WASHINGTON (AP) — As President Donald Trump’s top law enforcement officials continue to fire and force out Justice Department veterans, Sen. Chuck Grassley decried the “political contagion” that has poisoned FBI leadership.
The Iowa Republican was not criticizing FBI Director Kash Patel or Attorney General Pam Bondi. In a July statement, he directed his anger at the FBI’s “extreme lack of effort” in investigating Democrat Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state a decade ago.
Trump loyalists have rocked the Justice Department, chipping away at standards and causing a mass exodus of veteran officials, but the 92-year-old chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is focused on the past.
Critics say Grassley’s reluctance to challenge the Trump administration also extends to a defining issue: his support for whistleblowers who allege fraud, waste and abuse.
In an interview, Grassley stressed that he had not relinquished his oversight role. He said he felt compelled to investigate the cases under previous presidents to avoid repeating what he described as politically motivated prosecutions against Trump and his associates.
“The political weaponry has been brought to the surface and made more transparent because this administration is the most supportive of any administration — Republican or Democrat,” Grassley said.
Grassley has acknowledged that Congress has ceded too much power to the current administration, a concession that makes his own oversight more important.
“The need for this is going to increase,” he said.
Grassley is known for his focus on oversight
After entering Congress in 1975, Grass developed a reputation for exposing corruption and waste. He once drove to the Pentagon in his orange Chevy Chevy to demand answers from officials about their purchases of $450 hammers and $7,600 coffee pots.
He was among the leading proponents in Congress of laws protecting employees who disclosed such waste and sponsored the landmark 1989 Whistleblower Protection Act. He also played a key role in empowering inspector generals, internal watchdogs tasked with rooting out abuses.
“He’s been the conscience of the Senate on whistleblower protection rights for decades,” said Tom Devine, legal director of the Government Accountability Project. In the current Congress, he has co-sponsored legislation to enhance protections for whistleblowers at the FBI and CIA.
“No one has come close to his influence,” Devin said. “That doesn’t mean we always agree with his decisions about policy.”
The Trump administration was criticized for not complying
Trump and Grassley have not always aligned. This past week, for example, they clashed over the pace of confirmation of administration nominees.
Still, Democrats and good government advocates say Grassley has been conspicuously silent as the administration has fired Trump’s perceived enemies, agents working on politically sensitive cases and upheld the Justice Department’s longstanding post-Watergate independence.
Some whistleblowers have been loathe to trust him with revelations that could damage the administration, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former US officials, or their lawyers, many of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation.
“There are a lot of people concerned that he’s not the same old Chuck Grassley,” said Eric Woolson, author of a 1995 biography of Grassley who once served as a Grassley campaign spokesman.
Grassley rejected that criticism, calling him whistleblowers regardless of anyone in the White House. His office’s online portal has received more than 5,300 complaints in 2025, about the same level as in previous years, staff reported.
“His whole career, he’s been a guy people trusted,” said Jason Foster, Grassley’s former chief investigative counsel, who founded Empower Oversight, a group that has advocated on behalf of FBI agents disciplined under the Biden administration.
staunch Trump ally
Many of Grassley’s recent actions, however, suggest he has evolved from a fiercely independent liberal to a Trump ally eager to sniff out fraud, according to Democrats and whistleblower advocates.
Some were particularly concerned about Grassley’s dismissal of witnesses who raised concerns in June about the nomination of Emile Bove, a top Justice Department official and former Trump lawyer, to a lifetime federal appeals court seat.
Among the many officials who came forward was Justice Department lawyer Erez Reuveni, who was fired for refusing to go along with Bove’s plans to defy court orders and withhold information from judges to advance the administration’s aggressive deportation goals.
Grassley said his staff tried to investigate some of the claims, but lawyers for a whistleblower could not give his staff all the materials they requested in a timely manner. Instead of delaying the hearing, Grassley turned the tables on Trump’s nominee.
Grassley said in a speech that the abuse, unfair accusations and abuse directed at Mr. Bove “crossed the line.”
Stacey Young, a former Justice Department attorney who founded Justice Connections, a network of department alumni to support the department’s traditionally apolitical workforce, said she was disappointed that Grassley did not use his influence to condemn the firings at the department.
“How is the majority of Congress not screaming bloody murder? We are witnessing the near destruction of the DOJ in real time, and Congress is sitting by and doing nothing,” she said. “Does Sen. Grassley think it’s okay to fire people for doing their job?”
At an oversight hearing in September, Grassley missed an opportunity to grill Patel on a series of terminations of line agents and high-level supervisors, including five whose sudden and still inexplicable dismissals generated headlines weeks ago.
When Democrats pressed Patel about the bureau’s use of aircraft for personal reasons, Grassley chided his Senate colleagues for their indifference to previous directors’ travel practices.
Grassley has also become a keen conduit for FBI leadership seeking to expose investigative misconduct and overreach during the Biden administration in Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 election.
He has released batches of sensitive documents from that investigation, known as “Arctic Frost,” which he says were presented by FBI whistleblowers or which are labeled as “produced by FBI Director Kash Patel.” The records are not the type of documents that federal law enforcement typically makes public on its own.
Advocates were disappointed in Grassley’s response to the IG firings
Whistleblower advocates said they were frustrated by Grasse’s failure to take a strong stand after Trump fired several inspector generals without cause within days of taking office.
Some Republican-appointed inspectors general also accused Trump of violating a law requiring the White House to provide Congress with a 30-day notice and rationale. If a Republican was going to stand up for them, some fired inspector generals said, they expected it to be Grassley.
“He’s been unreasonably silent,” said Mark Greenblatt, a Trump appointee at the Interior Department who was among those fired. “It is inconceivable that the Grass of a few years ago, who kept nominees and threatened inspector generals at the slightest provocation, would be so silent in the face of these attacks.”
Grassley responded to the purge by sending a letter to Trump asking officials to spell out their case-by-case specific reasons for the “immediate” dismissal.
It took eight months for the White House to respond. In a two-page letter, it reiterated the president’s right to fire the inspector general at will and made no attempt to explain its reasoning beyond citing “changed priorities.”
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Associated Press writer Ryan J. Foley in Iowa City, Iowa, contributed to this report.
