FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed why he decided to resign “during such a dangerous time” and with nearly three years left to go in his term during an interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” Sunday.
“If it’s such a dangerous time, why resign?” asked host Scott Pelley.
Wray, 58, had just been outlining the United States’ greatest threats from communist China’s ability to attack critical US infrastructure to domestic terrorists like New Orleans attacker Shamsud-Din Jabbar who became radicalized “not in years, but in weeks.”
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“My decision to retire from the FBI was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make,” Wray responded.
The outgoing FBI boss said that while he cares deeply about the FBI and “our people,” his decision to leave after having only served seven years of his ten-year term was motivated by President-elect Donald Trump’s stated desire for a change in leadership at the bureau. Wray announced he was leaving his post in December.
“President-elect had made clear that he intended to make a change… my conclusion was that the thing that was best for the bureau was to do this in an orderly way. To not thrust the bureau deeper into the fray,” Wray said.
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Wray, a graduate of Yale Law School who joined the DOJ in 1997, was nominated by Trump to run the bureau in 2017 after he fired then-FBI Director James Comey.
Trump and Wray’s relationship has since deteriorated after the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago after the president-elect was accused of possessing classified documents in his private residence.
“Our job at the FBI is to follow the facts wherever they lead, no matter who likes it,” Wray told “60 Minutes.”
Wray further inflamed tensions with Trump after he questioned whether he was actually shot with a bullet at his July 2023 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“With respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear,” Wray told House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) at a hearing on the attack.
Trump’s campaign spokesman and incoming White House communications director slammed Wray at the time as peddling “conspiracist bulls—t” for “political reason” in a statement given to the New York Post.
Trump nominated his longtime ally Kashyap “Kash” Patel to succeed Wray as head of the bureau.
Patel, 44, who served on the National Security Council during Trump’s first term and authored the book “Government Gangsters,” has been one of the president-elect’s more controversial picks.
Former Reagan CIA Chief William H. Webster, 100, wrote to senators urging them not to confirm Patel, saying his confirmation would set a “dangerous precedent.”
“The resignation of Christopher Wray is a great day for America as it will end the Weaponization of what has become known as the United States Department of Injustice,” Trump posted to Truth Social after Wray announced his resignation in Dec. 2024.
During his “60 Minutes” interview, Wray expressed his view that China poses the greatest threat to the United States.
“Chinese government is prepositioning on U.S. civilian critical infrastructure to lie in wait on those networks to be in a position to wreak havoc and inflict real world harm at a time & place of their choosing,” he said.
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