Christopher Wray, the FBI director, told employees in a packed conference room at FBI headquarters that he intended to resign before the Trump administration began. “I love this place, I love our mission and I love our people,” he said as he finished his address, then left the room to a standing ovation, The New York Times reported. Paul Abbate, the deputy FBI director, the most senior agent in the bureau, is set to retire in late April but would typically serve as acting director until Patel is confirmed. This week's announcement comes more than two years before the expiration of Wray’s 10-year term and after president-elect Trump said in late November that, to head up the FBI, he intended to nominate Kash Patel, a longtime Trump loyalist and fierce critic of the FBI, who has vowed to fire its leadership, empty its headquarters and root out the president-elect’s perceived enemies in what he calls the “deep state.” Trump welcomed the news of Wray’s resignation, praising it on social media as “a great day for America.” Under Wray’s leadership, he added, the bureau had “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 his seven years, Wray has overseen a tumultuous period at the bureau, “juggling high-profile criminal investigations of political figures, heated congressional inquiries and two attempted assassinations of Mr. Trump,” The Times writes. “But it was the bureau’s scrutiny of Mr. Trump that almost certainly cut short Mr. Wray’s tenure.” Wray’s FBI repeatedly investigated Mr. Trump, including its court-approved search of the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022 for classified documents, an examination of his widespread efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and scrutiny into the possible links between his 2016 campaign and Russian intelligence operatives engaged in election interference. Wray’s agents also launched an inquiry into Hunter Biden and investigated the current president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., over his handling of sensitive records after he left the vice presidency.
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