It’s been 11 days since Donald Trump announced that he wants a Republican operative named Kash Patel to become the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Implicit in the president-elect’s announcement was the apparent fact that he’s replacing Chris Wray, the incumbent FBI director whom Trump tapped for the job seven years ago, after the scandalous firing of James Comey.
Wray’s term isn’t supposed to wrap up until 2027. The president-elect not only plans to bring that tenure to a premature end, he also failed to even mention Wray in his announcement about Patel.
It was against this backdrop that NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked Trump on “Meet the Press” whether he intends to fire Wray, who Trump handpicked for the job. The Republican replied:
“Well, I can’t say I’m thrilled with him. He invaded my home. I’m suing the country over it. He invaded Mar-a-Lago. I’m very unhappy with the things he’s done, and crime is at an all-time high. Migrants are pouring into the country that are from prisons and from mental institutions, as we’ve discussed. I can’t say I’m thrilled.”
None of this reflected reality. Asked why he’s prepared to fire an FBI director — or more to the point, another FBI director — the incoming president’s explanation was rooted entirely in delusion.
Neither Wray nor the bureau, for example, “invaded” Mar-a-Lago. The truth is that the FBI executed a court-approved search warrant after Trump allegedly blew off a federal subpoena and refused to return classified documents he kept at his glorified country club. (What’s more, the FBI reportedly went out of its way to oppose executing the search warrant — even after a surprised group of federal prosecutors presented the bureau with incriminating surveillance video and evidence of an intent to obstruct the subpoena.)
Similarly, as part of the same exchange, Trump insisted that crime rates are at “an all-time high,” which is the exact opposite of the truth. The Republican added that migrants are “pouring into the country that are from prisons and from mental institutions,” which is absurd, and which falls outside the purview of the FBI anyway.
Remember, the president-elect has had plenty of time to come up with an explanation for why he wants to oust his own handpicked FBI director. But given an opportunity to make his case, Trump didn’t state a single legitimate reason.
Under normal circumstances in a healthy political environment, the fact that an incoming president is poised to fire another FBI director without cause would be the basis for a major, presidency-defining controversy. Under our current circumstances, this is barely causing a ripple — and a GOP-led Senate is likely to confirm Trump’s radical and unqualified choice to lead the bureau.
Indeed, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Ohio — a man who’s set to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has oversight responsibilities over federal law enforcement — wrote an 11-page letter to Wray this week, calling for his resignation and expressing his “vote of no confidence.” On the third and fourth page of the document, the senator complained, among other things, that Wray failed to go after Hillary Clinton, before also complaining that the FBI failed to take seriously discredited allegations against President Joe Biden. In July 2023, six months into the current Congress, Wray participated in a House Judiciary Committee hearing, where he confronted a series of odd conspiracy theories from the panel’s GOP members. Eventually, an exasperated FBI director said some of the Republicans’ lines of inquiry were “somewhat insane,” “absurd,” and “ludicrous.” The relevance of those comments continues to linger.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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