Raskin said: “One of our colleagues referred to the ‘weaponization of the DOJ’ and specifically focused on the January 6th defendants. That startled me because 140 American police officers were violently assaulted on that day, wounded, hospitalized, some of them disfigured, disabled, forced to leave police work, but he said that there would have been a better use of the FBI and prosecutorial and investigative resources, and I wonder what he was referring to. Dr. Hunt, do you agree with that assessment?” Dr. Hunt responded, “January 6th shocked and horrified me. That was a shameful day, because of the many attacks on our law enforcement officers. So, any suggestion that is a low priority and should not be investigated is shocking to me. I can’t imagine a more important devotion of resources by the FBI to anyone who would attack our nation’s capital.”
Ranking Member Crockett: “Despite Republicans’ claim of backing the blue and being the party of law and order—we’re here today because Republicans are willing to throw our country’s top law enforcement agents under the bus to appease Trump and execute his political vengeance.”
