Will Trump’s Assault on the FBI Affect CBS’ ‘FBI’ TV Franchise?

With Donald Trump blasting the FBI as “corrupt,” seeking to install new leadership and moving to fire agents who investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, questions have arisen about what that could mean for the fictional agents in Dick Wolf’s three CBS series about the bureau.

Breaking with precedent in a way that has threatened the FBI’s independence, President Trump has moved to install a loyalist, Kash Patel, as the new head of the FBI, prompting fears that the law enforcement agency will be “weaponized,” as some critics have warned, against his political enemies.

The “FBI” series generate some of CBS’ strongest ratings, but could real-life events alter how the public views the agency, which has been heroically saving the day in movies and TV for decades?

CBS and Wolf Entertainment did not respond to a request for comment, but TheWrap spoke to several experts, including former FBI agents, about how this real-life series of events could affect the shows, and even potentially become part of the plot.

Bobby Chacon, who was an agent for 27 years and went on to write for another CBS series, “Criminal Minds,” told TheWrap that a story based on the real-life chaos in D.C. would be “on-brand” for Wolf, but would have to be fictionalized.

“I can see them doing this over multiple episodes,” he said. “It can run, literally, all season as a backstory,” while acknowledging that dealing with that sort of internal political battle would be “kind of a stretch.”

Although Wolf-produced shows, including “Law & Order,” often feature ripped-from-the-headlines plots, they generally serve as procedural escapism, an approach that is unlikely to change despite the noise beyond them. Even so, the recent spate of headlines about the bureau could make it difficult, or at least conspicuous, if the shows completely ignore what is transpiring beyond the screen.

Potentially, the Trump situation could be treated like COVID: From 2020 to 2024, agents on “FBI” only occasionally masked up, compared to the almost constant masking on Fox’s first-responder series “9-1-1.”

James Nadler, a TV writer and producer who teaches media production at Toronto Metropolitan University, told TheWrap that certain provocative plot lines — like the white supremacist villain featured in the “FBI” pilot — might quietly disappear.

These are White Knight shows. You don’t want to see your heroes compromised morally or ethically. You don’t want them looking weak. We got that note a lot at CBS, that heroes have to always prevail, and we can’t have the bad guys win.

— Bobby Chacon

“I just wonder whether there’s going to be some self-censorship,” Nadler said, citing the legal battle between CBS and Trump over the network’s “60 Minutes” Kamala Harris interview. After huge settlements with other media companies, including ABC and Meta, Trump doubled his lawsuit against the network, seeking $20 billion in damages.

Jerri Williams, one of the first Black women agents when she joined the FBI in 1982, now works as a TV consultant on shows like J.J. Abrams’ upcoming “Duster.” She told TheWrap she didn’t anticipate big changes ahead, despite Trump’s animosity toward the bureau.

“White supremacists and people who blow up abortion clinics will always be villains,” she said. “Even if you don’t believe in abortion, I can’t imagine a world where it is OK to blow up [a clinic] for most Americans.”

In January, the New York Times reported that Paramount chairwoman Shari Redstone was leaning towards settling with the president to help clear the path for the company’s still-pending merger between Paramount and Skydance. The executive appears to want to avoid antagonizing Trump at all costs.

The “FBI” launched during Trump’s first term

The first show in Wolf’s CBS franchise, “FBI,” kicked off in September 2018 during Trump’s first term in the White House. The procedural, which featured a number of “Law & Order” alums, was created by Wolf and Craig Turk. “FBI: Most Wanted,” which follows the members of the Fugitive Task Force as they pursue violent, high-profile criminals, launched in early 2020, followed a year later — with Joe Biden now in the White House — by “FBI: International.” 

The very first episode of the flagship series featured agents Maggie Bell (Missy Peregrym) and OA Zadan (Zeeko Zaki) investigating the bombing of an apartment building that eventually leads to a white nationalist who was working with Central American gangs. 

While the Dick Wolf universe has its share of liberal critics — in 2022, John Oliver did a segment calling “Law & Order” “propaganda” and “a commercial for the police” — the FBI franchise has also been met with criticism from the right. 

In 2020, NewsBusters, a conservative media watchdog site founded by Trump backer Robert Mercer, took issue with an episode in which ICE agents were unfairly targeting people based on the color of their skin. The article was titled “CBS’ ‘FBI: Most Wanted’ Conflates White Nationalists With ICE Agents.”

Even if Wolf Entertainment wants to continue its traditional “ripped from the headlines” approach to its series, which in the past has drawn inspiration from sensational cases like the O.J. Simpson and Casey Anthony trials, it is not clear CBS would welcome storylines that hew too close for comfort to the Trump administration. 

In October 2016, NBC, home of Wolf’s “Law & Order” franchise, pulled a “Special Victims Unit” episode in which Gary Cole played a politician who, like Trump, had been accused of sexual assault.

In January 2017, after Trump was elected, Wolf expressed his belief that the episode might still air, but it never saw the light of day. “I never pressure the network to schedule anything in a specific way except things like crossovers. I haven’t been informed when it’s going to air. I suspect it will be this spring,” Wolf told reporters at the TCA tour at the time.

“In the end, the folks who want to sell Paramount want to make money. And you have an administration who might be very heavy-handed about extracting money from them if they don’t follow the political line.” Nadler said, referencing Trump’s post-election string of lawsuits against media companies. 

Trump has already taken a much more aggressive stance against his perceived enemies in his second term, stepping into arenas he previously left alone, such as taking control of DC’s historic Kennedy Center and installing a board that quickly voted him in as the new chairman.

It might not be a huge leap for Trump to expand that interest to TV and movies, especially considering his ongoing war with the press. Earlier this month, he announced that established outlets including NBC News, National Public Radio and the New York Times were being swapped out for more conservative platforms, including One America, Breitbart and the New York Post. He also banned Associated Press from the White House over the agency’s refusal to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.”

Former agent Williams, who wrote the book “FBI Myths and Misconceptions: A Manual for Armchair Detectives,” also addressed what she called the worst-case hypothetical under Trump. “It’s a scary thing to want to voice your opinion and to speak up, knowing that there are people who now have access to your pensions and your Social Security and your medical data,” she said, referring to Elon Musk’s DOGE operation being granted access to confidential federal databases. 

“It’s a chilling question to ask, and the answer is totally opinion based, because no one really knows how far the intimidation tactics might reach,” she said.

“On a certain level, these are White Knight shows,” added Chacon, referring to Wolf’s “FBI” series. “You don’t want to see your heroes compromised morally or ethically. You don’t want them looking weak. We got that note a lot at CBS, that heroes have to always prevail, and we can’t have the bad guys win.”

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