Good Riddance, Christopher Wray

FBI Director Christopher Wray announced on Wednesday that he would step down from the nation’s premier law enforcement agency in January.

“After weeks of careful thought, I’ve decided the right thing for the Bureau is for me to serve until the end of the current administration in January and then step down,” Wray told agency employees at an internal town hall. “My goal is to keep the focus on our mission — the indispensable work you’re doing on behalf of the American people every day. In my view, this is the best way to avoid dragging the Bureau deeper into the fray, while reinforcing the values and principles that are so important to how we do our work.”

Dragging the bureau “into the fray,” however, seemed to be Wray’s operating order.

Was Wray the worst director the FBI ever had? That’s debatable only because he replaced James Comey, whose entire career was prosecuting prominent people he simply didn’t like on bogus charges (see Martha Stewart).

“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 told Fox News immediately following Wray’s announcement. “I just don’t know what happened to him.”

What happened to him, however, is obvious. Democrats exploited the FBI as a vehicle of deep state interference to crack down on political opponents, and Wray became its conductor. The FBI director had two options when President Joe Biden took over, either get on board or get out. He obviously stayed and accelerated the FBI’s transformation into an American KGB under the Biden regime. The only reason Democrats fret about Trump as a threat to democracy is because now the new president has the power to use the FBI the way Wray did.

1. Mar-a-Lago Raid

It was under Wray that FBI stormtroopers carried out an unprecedented raid of President-elect Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence two years ago. The search, personally approved by Attorney General Merrick Garland after Trump’s election thwarted Garland’s 2016 Supreme Court nomination, authorized agents to confiscate any and all documents Trump may have come in contact with as president. FBI agents were even given the authority to use “deadly force” to conduct the search of the former and now future president.

Law enforcement officials ultimately left with 15 boxes of allegedly classified material after their search of the 128-room complex, including former First Lady Melania Trump’s wardrobe. The ensuing case over Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents was ultimately dropped by a federal judge in Florida who ruled this summer that the special counsel’s appointment was unconstitutional. The FBI was also found to have tampered with evidence from the raid.

2. FBI Refuses to Open Attempted Assassin’s Phone

Trump revealed on a podcast in October that the FBI has yet to open “three or so cell phones” possessed by the attempted shooter who stalked him on his Mar-a-Lago golf course this fall.

“They had no problem getting the J6 people’s cell phones open,” Trump said. “They opened their cell phones very quickly.”

Wray also wondered whether Trump was actually shot in Pennsylvania this summer, telling lawmakers at a public hearing, “There’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear.” The FBI later concluded Trump was hit with a bullet.

3. J6 Crackdown

The FBI under Wray’s direction carried out a nationwide hunt to find any and all participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, even questioning 71-year-old grandmothers.

The agency, meanwhile, refused to answer lawmakers’ questions about the extent of federal law enforcement’s involvement in the Capitol riot. Wray played down the FBI’s own negligence about federal preparedness at an August Senate hearing and claimed, “We did not have any credible intelligence that pointed to thousands of people breaching the Capitol.” According to Newsweek, however, the FBI deployed commandos with “shoot-to-kill authority.”

The FBI has been even less forthcoming about a pair of pipe bombs planted at the RNC and DNC headquarters while charging nearly 1,300 people for the riot as of January.

4. Whitmer Plot

Sometimes the FBI was behind the very plots federal law enforcement officials sought to prosecute. While Democrats were branding Republicans as dangerous extremists during the 2020 election, the FBI revealed plans to kidnap Michigan Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. A group of far-right militiamen, the fable went, conspired to kidnap the governor and try her as a “tyrant.”

In July 2021, however, long after the election, BuzzFeed reported that at least 12 people involved were FBI informants orchestrating an entrapment plot.

“The problem with the case is that it appears the FBI, through informants and undercover agents, hatched the kidnapping plot, served in the key leadership positions of the militia group, trained the militia members in military tactics, actively recruited participants, and funded much of the militia’s activities,” former CIA Paramilitary Operations Officer Max Morton wrote in The Federalist. “Then, when various members of the Watchman militia became uncomfortable with the kidnapping plot, with several quitting, the FBI’s primary informant pushed the plot along, eventually becoming the militia group’s leader.”

In a 2022 Senate hearing, Wray confirmed at least one agent involved in the Whitmer scandal was promoted instead of punished, going on to oversee prosecutions of those charged with crimes related to the Jan. 6 riot.

5. Arrest of Dissident Reporter

Steve Baker, an investigative reporter for Blaze Media, was arrested by the FBI earlier this year without being told what his charges were because “they believe[d] Baker [would] post them on social media.” Baker was arrested after reporting on demonstrations surrounding the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

6. Obfuscating Russiagate

Wray spent his tenure as chief of the FBI covering up for the agency’s misconduct related to deep state agents determined to indict Trump as a Russian agent. The FBI director rebuffed congressional inquiries as the agency sought to dodge substantive oversight.

7. Infiltration of Catholic Parishes

In February last year, former Special Agent Kyle Seraphin revealed that “the FBI’s Richmond Division would like to protect Virginians from the threat of ‘white supremacy,’ which it believes has found a home within Catholics who prefer the Latin Mass.”

“The document assesses with ‘high confidence’ the FBI can mitigate the threat of Radical-Traditionalist Catholics by recruiting sources within the Catholic Church,” Seraphin reported.

A new memo released in August 2023 revealed multiple FBI field offices under Wray were involved in the surveillance of Catholics and contradicted the director’s congressional testimony where he denied such investigations.

“This new information suggests that the FBI’s use of its law enforcement capabilities to intrude on American’s First Amendment rights is more widespread than initially suspected,” House Republicans wrote in a letter to Wray.

8. Targeting Parents for Domestic Terrorism

Weeks before the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election, in which parental rights in education were the centerpiece of Republican campaigns, the FBI deployed counterterrorism resources on parents who raised issues at school board meetings. Parents identified as extremists by FBI activists were labeled with “threat tags,” which House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee found had “no legitimate basis.”

Wray, however, was unapologetic about the scandal.

“I think the FBI conducted itself the way it should here,” Wray said at a House hearing last year.

9. Prosecution of Pro-Life Christians

Wray denied allegations this summer that his agency was unfairly targeting pro-life demonstrators before the House Judiciary Committee.

“I think one of the things that gets lost — and I appreciate the opportunity to clarify — is that really, since the Dobbs decision, actually more of our abortion-related violent extremism investigations have focused on violence against pro-life facilities, as opposed to other way around,” Wray said.

The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd, however, reported that “contrary to Wray’s claims, only five of the 60 cases brought under Biden’s watch focused on pro-abortion extremists.”

“The other 55 targeted people who value life in the womb for praying, singing, and evangelizing at abortion facilities across the U.S.,” Boyd wrote.

10. Vacation in the Middle of a Hearing

In November 2022, Wray confessed that he trimmed a summer appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee to vacation in the Adirondacks. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, had asked Wray to stay for another 21 minutes so lawmakers could continue to question the FBI director about a range of issues.

“Senator, I had a flight that I’m supposed to be high-tailing it to outta here, and I had understood that we were going to be done at 1:30, so that’s how we ended up where we are,” Wray told the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.

Except Wray was flying private on an FBI plane.

Grassley celebrated the news of Wray’s exit on Wednesday.

“Wray’s departure is an opportunity for a new era of transparency and accountability at the FBI. Future FBI Directors ought to learn a lesson from Wray’s mistakes,” Grassley said in a statement. “Stonewalling Congress, breaking promises, applying double standards and turning your back on whistleblowers is no longer going to cut it.”

11. Hunter Biden Laptop Cover-Up

Wray’s corruption started long before President Biden’s tenure. In 2020, Wray led the FBI as the bureau actively sought to undermine the legitimacy of the Hunter Biden laptop stories even after the agency had verified the hard drive’s authenticity a year earlier.

Part six of the “Twitter Files” detailed how Twitter was a conduit for the FBI to influence voters ahead of the 2020 election. The two were reportedly in “constant and pervasive” contact. The agency partnered with Twitter to suppress right-leaning content throughout the election cycle. That suppression still continues under Elon Musk’s leadership.

Part seven of the series, published by California-based Substack reporter Michael Shellenberger, illustrated how the FBI launched an operation to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop stories, which implicated then-candidate Biden in global influence-peddling schemes. The FBI even arranged security clearances for senior employees at Twitter and paid the company $3.4 million in taxpayer dollars.

In August of 2022, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan’s podcast and revealed that the FBI prepped the company to write off the Hunter Biden laptop story as an instrument of Russian interference.

“The FBI basically came to us and spoke to some folks on our team and was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda on the 2016 election. We have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump similar to that,’” Zuckerberg said.

Once the laptop stories broke from the New York Post, Facebook promptly suppressed their distribution on the platform.

“I think it was 5 to 7 days when it was basically being determined whether it was false,” Zuckerberg said, without disclosing who was responsible for the network’s “fact-check.” “Fewer people saw it than would have otherwise.”

12. Refuses to Testify on His Way Out

Wray is capping off his tenure as FBI director by breaking a 15-year tradition of testifying in an end-of-year hearing.

Tristan Justice is a national correspondent for The Federalist and the co-author of “Fat and Unhappy: How ‘Body Positivity’ Is Killing Us (and How to Save Yourself).” He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at [email protected]. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here. Buy “Fat and Unhappy” here.