We cannot let Donald Trump nominate John Cornyn as FBI Director, and not for the reason you think

Donald Trump trotted out the names of four people he’s considering for nomination as the next Director of the FBI, and there may only be one we truly need to worry about: Senator John Cornyn. It’s not because he’s a Trump loyalist who wants to make the Russia investigation go away; anyone Trump appoints will fit that description. We have to worry about Cornyn because he’s the only one who could actually get confirmed.

We’ve seen just enough vocal pushback from Senate Republicans this week over the firing of FBI Director James Comey to know that Trump will have a difficult getting anyone confirmed as his replacement. The Republicans only have fifty-two votes in the Senate, so if even just three of them vote no, any nominee can be derailed. So Trump is stuck looking for some kind of backdoor way to sneak one of his own loyalists past the confirmation process – and he may have hit on it with Cornyn.

Trump is floating the name of acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. But Trump will only nominate McCabe if he concludes that McCabe is loyal to him, and in such case, the Senate will conclude that McCabe shouldn’t be confirmed. The other two names, Alice Fisher and Michael Garcia, seem to have been thrown in as mere filler, although we’re still looking into any ties they might have to Trump and/or Russia. It’s difficult to imagine either of them getting confirmed under current circumstances, either.

But let’s say Trump really does nominate John Cornyn, a sitting Republican Senator, to be the new FBI Director. Even though certain Republicans in the Senate might want to take a stand, in order for them to accuse Trump of trying to rig the FBI, they’d have to accuse their own colleague Cornyn of being in on it. This might be enough to cause all of these spineless Republican Senators to go ahead and meekly vote yet on Cornyn.

So the point here is that we must immediately begin pushing back against the idea of John Cornyn as head of the FBI. Call Senators from both parties and make clear to them that you’ve already heard enough bias from Cornyn in public hearings, and that you do not trust him to take over the Trump-Russia investigations. Let’s correctly taint the notion of Cornyn as FBI Director before Trump gets any funny ideas about actually nominating him for it. Help fund Palmer Report