Trump shooting investigation gives FBI chance to dig itself out of deep hole with Republicans

The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump could help the FBI accomplish something it has struggled to do for years: repair its poisonous relationship with Washington’s GOP political establishment.

It might even curtail the storied law enforcement agency’s role as one of Trump’s favorite punching bags.

The FBI is leading the investigation while much of the blame for the security breach that led to the attempted assassination has fallen on the Secret Service.

“We weren’t involved in the problem. We’re investigating what happened afterwards, which hopefully will give the bureau the chance to do what it does best: throw resources, the best technology and skills at an important investigation and solve it and shed light on it,” said a former senior FBI official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the bureau’s delicate relationship with Congress and the White House. “We’re not always in that situation.”

The FBI — which announced Monday that it gained access to the suspected shooter’s phone — has a lot of ground to make up. Less than two months ago, Trump was accusing agents of trying to kill him when they raided Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, carrying out a court-issued warrant to retrieve classified documents from Trump’s Florida home.

In a May fundraising email, Trump said President Joe Biden was “locked & loaded and ready to take me out.” In a social media post around the same time, Trump suggested that the Justice Department “AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE” against him.

Trump’s comment appeared to allude to press reports about the FBI’s operations plan for the search — a plan which included boilerplate language about when agents could use force. The FBI, however, intentionally carried out the search when Trump wasn’t home to avoid any confrontation and there’s no indication Biden was involved.

The former president’s denunciations of the FBI were just the latest installment in a history of Trump-FBI animosity that dates back more than seven years to his firing of then-Director James Comey in 2017. The abrupt dismissal jolted the agency and left many agents and staff dismayed.

The acrimony continued through Trump’s presidency as he blamed the FBI for the special counsel investigation into his campaign’s dealings with Russia.

Trump’s attacks on the bureau intensified after reports from the Justice Department’s inspector general faulted the FBI’s handling of an application for a surveillance warrant for a foreign policy adviser on Trump’s 2016 campaign, found broader signs that the agency failed to adhere to policies involving such requests and concluded that its officials violated rules about contacts with the media. One former FBI lawyer pleaded guilty to a felony charge of falsifying an email related to a surveillance application.

Republican lawmakers picked up the fight in a series of contentious hearings where the man Trump picked to replace Comey, Christopher Wray, acknowledged errors and vowed reforms. GOP House members often accused the director of failing to acknowledge the breadth of the problems and not doing enough to punish those responsible.

After Republicans won control of the House in 2022, they formed a subcommittee focused squarely on what they termed the “weaponization” of the federal government — a term that typically signifies the notion that the FBI has been politicized by Democrats or Trump opponents.

It’s not surprising then that the FBI faces some skepticism from Republican lawmakers and Trump supporters as it probes the shooting at the former president’s campaign rally Saturday.

“My constituents are deeply concerned with the FBI conducting the sole investigation into the attempted assassination of President Trump,” Rep. Lance Gooden of Texas posted on X Monday . “They don’t have faith in the current FBI leadership to get to the truth given how they have targeted President Trump with political witch hunt after witch hunt at the behest of Joe Biden. I share these concerns.”

Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. picked up on Gooden’s concerns, urging that a House committee closely oversee the FBI probe.

“Given how biased & weaponized the FBI has become in their action’s over the past decade, I think this committee would be critical in making sure that Americans have some actual faith in the results of this much needed investigation,” the Trump son wrote .

The FBI says it is still trying to determine the motive of the 20-year-old man who climbed a roof outside the Trump rally venue on Saturday and opened fire before he was shot to death by Secret Service personnel. Some Trump backers may remain unsatisfied with the FBI unless it can tie the attack to Biden’s supporters or left-wing activists.

However, unlike many of the recent controversies, the FBI has so far found itself not needing to defend its past actions or inaction. Officials have said there are no indications that the gunman had any contact with the bureau or other law enforcement.

“We might be perceived as the good guys,” the former FBI official said. “I think it probably does bode better for Hill relations, even on the House side.”

Much of the GOP’s anger toward the FBI in recent years has been heaped on Wray, even though he’s a Trump appointee and was brought in after the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign had become public and was taken over by Mueller.

An FBI spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment, but Wray and other officials appear to have seized on the shooting probe as an opportunity for the FBI to put its best foot forward with skeptical elements of both the public and Congress.

On Sunday afternoon, no fewer than four senior FBI officials joined a telephone briefing for reporters to offer updates on the state of the investigation. Attorney General Merrick Garland and Wray opened the session and then the officials leading the investigation spent an unusually long time, nearly 30 minutes, detailing what investigators have found so far and fielding questions from journalists.

Deputy Director Paul Abbate acknowledged that the level of transparency is unusual for the bureau.

“This is not typical, but we’re leaning far forward here, given the circumstances, and want to keep everyone well informed,” Abbate told the group.

In a twist, the FBI’s proactive media strategy appears to take a page from Comey’s playbook. The former director broke with his predecessors by urging more transparency at the agency in a variety of ways, including around ongoing investigations where the primary suspect had died. Critics in both parties sometimes accused him of sharing too much information, particularly about politically sensitive investigations.

Comey, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2013 and fired by Trump in 2017, declined a request for comment Monday.

FBI directors are appointed by law to 10-year terms in an attempt to keep them above politics. Wray’s term runs through 2027. In a recent interview, he suggested he’d like to stay in his job if Trump wins, as long as the FBI is permitted to abide by its longstanding standards and to keep investigations apolitical.

“As long as I think I can continue doing that in a way that adheres to all those rules and norms, it’s what I’d like to keep doing,” he told NBC in April .

Whether the FBI’s handling of the aftermath of the assassination attempt can repair Trump’s own distrust of the FBI is less clear, but the former official who spoke with POLITICO said there’s reason to hope.

“A near-death experience has different effects on people,” he said. “There’s no more serious thing.”