Christopher Wray, who President Donald Trump selected to replace James Comey as director of the FBI, was the wrong choice to clean up the troubled agency, former federal prosecutor Larry Klayman tells Newsmax TV.
"Christopher Wray is not the person to turn the bureau around," Klayman, founder of the government watchdog Freedom Watch, said Friday on Newsmax's "America Talks Live" with Miranda Khan.
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"He doesn't have the gravitas. He's like a kid. He's trying to do what he needs to do to be friendly with the rest of the powers that be and the FBI. But he's not a strong individual and consequently the real movement here has to be from the president himself.
"[Trump] got to clean house and he was right to go to the FBI academy today because yes it's a noble thing to be an FBI agent. That's what I'm talking about not shutting the FBI down, but clean it up at the top."
Trump has said the FBI's integrity is "in tatters" for its handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation as well as its work on the special probe of Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election and whether the Trump campaign was involved. On Friday continued his criticism, telling reporters, "It's a shame what's happened with the FBI. It's a very sad thing to watch."
Asked why Trump selected Wray, Klayman said he believed the commander in chief "got bad advice."
"The president has very good instincts. The president is a fighter. The president wants to clean house and clean out all of the dead wood in this government. But someone convinced him to put Wray in there and that was a mistake," Klayman told Kahn.
"They need somebody who's really dependent. I would've hoped that [former prosecutor and New York City Mayor] Rudy Giuliani would've been appointed. I think Rudy would have cleaned it out and I might add I'm available if he wants to appoint me."
Klayman said he would begin an FBI shakeup by firing "all of the senior officials."
"I would hire people who are not [part] in the Washington establishment … people from outside of Washington to run it … You need people like our founding fathers who risked their lives, pledged their fortunes in sacred honor to form a new nation,'' he said.
"We don't have anybody like that today with one exception — the president of the United States. He may be a little bit coarse from time to time. He may be somewhat rude, but you know what is in his heart."
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