WASHINGTON − Seven years before President-elect Donald Trump pushed FBI Director Christopher Wray into announcing Wednesday he will step down at the end President Biden’s term, Trump appointed Wray and called him “a model of integrity.” In the years since, Trump soured on the nation’s top law enforcement official for overseeing investigations into his allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election and retaining classified documents after he left office in January 2021.
Trump had already nominated Kash Patel, an ardent Trump supporter, to be Wray’s replacement, thus signaling his intent to fire Wray upon taking office.
Here’s a list of key events in the fraught relationship between Trump and Wray that began in 2017 with Wray’s nomination to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
- June 7, 2017: After firing FBI Director James Comey for his role in investigating Trump’s potential role in Russian interference in the 2016 election, then-President Trump nominates Wray as head of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, in charge of 35,000 people including more than 10,000 “special agents” across the U.S. and around the world. Trump described Wray as a “model of integrity” and an “impeccably qualified individual” for the role of investigating crimes and foreign influence in the United States without fear or favor. Wray had began his career clerking for prominent conservative U.S. Appeals Court Judge J. Michael Luttig and served as a prosecutor in the Justice Department. He was appointed assistant attorney general, charge of the department’s criminal division, by President George W. Bush. Prior to being named FBI director, he was a partner at the law firm King & Spaulding. After receiving Senate confirmation, Wray began his 10-year term at the FBI, a unique protection created by Congress specifically to insulate the FBI director position from political influence, especially from the White House.
- December 7, 2017: Four months after Wray is sworn in as the eighth director of the FBI, he publicly defends the agency from Trump’s criticism of its role in investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election to help Trump defeat Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. After Trump tweeted that the bureau’s reputation was “in Tatters – worst in history!” and called its impartiality into question, Wray told the House Judiciary Committee that, “The FBI I see are tens of thousands of men and woman who are hard charging people of integrity.”
- Sept. 24, 2020: As Russia interferes in the election to help Trump beat former Vice-President Joe Biden, Trump sharply criticizes U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials for investigating and publicizing what he describes as “Fake News” and the “Russia Hoax.” In testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee, Wray says, “we are not going to tolerate foreign interference in our elections” and describes how the FBI was working with Facebook and Twitter to shut Russian disinformation campaigns down before they “could develop some kind of broader following.”
- August 8, 2022: The FBI conducts a search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla. to recover classified documents that Trump took with him from the White House and refused to return. This infuriates Trump, who decries the “weaponization of the Justice Department” and begins a campaign of publicly criticizing the FBI, saying the agency is part of a Deep State “hoax” and attack against him. The documents seized by agents play the central role in one of the two felony criminal cases ultimately filed against Trump – the first charges against a former president in U.S. history – by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith. The other case, filed in July 2023 and based on an investigation that involved the work of FBI agents, accuses Trump of trying to steal the 2020 election that he lost to Biden. Trump maintains his innocence and pleaded not guilty in both cases. “Biden’s DOJ was authorized to use DEADLY FORCE” in Mar-a-Lago raid, Trump falsely claimed at one point, adding that FBI agents were “locked and loaded” and “ready to take me out.” Wray, and Attorney General Merrick Garland flatly denied any bias, and said the search was authorized by a judge as required.
- Nov. 5, 2024: Trump wins the presidential election. The DOJ subsequently moves to have both cases dismissed, per its policy of not prosecuting a sitting president. Trump’s spokesman Steven Cheung applauds the move, saying, “Today’s decision by the DOJ ends the unconstitutional federal cases against President Trump, and is a major victory for the rule of law.”
- Nov. 30, 2024: Trump nominates Patel, a former Justice Department prosecutor, congressional staffer and national security official in Trump’s first administration. Patel had publicly vowed to go after senior FBI and Justice Department officials who investigated Trump, and to shut down FBI headquarters “on Day One” and turn it into a museum for the so-called “deep state” national security bureaucracy that Trump believes has been out to get him.
- Dec. 11, 2024: Wray informs FBI employees of his decision to resign next month at the end of Biden’s term on January 20, 2025. His announcement comes two days after a key Republican senator who will have oversight of the FBI issues a stinging rebuke of Wray and his “failed” and politicized leadership of the law enforcement agency and calls on him to step down immediately. Wray describes his decision as the best way to “keep the focus on our mission… and avoid dragging the bureau deeper into the fray, while reinforcing the values and principles that are so important to how we do our work.” He has more than two years left in his term. Trump immediately hails Wray’s resignation on social media as “a great day for America as it will end the Weaponization of what has become known as the United States Department of Injustice.” Trump said in a statement on social media. “Under the leadership of Christopher Wray, the FBI illegally raided my home, without cause, worked diligently on illegally impeaching and indicting me, and has done everything else to interfere with the success and future of America.” In a statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Wray “has served our country honorably and with integrity for decades, including for seven years as the Director of the FBI under presidents of both parties.”
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