Today is Thursday, August 6th, 2020.

On this day in 1993, Louis J. Freee was confirmed by the United States Senate as the fifth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

During his tenure, he would oversee several of the most infamous criminal cases in US history.

Welcome to today in true Crime, a parcast original. Today we're

covering the confirmation of Lewis Freee as director of the FBI. Let's go back

to Washington DC on August 6, 1993. Inside the Senate chamber the mood was jubilant, almost carefree as

senators prepared to vote on the confirmation of Louis J. Free.

All 100 senators on both sides of the aisle seemed confident and reassured that

Free was the man for the job.

So on August 6th, without a single dissenting vote,

Freee was officially confirmed.

Just under a month later, he was sworn into office by President Bill Clinton.

Clinton had nominated free to replace William Sessions, the previous FBI director.

Sessions had allegedly clashed with both Attorney General Dick Thornburg

and Thornburg's successor, Attorney General William Barr.

Barr was openly hostile to Director Sessions.

His anger stemmed in part from Sessions' refusal to turn a blind partisan eye to the possible

transgressions within Barr's Justice Department.

In fact, after Sessions opened an investigation into that very department,

Barr opened his own ethics investigation into Sessions.

He accused Sessions of using FBI funds to pay for a security system in his home and for traveling

aboard an FBI jet to visit his daughter, neither of which met the threshold of high crimes.

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