An incoming top White House aide to President-elect Donald Trump on Friday shut down speculation that former Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan would lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“It’s not happening,” Dan Scavino Jr., Trump’s incoming deputy chief of staff, wrote on X.
Scavino said he had spoken to the president-elect about Rogers, who for years has been floated to take over as FBI director.
Trump’s response, according to Scavino: “I have never even given it a thought.”
Rogers, a former FBI special agent and House Armed Services Chair who narrowly lost his Michigan Senate bid earlier this month, was endorsed by the FBI Agents Association in 2013 and 2017 to lead the agency. He was also under consideration for Defense secretary before Trump tapped Pete Hegseth, POLITICO reported.
But Rogers was also seen as an establishment figure — and with his Cabinet picks, Trump is doing all he can to subvert what his base calls the “deep state.”
Another reported top contender for the role, Kash Patel, who was principal deputy to Trump’s former acting Director of National Intelligence, said he would “shut down the FBI Hoover building on Day 1 and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state.”
CORRECTION: A previous version of this report misstated Kash Patel’s former title.