Christopher Wray’s Departure Paves the Way for an Improved FBI

Goodbye to FBI Director Chris Wray.

A smooth talker who mastered the technique of evading questions at congressional hearings, Wray treated the FBI aircraft as if it were his own personal jet and has overseen numerous significant failings in the bureau’s history.

He eroded public confidence and left a once-mighty institution weakened.

Now, he has made the expected move, announcing last week that he will resign, departing two years and nine months before completing his full 10-year term.

He is stepping aside ahead of Kash Patel’s arrival, the determined 44-year-old advocate chosen by Donald Trump to reform the nation’s leading law enforcement agency, pending Senate approval.

Wray, 57, faced backlash from figures such as former CIA Director John Brennan for his premature exit. Critics had hoped for a confrontation with Trump that could provide fresh fodder for anti-Trump narratives.

A Disgraceful Legacy

Wray hastily vacated his position just two days after Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a longtime defender of whistleblowers, sent him a scathing 11-page letter declaring “my vote of no confidence in your continued leadership of the FBI…”.

“For the good of the country, it’s time for you and your deputy [Paul Abbate] to embark on the next chapter of your lives.”

Deputy Director Abbate should also hand in his badge. The alleged leftist disregarded concerns from FBI agents about the unnecessarily provocative raid on Mar-a-Lago against Trump and has been identified by FBI whistleblowers as a key instigator of retaliation against them.

Wray’s announcement also preempted a report the following day from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz, which confirmed details about the January 6 Capitol riot that Wray has always evaded. The FBI had 26 “confidential human sources,” or informants, present at the Capitol that day, 17 of whom entered the building or the restricted area surrounding it.

What they did there remains unknown, and they faced no charges—unlike nearly 1,600 Trump supporters.

The unjust targeting of nonviolent January 6 defendants in the largest investigation in FBI history, while Antifa and BLM rioters went largely unpunished, is merely one of Wray’s failures.

Here are several more:

• Executing a raid on Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s residence, where FBI agents ransacked Melania Trump’s personal belongings.
• Undermining The Post’s “Laptop From Hell” report on Biden’s corruption by warning Twitter and Facebook of an anticipated Russian “hack and leak” operation in October 2020, which was likely to reference Hunter Biden.
• Placing 70-year-old Trump advisor Peter Navarro in leg irons upon his arrest for the nonviolent misdemeanor of defying Nancy Pelosi’s subpoena.
• Deploying FBI agents against Catholics attending Latin Mass, parents at school board meetings, and Christians praying outside abortion clinics, while failing to act on numerous attacks against pro-life centers and churches.
• Retaliating against whistleblowers and honorable agents who opposed the rampant abuses of power during Wray’s leadership.
• Downplaying the first assassination attempt on Trump by questioning whether he was struck by a bullet or simply “shrapnel.”
• Promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives within the FBI.

That is Wray’s disreputable legacy, adding to the damage done to the bureau’s culture by his predecessors, Robert Mueller and James Comey.

Ultimately, the FBI has strayed from its core mission of combating crime and instead has become akin to a quasi-Stasi, surveilling Americans and being used as a weapon against conservatives.

A Loss of Prestige

Forget Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity. The FBI has come to represent Fear, Bias, and Intimidation, or any number of clever acronyms crafted by disillusioned former agents.

The majority of Americans no longer trust the FBI, as reflected in recent polling cited by CNN this month, which shows the agency’s lowest approval rating in history: a 16-point decline since 2019, landing at just 41% this year, reflecting trends during most of Wray’s term.

Fewer than a quarter of Republicans now view the FBI as performing an “excellent or good job” since they recognize it has been weaponized against them.

Patel will face significant challenges in restoring the FBI’s credibility. Former agents warn that saboteurs will be poised to undermine his efforts.

“A serious effort will be made to disrupt [him],” predicts Chris Piehota, 59, a former FBI executive assistant director (the third highest rank).

“There are elements that will foster inertia, cause initiatives to fail… create an atmosphere of inefficiency so that critics can claim this administration has arrived and everything is now dysfunctional… .

“How many passwords will be lost, and how many systems will go offline? It will be a death by a thousand cuts… guerrilla warfare will occur unless the president installs a leadership team that shares his vision and values and is committed to executing his directives.”

Piehota, who retired in 2020, witnessed with dismay the degradation of the institution to which he had dedicated his life. His new book, “Wanted: The FBI I Once Knew,” offers a framework for restoring the FBI’s reputation and efficiency.

However, his foremost counsel to Patel is to replace the top three levels of management with at least 20 reform-minded individuals who understand the complex dynamics of the bureau.

“Bring back the old FBI dragonslayers who say, ‘I’m not worried about your pronouns or personal issues today. We have national security threats and crime to tackle,’” he stated last Sunday.

Fortunately, Patel is no newcomer to the dark operations of the so-called Deep State.

The Dragonslayer

He gained experience from both sides of the aisle during eight years as a public defender in Miami, then serving as a federal prosecutor in the DOJ’s National Security Department; the congressional investigator who exposed the Russiagate conspiracy; Trump’s senior White House counterterrorism official; principal deputy to the acting director of national intelligence; and chief of staff for the Department of Defense.

In his pivotal book “Government Gangsters,” he argues that the Deep State is not a mere conspiracy theory but a coordinated effort to politicize core American institutions and the federal government by numerous high-level cultural figures and officials who disregard objectivity, weaponize the law, spread misinformation, abandon fairness, or even violate their oaths for political and personal gain, all at the expense of justice and national security.

Together with the formidable incoming Attorney General Pam Bondi and Devin Nunes, his former boss from the House Intelligence Committee, who has just been appointed by Trump as chairman of his Intelligence Advisory Board, Patel has repeatedly taken up arms against Deep State operatives.

In retaliation, the FBI surveilled him while he was investigating the agency during 2017 and 2018, a grievance he won’t soon forget.

Patel describes his adversaries as “thugs in suits, no more than government gangsters pretending to be righteous. . . . There are no depths the Deep State will not reach, no crimes they won’t commit, and no lives they won’t ruin to achieve their agenda.”

Nevertheless, he believes they are not invincible—and Trump could not have selected a more formidable dragonslayer.