US FBI director Chris Wray to resign following Trump nomination of Kash Patel

WASHINGTON - Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Christopher Wray said on Dec 11 that he will step down early in 2025.

This came after Republican President-elect Donald Trump signalled his intent to fire the veteran official and replace him with firebrand Kash Patel.

His resignation makes him the second straight FBI director driven out by Trump, who during his first term in office fired Mr Wray’s predecessor James Comey, after souring on him over the FBI’s investigations into alleged contacts between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.

Mr Wray, who was appointed by Trump himself in 2017, will leave before the end of his 10-year term.

“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,” Mr Wray told FBI employees in a town hall meeting.

Trump and his hardline allies turned on Mr 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 Justice Department policy not to prosecute a sitting president.

Trump’s Republican allies joined him in alleging that the FBI had become politicised, though there is no evidence that Democratic President Joe Biden interfered with its investigative processes.

On his social media platform Truth Social, Trump called Mr Wray’s resignation “a great day for America”.

“It will end the weaponisation of what has become known as the United States Department of Injustice. I just don’t know what happened to him,” Trump wrote.

In building 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.

Mr Patel, who would need to be confirmed by the US Senate, has never worked at the FBI and spent only 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 in intelligence-gathering.

In a statement to Reuters, Mr Patel said: “I will be ready to serve the American people on day one.”

Trump allies welcomed the news. “Reform is badly needed at FBI,” Republican Senator Charles Grassley wrote on X, adding that the American people deserve transparency and accountability.

Wray denies bias

Throughout his term, Mr Wray has 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,” Mr Wray said.

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

Mr Wray’s term was not due to expire until 2027.

Senate Democrats on Dec 11 thanked Mr Wray for his service, with some raising concern for the bureau’s future without him.

“The FBI is critical to our nation’s security and our families’ safety,” Senate judiciary committee chairman Dick Durbin said. “It will soon embark on a perilous new era with serious questions about its future.”

The FBI Agents Association said in a statement that the bureau’s mission “does not waver when there are changes in a presidential administration”.

US Attorney-General Merrick Garland also praised Mr Wray, noting in a statement that the FBI director is charged with protecting the bureau’s independence from “inappropriate influence” in its criminal investigations. “That independence is central to preserving the rule of law.”

The FBI has faced increasing criticism by Trump’s supporters for its roles in investigating him over the years.

Some of the concerns pre-dated Mr Wray’s tenure, including several damning reports by the Justice Department’s inspector-general that faulted the bureau for making numerous errors in its warrant applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court during its early investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign known as Crossfire Hurricane.

During his tenure, Mr Wray has overseen reforms of the FBI’s processes for securing Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants.

The FBI during Mr Wray’s time also played a major role in helping to investigate and arrest many Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan 6, 2021, in a failed bid to block Congress from certifying Mr Biden’s election win.

More than 1,500 people were criminally charged in the attack.

Trump has pledged to grant clemency to some of the Jan 6 defendants, though he has not provided details.

Throughout his time as FBI director, Mr Wray has been known for his hawkish views on China, and has frequently warned that the country represents the biggest national and economic security threat facing the US.

Mr 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 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.

Mr Wray practised law for about 17 years with the firm King and Spalding, and 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. REUTERS