Washington DC, United States

United States President-elect Donald Trump has bypassed standard background checks by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for some of his controversial cabinet appointees, to minimise the chances of them being rejected during the Senate confirmation for any conflict of interest, reported CNN. 

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These background checks have been a longstanding tradition for incoming presidential nominations and date back to the early Cold War days.

However, Trump has outsourced it to private investigators instead of the FBI. 

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According to Trump and his allies, the FBI system is plagued with issues that could hinder the President-elect's plan to quickly begin the work of implementing his agenda, people briefed on the plans reportedly said. 

Meanwhile, the critics of this move have said that the intrusive background checks sometimes bring up embarrassing information used to inflict political damage. 

The move to keep the FBI out of it lines up with a pre-election memo drafted by Trump's legal advisors and also fits with his enduring suspicion that the agency is part of what, without evidence, he believes to be a "deep state" machine within the federal government bent on undermining him. 

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Trump appointed Matt Gaetz as the attorney general, who has faced a two-year Department of Justice investigation into sex-trafficking allegations, which were eventually dropped without charges being lodged. 

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This led to a further investigation by the House of Representatives ethics committee that had been due to culminate in a report this week before Gaetz effectively suspended its publication by resigning.

However, it was not immediately known which of Trump's picks will be spared by the routine FBI check. 

Ultimately, the president holds the final authority on who he nominates to share intelligence with, regardless of the established protocol set in the wake of World War II, to ensure these selections don't have unknown foreign ties. 

Dan Meyer, a national security attorney in Washington DC, said the incoming Trump administration “doesn’t want harmony.” They “don’t want the FBI to coordinate a norm; they want to hammer the norm,” he said.

Moreover, some of Trump’s advisers also circulated a memo ahead of the election, urging him to bypass the traditional background check process for some of his appointees, a source briefed on the memo told CNN. 

(With inputs from agencies)