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On Wednesday afternoon, ABC and NBC broke in with network special reports to share that FBI Director Christopher Wray told employees he’d be resigning prior to President-Elect Trump’s inauguration on January 20. 

This left journalists like NBC’s Ken Dilanian despondent, blasting Trump’s “controversial,” “hardline,” and “provocative” selection of Kash Patel to replace him after he did “more…than” anyone to force Americans to distrust the bureau.

NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt tossed to the one-time Fusion GPS tool, lamenting Wray is stepping down and might lead the way for the “controversial” Patel. 

Dilanian first kvetched that Wray gave into those who “counselled Mr. Wray that it would be better for the FBI workforce if he left on his own accord” and not those “urg[ing]” him “to force Mr. Trump to fire him, to reinforce the idea that this is a norm-shattering event.”

Citing the January 6 investigations and both Jack Smith probes — on classified documents and January 6 — that pulled in FBI resources, Dilanian lamented “Mr. Wray couldn’t avoid crossing Donald Trump” before his thesis that distrust in law enforcement is Trump’s fault:

Mr. Trump said in that interview that he had a lot of respect for the FBI, but the FBI’s respect had gone way down over the last number of years. And he’s right about that. Polls show that around half of Americans don’t trust the FBI, although trust is higher among Democrats than Republicans, but perhaps no one is more to blame for that than Mr. Trump himself who has baselessly accused the bureau of conducting witch hunts against him. In fact, outside reviews found that the FBI had ample reason to open its investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia in 2016 and, of course, the FBI uncovered significant evidence of wrongdoing in the January 6 classif — and classified documents investigation[.]

As for Patel, Dilanian whined he “got his start as a firebrand congressional aide” and has “a history of making inflammatory and controversial statements, even promising to use the FBI and Justice Department to go after Mr. Trump’s enemies, to go after journalists.”

He concluded with this unintentionally hilarious claim from anonymous sources that Patel supporters could use to argue this is why he deserves confirmation:

Over on ABC, longtime Justice correspondent Pierre Thomas worried any lag time by Wray’s departure could spell doom for the country’s security:

CBS didn’t break in, so its correspondents were left to fire off hot takes on their free streaming platform, CBS News 24/7.

Justice reporter Nicole Sganga called Patel “a hardline critic of the bureau” who “has echoed claims of witch-hunt from President Trump,” but “has a less robust portfolio when it comes to law enforcement and management experience, typical of an FBI director.”

As for Wray, she gushed he “loves the FBI, as he put out in the statements here, you know, feels like he does not want to abandon the men and women on the front lines” and “wanted to, you know, break this news to them, which is why he chose to say this at an FBI town hall, directly to the workforce before, perhaps, it was leaked in some other way.”

January 6-obsessed correspondent Scott MacFarlane weighed in from the Capitol, decrying the likely ascension of such “a provocative figure and a controversial figure” and surrounded by concerns “he is too loyal, too beholden to Donald Trump to operate an independent FBI, one that operates outside of the interest of the president of the United States and in the interest of the American people.”

“If there’s going to be a political hill for Democrats to try to die on, this would be one…There is concern about his independence about his devoted loyalty to Donald Trump at an agency that shouldn’t be devotedly loyal to a president,” he added.

To see the relevant transcripts from December 11, click here (for CBS) and here (for NBC).