As my colleague David Kurtz explained in Monday’s Morning Memo, it would be a massive break from precedent for Donald Trump to come into office with plans to replace the FBI director, a position that’s given a 10-year term specifically to inoculate against partisan politics seeping into the bureau’s operations.
But it is increasingly looking like Trump will do just that.
Trump, famously, appointed current FBI Director Christopher Wray back in 2017 after he fired James Comey, who was at the helm of the FBI as it investigated the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The OG “Witch Hunt,” if you will.
Wray has been a massive disappointment to Trump because he has done his job instead of using the FBI as a weapon against Trump’s various political foes. That has, at times, meant investigating Trump and other Republicans. Wray gets lumped in with the rest of the Justice Department when Trump and his allies talk about their belief that DOJ has been “weaponized” against Trump. But Trump’s initial beef with Wray actually dates back to 2018. Not long after Wray was appointed and confirmed as FBI director, House Republicans (led by none other than then-Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA)) planned to publish a memo that condemned the FBI’s handling of the Russia investigation.
The FBI, led by Wray, came out against the White House, which had reportedly advocated for the memo’s release at the time, and said it had “grave concerns” about the publication of the memo put together by House Republicans, which alleged that the FBI misused its surveillance tools.
It’s the sort of showdown that feels a bit quaint as we approach Trump II. Trump likely has built up other supposed rationales for his reported interest in replacing Wray over the years too.
In a post on Twitter on Tuesday, which appears to have been deleted, Vice President-elect JD Vance defended himself for missing a vote in which one of President Biden’s judicial nominees was approved. He also confirmed, perhaps unintentionally, that he and Trump are interviewing for the position of FBI director.
“When this 11th Circuit vote happened, I was meeting with President Trump to interview multiple positions for our government, including for FBI Director,” Vance reportedly wrote.
“I tend to think it’s more important to get an FBI director who will dismantle the deep state than it is for Republicans to lose a vote 49-46 rather than 49-45,” he added.
We’ve seen some reports that Trump is considering Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) or the dangerous political operative Kash Patel, who himself had a hand in the Nunes memo, for the gig.
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