FBI director Wray says he will resign before Trump takes office
Ties between bureau chief and president who appointed him soured due to Russian 2016 election interference probe, further deteriorated after court-approved raid on Florida home
FBI Director Christopher Wray will step down from his post early next year, the bureau said on Wednesday, after Republican US President-elect Donald Trump signaled his intent to fire the veteran official and replace him with firebrand Kash Patel.
Trump had appointed Wray, a fellow Republican, to his 10-year term in 2017, after firing his predecessor James Comey, who the then-president soured on over the FBI’s investigations into alleged contacts between his 2016 campaign and Russia.
“After weeks of careful thought, I’ve decided the right thing for the Bureau is for me to serve until the end of the current Administration in January and then step down,” Wray told FBI employees Wednesday, the agency said in a statement.
In a statement to Reuters, Patel said he looks forward to a “smooth transition.”
“I will be ready to serve the American people on day one,” he said.
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 that he had retained after leaving office.
That sparked one of two federal prosecutions Trump faced while out of power, neither of which went to trial. Trump denied wrongdoing and described all the cases against him as politically motivated. Federal prosecutors ended their efforts after his election, citing longstanding US Justice Department policy not to prosecute a sitting president.
Trump’s Republican allies joined him in alleging that the FBI had become politicized, though there is no evidence that Democratic US President Joe Biden interfered with its investigative processes.
“There are serious problems at the FBI. The American public knows it. They expect to see sweeping change,” Republican US Senator Bill Hagerty said in early December after Trump’s nomination of Patel.
Throughout his term, Wray said that he followed the law and strove to impartially carry out the FBI’s duties. During a 2023 hearing before a House of Representatives panel he rebuffed the idea that he was pursuing a Democratic partisan agenda, noting that he had been a lifelong Republican.
“The idea that I am biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me, given my own personal background,” Wray said.
FBI directors are appointed for 10-year terms, a measure meant to avoid the appearance of partisanship after a political turnover in the White House every four years.
Wray’s term was not due to expire until 2027.
As he has built out his roster of Cabinet officials over the past few weeks, Trump has assembled a team ready to carry out two of his biggest priorities: retribution against his political adversaries and a wholesale reshaping of the US government.
Patel, who would need to be confirmed by the US Senate, has never worked at the FBI and only spent three years at the Justice Department earlier in his career in the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section. If confirmed, he has pledged to shut down the FBI’s headquarters building in Washington and drastically redefine the bureau’s role with intelligence-gathering.
Throughout Trump’s first term, Trump repeatedly mused about the idea of replacing Wray for not being forceful enough in defending him from the 2016 investigation, but former Attorney General Bill Barr resisted such efforts, Barr recounted in his book “One Damn Thing After Another.”
Wray, in his address to employees on Wednesday, urged them to continue to focus on their mission to keep Americans safe.
“My goal is to keep the focus on our mission — the indispensable work you’re doing on behalf of the American people every day,” Wray said, according to excerpts provided by the bureau.
“In my view, this is the best way to avoid dragging the bureau deeper into the fray, while reinforcing the values and principles that are so important to how we do our work.”
The FBI has faced increasing criticism from Trump’s supporters for its various roles in investigating Trump over the years.
Trump had telegraphed his anger with Wray on multiple occasions. Trump said in a recent interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “I can’t say I’m thrilled with him. He invaded my home,” a reference to the FBI search of his Florida property.
But the soft-spoken director rarely seemed to go out of his way to publicly confront the White House.
TRUMP ON FBI DIRECTOR WRAY: “He invaded my home…And then when I was shot in the ear, he said, oh, maybe it was shrapnel.”
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) December 8, 2024
In fact, Wray was quick to distance himself and his leadership team from the FBI’s investigation into ties between Russia and the Republican president’s 2016 election campaign.
On the same day of a harshly critical inspector general report on that inquiry, Wray announced more than 40 corrective actions to the FBI’s process for applying for warrants for secret national security surveillance. He said mistakes made during the Russia inquiry were unacceptable and he helped tighten controls for investigations into candidates for federal office.
FBI officials actively trumpeted those changes to make clear that Wray’s leadership had ushered in a different era at the bureau.
Even then, though, Wray’s criticism of the investigation was occasionally measured — he did not agree, for instance, with Trump’s characterization of it as a “witch hunt” — and there were other instances, particularly in response to specific questions, when he memorably broke with the White House.
Last December, he said that there was “no indication” that Ukraine had interfered in the 2016 election, countering a frequent talking point at the time from Trump. When the Trump White House blessed the declassification of materials related to the surveillance of a former Trump campaign aide, Wray made known his displeasure.
Wray angered Trump by saying that Antifa was a movement and an ideology but not an organization. Trump had said he would like to designate the group as a terrorist organization.
Wray described in detail Russian efforts to interfere in the 2020 election that Trump lost to Biden, even though Trump and senior officials in his administration, including his attorney general and national security adviser, maintained that China was the more assertive threat. Wray also said the FBI had not seen evidence of widespread voter fraud, a claim that Trump repeatedly pushed.
The FBI during Wray’s time has also played a major role in helping to investigate and arrest many of Trump’s supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a failed bid to block Congress from certifying Biden’s election victory.
More than 1,500 people were criminally charged in the attack.
Trump has pledged to grant clemency to some of the January 6 defendants, though he has not provided details.
Throughout his time as FBI director, Wray has been known for his hawkish views on China and has frequently warned that China represents the biggest national and economic security threat facing the United States.
Wray started his career at the Justice Department in 1997 as a federal prosecutor in the Atlanta-based Northern District of Georgia.
He was nominated by then-president George W. Bush in 2003 to lead the department’s Criminal Division, where he oversaw a variety of investigations including post-9/11 efforts to combat terrorism and the Enron Task Force.
Wray also practiced law for about 17 years with the law firm King & Spalding, and he clerked for former Judge J. Michael Luttig in the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit after earning his law degree from Yale Law School.
