Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said an effort to “completely gut” the Department of Justice (DOJ) and intelligence agencies is needed to remove corruption in the federal government.
During an interview with Haley on Thursday, Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo noted former President Donald Trump is facing four criminal indictments — which Trump claims are politically motivated — while asserting there is “increasing evidence” that President Joe Biden and his family accepted money from U.S. adversaries in an influence campaign.
“If you are commander-in-chief, what are you going to do to right the ship here in terms of wiping out this corruption and ensuring that the DOJ is not covering it up?” Bartiromo asked.
“You’re going to have to completely gut, you know, our Department of Justice and our intelligence agencies. I mean, look, the way they’ve treated the Bidens and the Clintons compared to the way they’ve treated Trump, I don’t care what you think about any of them, it’s wrong,” Haley said. “There’s political bias, we can see it. It’s not treating all of them equally. And it’s leaving America distrustful. That’s what you don’t want. The American people need to trust that agencies are doing their mission, and that they’re not playing politics. And I think that what we’re seeing is a whole lot of politics.”
Haley then vowed to replace the head of every agency.
“We’ll go in and where we need to clean out and clean house. We’ll do it, and where we need to go and focus them back on their missions, we’ll get it done,” she added. “We need government to work for the people. We’ve got to … stop this where the people are working for government.”
Haley is a former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador during the Trump administration. Roughly two months until the Iowa caucuses, Haley has risen in national Republican primary polling to roughly 8.7% on average. However, she is still far behind Trump, the GOP frontrunner.
While new presidents typically start their administrations with a broad shakeup of leadership across the federal agencies, not every department is necessarily impacted. For instance, the FBI director is picked to serve a 10-year term, unless that official is fired — as James Comey was by Trump.
Haley’s press secretary, Ken Farnoso, told the Daily Caller that the candidate would fire FBI Director Christopher Wray, who was picked during the Trump administration and kept on under Biden to serve a 10 year-term, “as part of a larger overhaul that would go after both senior and middle management at the FBI and DOJ.”
