Wray Kashing Out of FBI?

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Christopher Wray has read the writing on the wall, and it’s posted from Truth Social. The FBI director appointed by Donald Trump in 2017 still has almost three years left on his term. When your old boss comes back on the job and announces your replacement, however, it doesn’t take a genius to see what’s coming next.

According to Kerry Picket at the Washington Times, Wray has decided that discretion is the better part of valor:

FBI Director Christopher A. Wray plans to resign on or before Inauguration Day, The Washington Times has learned.

Mr. Wray is calling it quits because he doesn’t want to get fired by President-elect Donald Trump, according to sources inside the bureau who are familiar with the director’s thinking.

“He’s going to be gone at the inauguration. On or before the inauguration,” a source said.

Trump announced last week that Kash Patel would take over as FBI director, to work under Pam Bondi as the new Attorney General. Both appointments send a message that Trump intends to overhaul the Department of Justice with an eye toward reversing the politicization in both the DoJ and FBi that led to a number of confrontations with Trump. Wray got the job initially for the same purpose but turned out to be part of the problem rather than the solution.

Wray may have hoped that the Senate would ride to his rescue, but a letter from Chuck Grassley yesterday dashed those hopes. The Senate Judiciary ranking member — and soon to be its chair — sent a scathing letter to Wray and his chief deputy Paul Abbate that advised them to seek new jobs as soon as possible:

Across 11 pages, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said that Wray, appointed in 2017 to replace James Comey, had run the agency no differently than his predecessor, comparing the 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago under Wray to the Russia investigation that prompted Trump to fire Comey.

Grassley also denounced what he called an “outright disdain for congressional oversight” during Wray’s seven years leading the FBI.

“Rather than turn over a new leaf at the FBI, you’ve continued to read from the old playbook of weaponization, double standards, and a relentless game of hide-and-seek with the Congress,” the Iowa Republican wrote.

The letter, addressed to Wray, amounts to the clearest sign yet that Senate Republicans are open to Trump’s plan to reshuffle the Justice Department’s leadership. Trump has nominated Kash Patel, a loyalist attorney, to take over the FBI when his second term begins in January.

According to Picket, this letter was enough to convince Abbate to leave as well. The plan right now is for Abbate to stick around until May to help with the transition, but those are the plans from Wray and Abbate. Trump and Bondi may have very different plans indeed, and likely will work to oust the senior leadership as quickly as possible. It may take longer than May to get second-tier nominees for those posts confirmed by the Senate, but at least in Abbate’s case, Grassley appears highly motivated to expedite those nominations in Judiciary. 

Other Republicans appear ready to support Patel’s nomination, including the oddly-wobbly-these-days Joni Ernst:

‘Eventually, I assume Mr. Patel will be confirmed as the FBI Director,’ [John Cornyn] said. ‘We talked about the importance of restoring the reputation of the FBI as a nonpartisan law enforcement investigative agency.’ 

Ernst had a similarly positive post after the two’s meeting. 

‘Kash Patel will create much-needed transparency at the FBI,’ she said.

‘He shares my passion for shaking up federal agencies, downsizing the D.C. bureaucracy, and having public servants work on behalf of the American people!’

No word yet from Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski, but Trump can afford to lose them and still get the nominations of Patel and Bondi through. Both of them may well end up voting to confirm anyway; they routinely vote to confirm nominees for presidents of both parties, and at least aren’t publicly opposing any of Trump’s nominees, not even Pete Hegseth. But even if they don’t vote to support these nominees, Republicans will have 53 votes and only need 50 plus J.D. Vance’s tie-breaking vote as VP if necessary. Ernst looked like the weakest link, but yesterday changed her position on Hegseth and now has gotten on board with Trump. 

Wray might stick around until the inauguration, but he’s out. And he might want to look into legal representation once Patel starts digging into the records of Wray’s tenure, including how the FBI decided to treat parents as domestic terrorists for objecting to CRT/DEI curricula at school-board meetings and investigating Catholics who support the traditional Latin Mass.