Government Accountability Institute Vice President Eric Eggers says a document detailing an FBI investigation into President Donald Trump in 2017 is less a shocking aberration than evidence of something much bigger: a permanent federal bureaucracy whose priorities can survive the presidents voters put in office.
“It is disappointing. It is unsurprising,” Eggers told Greg Kelly after Kelly read language from the document stating that the FBI had opened a full investigation into whether Trump may have been “wittingly or unwittingly” involved in activities on behalf of the Russian government.
For Eggers, the significance goes beyond Trump.
“The president might have changed, but the aim and the ideological bent of our national security apparatus with the FBI, the CIA, etc., clearly did not,” he said.
The timing also caught Eggers’ attention.
He argued that while federal investigators devoted resources to the Trump-Russia investigation, the FBI was winding down an investigation involving the Clinton Foundation — a subject Eggers knew firsthand from his work with Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer on the book Clinton Cash.
Eggers said he traveled to Haiti while researching the book and argued investigators had legitimate questions to pursue surrounding the Clintons’ dealings and Russia.
“There were real things to look into,” Eggers said, pointing to Bill Clinton’s lucrative speaking engagement and the controversial Uranium One transaction involving Russian interests.
But Eggers’ larger point was about institutional choices: what government agencies pursue aggressively — and what they do not.
“There are finite resources in these agencies,” he said. “So they chose to look into this.”
Eggers then widened the lens to Washington’s permanent bureaucracy.
He recalled former House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz describing career government employees who referred to themselves as the “B team” because, as Eggers recounted it, their message was essentially: elected officials and political appointees come and go, but they remain.
“We were here before you got here. We’re here now, and we’re not going anywhere,” Eggers quoted the officials as saying.
Eggers said the same dynamic can confront new administrations inside the Justice Department, where career lawyers hired under previous leadership remain in place long after political control changes hands.
That, he argued, is the real lesson of the Trump investigation.
Presidents change.
Cabinet secretaries change.
Congress changes.
But the people operating the machinery of government often do not.
Listen to the clip above.
