Trump won’t put Mike Rogers at FBI: Scavino

Dan Scavino, a senior adviser to Donald Trump, said Friday that the president-elect is not planning to install former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) as the head of the FBI, even as the former lawmaker says he could reform the agency.

“Just spoke to President Trump regarding Mike Rogers going to the FBI. It’s not happening — In his own words, ‘I have never even given it a thought.’ Not happening,” Scavino wrote on the social platform X.

Scavino’s comment came hours after Rogers appeared on “Fox and Friends” on Friday morning talking about how he would handle the agency.

“People have lost faith in the FBI,” he said. “Someone like me can restore that faith.”

“This is where the FBI should be applying its resources,” Rogers said, pointing to violent crime while echoing Trump’s claims the agency has been focused on politics.

“It should not be engaged in politics. And the culture of the FBI on the seventh floor needs to be changed and has to have a kind of a reckoning. You know you can, you can cure the cancer without killing the patient, and that’s exactly what needs to happen at the FBI.”

Scavino’s tweet is the latest to offer insight into Trump’s plans for the FBI, which Director Christopher Wray would otherwise be set to lead until his term ends in 2027 — but is expected to be fired by Trump.

Rogers, who was a FBI special agent for roughly five years, served multiple terms in Congress and also served as the Republican leader on the House Intelligence Committee for four years, making him a more traditional pick to lead the agency.

But speculation has been swirling that Trump could tap Kash Patel, a controversial figure from his first administration who held numerous national security posts.

“No part of the FBI’s mission is safe with Kash Patel in any position of leadership in the FBI, and certainly not in the deputy director’s job,” former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Thursday evening, adding that “The scope of authority is enormous.”

“If you enter into that position with nothing more than a desire to disrupt and destroy the organization, there is a lot of damage someone like Kash Patel could do,” he said.

Vice President-elect JD Vance earlier this week deleted a post after he revealed the transition team was meeting with prospective candidates — a sign of their plans to replace Wray.

Patel is a Trump loyalist who sparked internal battles during Trump’s first term and has echoed Trump’s arguments that the FBI is a weaponized agency that improperly investigated him.

“The Deep State can not be trusted. They have weaponized the government for their own political and personal agenda,” Patel wrote in an email last week from his foundation, calling the investigation into Trump’s Russia ties “fraud.”

—Updated at 1:49 p.m.