4 hours Ago
WASHINGTON — FBI Director Chris Wray on Wednesday became the latest part of institutionalist Washington to act in the interest of the institution he led even as incoming President-elect Donald Trump makes clear he intends to burn them all to the ground. Like parents modeling good behavior to a toddler, President Joe Biden and members of his administration have been performing the rituals of a democracy going through a normal transfer of power to benefit a man who tried to end that democracy just four years earlier. Vice President Kamala Harris conceded her election loss and congratulated Trump.
Biden invited him to the White House in the following days and pledged a smooth transition. Special counsel Jack Smith last month dismissed dozens of felony charges that could have put Trump in prison for decades because of standing Department of Justice policy that doesn’t allow it to prosecute a sitting president. And, Wednesday, Wray — who was appointed by Trump in 2017 and has more than two years to go in his 10-year term ― told his colleagues that he would resign before Trump takes office in January, given Trump’s desire to install loyalist and fellow conspiracy theorist Kash Patel in that job.
“This is the best way to avoid dragging the bureau deeper into the fray while reinforcing the values and principles that are so important in how we do our work,” Wray said in a video released by the FBI of his remarks. “This is not easy for me. I love this place, I love our mission and I love our people.
” Whether the strategy of teaching the value of American institutions by example will work with Trump remains to be seen. Bradley Moss, a lawyer in Washington who specializes in national security work, has his doubts, and said Wray should have forced Trump to fire him, given the man Trump wants to replace him with. “Utterly spineless.
By doing this, Director Wray has guaranteed the very thing he was supposed to avoid: the FBI becoming a politicized institution,” Moss said. “If there was any question that going forward the position of director will change every time the party in power changes, something the Watergate statutory reforms were supposed to prevent, that idea is dead.” FBI directors serve 10-year terms as a result of a post-Watergate reform implemented after President Richard Nixon tried to use both the FBI and the CIA to cover up his attempts to cheat in the 1972 election by spying on the Democratic Party .
Not long after Wray announced his decision, Trump — a convicted criminal who eluded federal charges by winning back the presidency — continued lying about his prosecutions and the FBI’s role in them. “Under the leadership of Christopher Wray, the FBI illegally raided my home, without cause, worked diligently on illegally impeaching and indicting me, and has done everything else to interfere with the success and future of America,” Trump posted on social media. In fact, the search of Trump’s South Florida country club was approved by a federal judge.
Agents who executed the warrant found dozens of secret documents that Trump had refused to turn over despite a subpoena demanding that he do so. Further, Wray had nothing to do with either of Trump’s impeachments — the first in 2020 for his attempt to extort Ukraine into smearing Biden; the second for his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt.
Both impeachments were carried out by the House of Representatives. In May 2017, Trump fired then-FBI director James Comey after he refused to pledge Trump his personal loyalty. Trump replaced him with Wray, who at the time was in the private sector after having served in the Justice Department under President George W.
Bush. Mark Warner, a Democratic senator from Virginia who will soon go from chair to ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was sorry to see Wray step down. “I understand that Director Wray is simply trying to do what he has always done – which is act with integrity – and I thank him for the principled leadership he brought to the FBI and for his service to the country,” Warner said in a statement.
Patel, who worked in Trump’s first administration in various roles but seemed most interested in undermining evidence that Russia had helped Trump win in 2016, said in an interview last year that he would go after Trump’s critics if Trump returned to the White House. “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in the government, but in the media,” Patel said . “Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.
We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out, but yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.” In fact, no one helped Biden “rig” any election.
Biden beat Trump by 7 million votes in 2020. Nonetheless, in a book he wrote called “Government Gangsters,” Patel laid out in an appendix the names of 60 people who may need going after. They include former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr, former Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham, former Trump Defense Secretary Mark Esper as well as Biden, Harris, and Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Patel made clear that his list “was not exhaustive.” Don't let this be the end of the free press. The free press is under attack — and America's future hangs in the balance.
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Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages. Moss said that if Wray had stayed on and Trump had fired him, the courts likely would have backed Trump. “But it would have come with a political cost.
And the legal fight over the ability to fire Wray given the statutory protection instituted post-Watergate would have been bloody,” he said. Mike Davis, a former Senate lawyer who has been working on Trump’s transition team, said Wray was smart to step down. “My best guess: Chris Wray would have been fired, publicly humiliated and legally defeated.
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