Wray said in a speech to agency staff Wednesday that he plans to resign at the end of Joe Biden’s term as president next month. Trump, who will be inaugurated on Jan. 20, made it clear he won’t keep Wray on as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, even though he’s serving a 10-year term that doesn’t end until 2027.
Wray told the the agency’s workforce that stepping down is the “best way to avoid dragging the bureau deeper into the fray.”
“What absolutely cannot, must not change is our commitment to doing the right thing, the right way, every time,” Wray said, in a speech provided to reporters. “Our adherence to our core values, our dedication to independence and objectivity, and our defense of the rule of law — those fundamental aspects of who we are must never change.”
Trump posted on his Truth Social network on Nov. 30 that he plans to nominate as FBI director Kash Patel, a loyalist who has pledged to overhaul the bureau and even said he would shut down the agency’s headquarters in Washington. Trump will be able to pick an acting director to serve until the Senate confirms his nominee.
Trump chose Wray to lead the FBI in June 2017 after he fired then-Director James Comey, who launched the investigation into whether Trump’s campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election. The probe was later taken over by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
But Trump and his allies eventually turned on Wray and have repeatedly lambasted him for actions the FBI took that they didn’t approve of or for not taking certain actions that they wanted.
“We will now restore the Rule of Law for all Americans,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday. “We want our FBI back, and that will now happen.”
Meanwhile, Attorney General Merrick Garland praised Wray in a statement, saying he “has worked tirelessly to protect the American people and to lead an agency of 38,000 dedicated public servants, many of whom put their lives on the line every day to serve their communities.”
Independence, Objectivity
Wray said in his speech that his “goal is to keep the focus on our mission.” He decried those who judge actions based on whether or not they liked the result.
“That’s not how independence and objectivity work,” Wray said. “We’re not on any one side. We’re on the American people’s side. The Constitution’s side”
Mild mannered and soft spoken, Wray, a New York City native, tried to steer the bureau away from political turbulence during his tenure. He replaced the bureau’s leadership when he took over as director and worked to stay out of the public spotlight as he emphasized the agency’s core missions of investigating corporate crime, espionage cases, cyber attacks and violent offenses.
He also oversaw implementation of new restrictions on how analysts can search intelligence databases and obtain classified warrants.
But Wray was never able to escape controversy.
He came under heated criticism by conservatives when FBI agents carried out a court-authorized search of Trump’s Florida resort in 2022 to retrieve classified documents. His agents also participated in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s probe into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and investigated Trump supporters who attacked the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to stop the congressional certification of the election.
The classified documents and election probes led to indictments of Trump. However, Smith had to dismiss the election case because of the Justice Department’s policy barring prosecution of a sitting president. A federal judge dismissed the classified documents case but the department wants to reinstate it without Trump.
Wray also became the target of criticism by conservatives for an assessment generated by an FBI field office in Richmond, Virginia, in 2023 that warned of possible threats posed by “radical-traditionalist” Catholics. The assessment was withdrawn and Wray has condemned it, but critics have alleged without evidence that it represented an effort to persecute Catholics and conservatives over their beliefs.
Meanwhile, Patel has vowed to carry out reforms to defeat what he calls “the deep state” in the FBI and elsewhere.
In his book Government Gangsters, Patel endorsed calls to fire government employees who undermine the president’s agenda.
“We must identify the people in government that are crippling our constitutional republic,” Patel told the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this year.
