- RAWSTORY.COM - Raw Story - 11/Jul 14:44

Strategist flags 'very unusual' Trump admin loyalty tests on CNN

With the FBI now ramping up the use of lie detector tests to gauge loyalty to its new director, Kash Patel, one former White House official is slamming the move as “very unusual,” sparking a fierce clash with a Republican strategist on CNN.“You take an oath to the Constitution, you take an oath to serve the American people, you don't take an oath to who the FBI director is, so it is very unusual in my experience,” said Meghan Hays, Democratic strategist and former White House director of message planning under former President Joe Biden.While lie detector tests are not outside the norm at the FBI, several current and former employees told The New York Times that lie detector tests are now being used to determine whether senior staff have ever made disparaging remarks about Patel. According to the report, several FBI employees have retired or been forced out amid heightened scrutiny over their loyalty.Melik Abdut, a Republican strategist, defended the practice, and characterized it as just another way the Trump administration is “rooting out the deep state within government.”“We saw during the first Trump administration (that) there were Trump officials – people that Donald Trump appointed himself – who were penning anonymous op-eds, talking about their dissatisfaction with the president of the United States instead of resigning,” Adbdut said.“...So in this case, yes, I think that if you have a problem with your boss, or if you're on record disagreeing with your boss, then I think that's something that your boss or the agency needs to know, so I don't have a problem with what the FBI is doing in this sense.”Pushing back on Abdut’s comments, Hays argued that loyalty tests, when administered to determine allegiance to a particular law enforcement official, were simply a bridge too far.“I think that the difference here is political appointees are different than federal law enforcement agencies in who you take your oath to, and I think if you want to root out people who are not loyal to you as the president being a political appointee, that is one thing,” she said.“But these are federal law enforcement agents, and they are not there to serve a president there, they are there to serve the Constitution and the American people, so that is the difference in this instance.”Watch the video below or use this link here.