Derek Schmidt Asks Ex-FBI Employee If Moving FBI Out Of DC May Remove It From 'Political Circus'

4/7/2025

During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Derek Schmidt (R-KS) spoke about relocating the FBI headquarters out of Washington, D.C.

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Transcript

00:00Recognize the gentleman for Kansas for five minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it. I do

00:04want to give the witnesses a heads up. I do intend to ask them questions over the course of this five

00:08minutes. I spent a dozen years as the chief law enforcement official of my state. I've never

00:14claimed to be a cop, not a certified officer, but I had the privilege of serving as our state

00:19attorney general. I've had a lot of conversations with law enforcement officers all over the state

00:23of Kansas, local cops, elected local officers and sheriffs, cops that worked directly for me

00:30under our supervision, cops that worked in local agencies, and all sorts of federal law enforcement

00:36officers as well as federal prosecutors who operated in our jurisdiction. I will tell you,

00:42in the course of those 12 years, I never saw an FBI agent perform less than honorably. Not once.

00:53And I never recall a single time in those rooms. Now, if I'd go down the street to the political

00:57party meetings, I'd hear conversations like we heard some today and we've heard a lot over the

01:02last four years. I'd hear all that all the time. If I turned on the television, I'd see it all the

01:05time. I never heard it among cops working a case. I heard folks who knew each other and liked each

01:12other and cooperated with each other who said, how are we going to get that child molester off

01:16the streets? How are we going to solve this murder? How are we going to deal with that case of elder

01:20abuse? How are we going to deal with that crime that's in front of us? That's the FBI I know,

01:25and it's the law enforcement world that I know. And I would just ask, you know, Mr. Whitson,

01:29you're first up here. Is that consistent or inconsistent with the law enforcement community

01:33you operated in? It's absolutely consistent. I'd say I had partners that I worked with for years

01:39on cases. And if you ask me what political party those people were in, I couldn't tell you. And

01:44they couldn't tell you the same for me when I was when I was in the FBI. So that is the real FBI

01:48when you go out to the field offices and you get away from headquarters. That's the real FBI,

01:52the real work. That's that's what they're like. Mr. Stout, you were a local or state officer

01:57or both before being federal. How about you? Is what I just described consistent or inconsistent

02:01with your experience? Yes, sir, it is consistent. And I would tack on to that something earlier

02:06that Miss Crockett said that I'm interested in about galvanizing this country. What will bring

02:12us all together? You know, something briefly, you mentioned there's a special place in hell

02:17for pedophiles and child pornographers. And we have systems in place at the FBI, but we can make

02:23those systems a little bit better, a little bit tighter. I'm prepared to talk about it later today,

02:27if you wish. That sounds very good. Let me tell you a brief story and then I have some follow

02:31on questions. So during the course of time I was serving in that role, we had a terrible case. It

02:36was a racist, bigoted individual from a neighboring state who crossed the line into our state with the

02:41intent of killing a group of folks because of their faith. He went to a religious institution,

02:46he shot the place up. He killed, as I recall, three people. He was immediately apprehended.

02:50He has since died in prison. But there was at the moment that happened, there was a motivated

02:56federal and state through local authorities response. A lot of folks on the scene, everybody

03:00trying to figure out how do we secure this thing? How do we fix it? And then there was a professional

03:05discussion. Who's going to go first in the prosecution? Because you had a state murder

03:08and you had federal hate crimes, as well as some other federal crimes, perhaps.

03:12And man, the press loved it. I mean, every day there was a headline about this dispute between

03:16the district attorney and the United States attorney and the local cops and the federal

03:20cops and who's going to go first. And finally, it was decided the state would go first and the

03:26district attorney announced it was filing capital murder charges with a notice of intent to seek

03:30the death penalty under our state law. And in the same article where the local press reported that,

03:37they then in the next paragraph said, and next, there'll be a decision on a federal prosecution

03:44where the penalties may be stiffer. Think about that. Think about that.

03:52I offer the story up for this reason. I think there may be a perception outside the cops on

03:59the beat, federal and state, who do this work in our communities every single day,

04:03that what we talk about up here is reality and that somehow the federal law enforcement officers

04:08are superior to their state counterparts. I don't think that's true. I don't think it's close to

04:13true. I don't think what we're hearing today and heard the last four years reflects what really

04:18happens with the vast, vast majority of the federal and state cops on the beat. And I guess

04:24I would just ask this, Mr. Whitson, you suggested we ought to move the FBI out of Washington, D.C.

04:33and the current director has already made some moves to that effect. Talk to me in my remaining

04:38time about how you think that might affect our ability to get this narrative back on track so

04:43it's the cops on the beat keeping our communities safe that drives it instead of all this political

04:48circus in this town that drives it. Well, briefly, just right now, almost a third of all FBI employees

04:56are stationed in the D.C. area. The crime that's taking place across America is not all happening

05:01in the D.C. area. It's happening everywhere, in pockets all over the country, Kansas, every

05:05member's district. And so moving the FBI out of D.C. and back into the field office is going to help

05:10that. But it's also cheaper. D.C. is an expensive area. I don't need to tell anyone that, right?

05:16Moving the headquarters to a lower cost area is not only cheaper for the federal government and

05:20the American taxpayer, but it's also cheaper for the workers, for the federal employees that have

05:24to commute every day to the office. If it's in a place that's a better quality of living and easier

05:29commute, that's better. And then the last reason, to be real brief, is the political makeup. And so my

05:35colleague at FGA, Hayden Du Bois, did a paper on this to look at federal senior executive

05:40employees. What is the political makeup? And across the country, they lean heavily Democrat

05:45by 30. But in D.C., it goes up to 40. And so that's not to say, not trying to be not Democrat

05:51or not Republican, but we really want to put it in a place where it's more representative of the

05:56entire country and not just one side of the country. And that's why we see that when a

05:59conservative comes in, the whole weaponization rises to the issue because the headquarters is

06:04populated by people of the opposite political. The gentleman's time has expired.

Derek Schmidt Asks Ex-FBI Employee If Moving FBI Out Of DC May Remove It From 'Political Circus'

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