Trump Demands FBI Preserve Records After Confirming It Shut Down DEI Office

President-elect Donald Trump speaks to members of the media during a press conference at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., on Jan. 07, 2025. Scott Olson/Getty Images

As the FBI has recently confirmed that it shut down its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) office, President-elect Donald Trump has demanded that the bureau preserve its records related to this decision.

DEI policies in both the government and private sector have come under fire in recent months, prompting some major corporations to shutter their offices and rescind some partnerships with outside groups. Critics argue that DEI policies are discriminatory and are political programs to advance a progressive, partisan orthodoxy.

A spokesperson for the FBI confirmed to The Epoch Times on Friday that its diversity office was shut down last month.

“In recent weeks, the FBI took steps to close the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI), effective by December 2024,” the spokesperson said.

The bureau, however, did not provide any other details about why it decided to shutter the diversity office, including what motivated it to do so.

The statement and reports about the FBI closing that office prompted Trump, who is due to take office in three days, to write, “We demand that the FBI preserve and retain all records, documents, and information on the now closing DEI Office,” which “never should have been opened.”

“Why is it that they’re closing one day before the Inauguration of a new Administration?” he wrote on his Truth Social platform on Thursday.

While on the campaign trail, Trump and then-vice presidential nominee JD Vance said they would work to remove DEI offices and related policies from the federal government. In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan in October 2024, Vance said that some white children are becoming transgender in order to fulfill DEI requirements to get into some universities.

“The one way that those people can participate in the DEI bureaucracy in this country is to be trans, and is there a dynamic that’s going on where, if you become trans, that is the way to reject your white privilege?” Vance asked at one point.

In recent days, the FBI has come under renewed scrutiny from Republicans in Congress, who accused the FBI of prioritizing DEI-related policies in the wake of the New Orleans terrorist attack that left more than a dozen people dead on New Year’s Day. Some, such as Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), have asked whether the agency prioritized DEI over national security.

In a letter to outgoing FBI Director Christopher Wray earlier this month, the senator claimed that the bureau’s policies have “endangered our national security and the lives of all Americans.”

“Until the President-Elect’s nominee to lead the FBI is confirmed, the American people deserve to know the full extent to which your radical DEI agenda has compromised our national security,” she said.

Blackburn’s letter noted that multiple former FBI agents have told members of Congress that “law enforcement and intelligence capabilities of the FBI are degrading because the FBI is no longer hiring ‘the best and the brightest’ candidates,” suggesting it is evidence that DEI policies are to blame.

In recent months, several major companies—including McDonald’s, Meta, Amazon, Walmart, Harley-Davidson, Lowes, Tractor Supply Co., John Deere, and others—have announced they would roll back certain DEI-related policies. Notably, some specifically said they would not participate in programs related to the Human Rights Campaign, a pro-LGBT group, including surveys of employees.

“We are retiring setting aspirational representation goals and instead keeping our focus on continuing to embed inclusion practices that grow our business into our everyday process and operations,” McDonald’s said in a Jan. 6 statement announcing the decision.

But a handful of board members on several companies, including Apple and Costco, have publicly called on their shareholders to keep their respective companies’ DEI policies intact.

The closure of the FBI’s diversity was first reported on Thursday by Fox News.

The Epoch Times contacted the FBI for additional comment on Trump’s statement but did not receive a response by publication time.