Christopher Wray is resigning as FBI director, multiple news outlets are reporting.
Wray, who President Donald Trump appointed in 2017, had three years left in his term. However, the move isn’t as a surprise as now President-elect Trump announced he would nominate Kash Patel to be the new FBI director.
Wray presided over the FBI’s raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in 2022. He also butted heads with Republicans in Congress–including Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio—over the bureau’s monitoring of traditional Catholics as well as parents speaking at public school board meetings.
On Monday, Grassley wrote a letter to Wray about the bureau’s many failures. This included a failure to investigate potential corruption of President Joe Biden and his family; and refusing to provide information to Congress about conduct at the FBI.
“These failures are serious enough and their pattern widespread enough to have shattered my confidence in your leadership and the confidence and hope many others in Congress placed in you,” Grassley wrote to Wray.
Wray has reportedly said he would resign before Trump takes office.
Under Wray’s watch, the FBI faced numerous controversies.
This included alleged targeting of FBI whistleblowers, who are supposed to have legal protection. Earlier this year, the FBI reinstated bureau employee Marcus Allen and agreed to back pay after initially placing him on a two-year unpaid suspension and revoking his security clearance. Allen had challenged Wray’s narrative on the Jan. 6, 2021 protest.
Also during Wray’s tenure, the FBI raided the home of pro-life activist Mark Houck.
The House Judiciary’s Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government released a report last year about an FBI Richmond field office memo that suggested infiltrating the churches of “radical traditional Catholics” for “threat mitigation.”
The FBI also investigated 25 parents who spoke at public school board meetings, according to the subcommittee’s findings.
On Wednesday, The Heritage Foundation posted on X that Wray was “one of the worst FBI Directors in American history.”
“His tenure is defined by the blatant weaponization of the FBI against Americans to suppress free speech and religious liberty, intimidate and harass law-abiding Americans for dissenting political opinions, and abusing FISA surveillance to spy on law-abiding Americans,” the Heritage post says.
This is a breaking news article and it will be updated.
This article was originally published at www.dailysignal.com
