CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has written a letter questioning the FBI’s recruitment, hiring and promotion practices, suggesting they present serious issues that may violate the nation’s non-discrimination laws.
Morrisey wrote the letter March 18 to Federal Bureau of Investigations Associate Deputy Director Brian C. Turner about how the organization has placed the Biden administration’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) requirements on top. The letter says this priority threatens to degrade the core values behind the Bureau’s recruitment, hiring and promotions efforts.
“Let me be clear: however you look at it, discrimination is wrong and has no place in our society,” Morrisey said. “Race-conscious recruitment, hiring and promotion practices in the FBI only foster division and stereotypes.
“The FBI is the country’s top law enforcer, but it is no longer recruiting for the best and the brightest — recent revelations suggest the organization is abandoning its core principle of attracting the most-qualified candidates and instead hiring and advancing employees based on gender/sexual orientation and race.”
In his letter, Morrisey describes those practices as “outright racial balancing,” saying the FBI has made diversity “an FBI core value.”
A couple months ago, anonymous FBI whistleblowers filed a report with the House Judiciary Committee titled “Report on Alarming Trends in FBI Special Agent Recruitment and Selection.” The conclusion of that report indicated a number of “lower-quality candidates” rejected by other agencies are being recruited by the FBI to follow Biden’s DEI push.
In his 12-page letter, Morrisey says the reports raise concerns about federal non-discrimination law, specifically the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee and Title VII’s non-discrimination requirements.
“The FBI has long said that ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ is more than a buzzword at the FBI – that it's ‘interwoven’ into everything the FBI does and is a priority at the ‘highest levels,’” Morrisey wrote. “It appears those platitudes may be metastasizing into illegal behavior.
“Although quotas are forbidden in hiring and recruitment, the Bureau has publicly expressed that there is still ‘progress to be made’ in upping female and racial minority representation in its ranks — strongly implying a yet-unreached numerical target (that is, a quota). And certain FBI graphs and public statements show that the quota/target is to meet or exceed the percentage of females and racial minorities in the general population.”
In his letter, Morrisey lists a dozen questions he wants answered regarding these practices. He requested the answers be returned by April 18.
“I write in the hope that you can provide answers to real questions that the Bureau’s actions have generated,” Morrisey said. “West Virginians — and the American people — deserve to know whether their government is following the laws it purports to enforce. …
“Obviously a genuinely diverse workforce is desirable and valuable for many reasons. But the Bureau can't build a diverse organization by targeting protected traits like race or sex. Thousands of FBI employees and contractors live and work in West Virginia, and the policies the FBI uses to hire them directly affect this state and its residents.”