REUTERS
WASHINGTON, Dec 11 (Reuters) – FBI Director Chris Wray will step down from his post early next year, the bureau said on Wednesday, after Republican President-elect Donald Trump signaled his intent to fire the veteran official and replace him with firebrand Kash Patel.
Trump himself 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 today, 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 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 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 U.S. 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.
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