FBI Director Chris Wray will resign after Trump nominates a replacement

FBI Director Chris Wray will step down early next year, the office said on Wednesday, after US President-elect Donald Trump signaled his intention to fire the veteran official and replace him with hardliner Kash Patel.

Trump himself appointed Wray, a fellow Republican, to a 10-year term in 2017, after the firing of his predecessor, James Comey, whose then-president soured over FBI investigations into alleged contacts between his 2016 campaign and Russia.

“After weeks of careful consideration, I have decided that the right thing for the office is for me to serve until the end of the current administration in January and then step down,” the agency said in a statement.

Trump celebrated Wray’s resignation in a post on the social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday, calling it a “great day for America” ​​that would “end the weaponization of what has become known as the US Department of Injustice.”

Trump and his hardline allies turned on Wray and the FBI more generally, after agents conducted a court-approved search of Trump’s Florida resort in 2022 to recover classified documents he kept after leaving office.

This led to one of the two federal prosecutions Trump faced while out of power, neither of which went to trial. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and described all the cases against him as politically motivated. Federal prosecutors ended their efforts after his election, citing the Justice Department’s long-standing policy not to prosecute a sitting president.

In his reaction to Wray’s resignation, Trump referred to these incidents, claiming that his home “was subjected to an illegal raid… for no reason.”

Trump’s Republican allies have also claimed that the FBI has become politicized, although there is no evidence that Democratic President Joe Biden has interfered in its investigative operations.

“There are serious problems at the FBI,” Republican US Senator Bill Hagerty said in early December after Trump nominated Patel. “The American public knows it. They expect to see sweeping change.”

In a statement to Reuters, Patel said he looked forward to a “smooth transition.”

“I will be ready to serve the American people on day one.”

Throughout his tenure, Wray said he followed the law and strove to carry out the duties of the FBI impartially. During a 2023 hearing before a House committee, he rejected the idea that he was pursuing a Democratic partisan agenda, noting that he had been a lifelong Republican.

“The idea that I’m biased against conservatives seems a little crazy to me, given my personal background,” Ray said.

Ray to end the semester early

FBI directors are appointed for 10-year terms, a measure intended to avoid the appearance of partisanship after a political coup in the White House every four years.

Ray’s term was not scheduled to end until 2027.

As Trump has been preparing his list of Cabinet officials over the past few weeks, he has assembled a team ready to implement two of his biggest priorities: retaliating against his political opponents and comprehensively reshaping the American government.

Trump stated that Patel, who had never worked for the FBI and spent only three years at the Department of Justice earlier in his career in the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Division, was “the most qualified candidate to lead the FBI in the agency’s history (sic) “.

Patel, who needs approval from the US Senate, has pledged to close the FBI’s headquarters building in Washington and radically redefine the bureau’s role in intelligence gathering.

Throughout Trump’s first term, Trump repeatedly considered the idea of ​​replacing Wray because he had not been forceful enough in defending him in the 2016 investigation, but former Attorney General Bill Barr resisted such efforts, Barr recounted in his book. One damn thing after another.

In his address to employees on Wednesday, Wray urged them to stay focused on their mission to keep Americans safe.

“My goal is to maintain focus on our mission — the indispensable work you do on behalf of the American people every day,” Wray said, according to excerpts provided by the office.

“In my view, this is the best way to avoid dragging the office deeper into the fray, while reinforcing the values ​​and principles that are so important to how we do our work.”

FISA Orders, January 6 Investigations

The FBI has faced increasing criticism from Trump supporters over its various roles in investigating Trump over the years.

Some of the concerns pre-date Wray’s tenure, including several damning reports from the Justice Department’s inspector general that faulted the office for making numerous errors in the arrest applications it submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court during its early investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign, Known as the “Crossfire Hurricane.”

During his tenure, Wray oversaw reforms to the FBI’s operations to secure Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants.

During Wray’s tenure, the FBI also played a key role in helping investigate and arrest several Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a failed attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s election victory.

Trump pledged to grant pardons to some of the nearly 1,500 people criminally accused in the attack, although he did not provide details.

Wray was known during his tenure for his hawkish views on China, and he frequently warned that China represented the greatest national security and economic threat facing the United States.

He began his career at the Department of Justice in 1997 as a federal prosecutor in the Northern District of Georgia based in Atlanta.

He was nominated by former President George W. Bush in 2003 to lead the department’s criminal division, where he oversaw investigations including post-9/11 counterterrorism efforts and the Enron task force.

Ray also practiced law for approximately 17 years with the law firm King & Spalding, and clerked for former Judge J. Michael Luttig of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit after receiving his law degree from Yale Law School.