Lawmakers express doubt over Trump plan to replace FBI’s Christopher Wray

President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement that he wants to replace FBI Director Christopher A. Wray with Kash Patel, a staunch loyalist who has vowed to fire the agency’s leadership and dramatically reshape its mission, was met with bipartisan concern that his appointment could undermine the agency’s independence.

Republicans and Democrats alike argued that replacing Wray - who has held the job since 2017 - with Patel showcases Trump’s efforts to appoint close allies who espouse his views and have expressed support for his plans to take aim at the country’s justice system.

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-South Dakota) said that Trump “has the right” to make appointments and that he was not surprised the president-elect is picking “people that he believes are very loyal to himself.” But he also praised Wray, calling him “a very good man” and saying he’d had no “complaints” or “objections” about his stewardship of the agency. He noted that Trump appointed Wray to a 10-year term.

“The message, and one that I feel very strongly about, is that there is a constitutional separation. The Founding Fathers did that for a reason. We will, you know, we accept that the president should have the people that he wants in his Cabinet and on his team. Every president wants that. We give them the benefit of the doubt,” Rounds told ABC.

But, Rounds noted, presidential appointees are subject to confirmation by the Senate. “We provide advice and consent. And once again, that can be sometimes advice, sometimes it is consent,” he said.

[Trump says he’ll nominate Kash Patel as FBI director to remake the agency. Here’s what happens next.]

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who is in line to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee once Republicans assume control of the Senate next month, criticized Wray in a post on X, saying he had “failed” at fundamental duties as FBI director. He added that Patel must “prove to Congress he will reform & restore public trust in FBI.”

Trump’s selection of Patel comes as the president-elect has rolled out proposed nominations and appointments that appear aimed at putting his political allies in key positions where officials and agencies had contradicted or angered him in the past.

Trump’s announcement Saturday night does not amount to a formal nomination, and Patel can’t take over the FBI unless Trump fires Wray or the FBI director steps down before the end of his 10-year term.

FBI directors typically have 10-year tenures, unique among appointments in the executive branch. That span, which extends beyond two consecutive presidential terms, was imposed in 1976 as a post-Watergate government reform effort after it became clear that Richard M. Nixon’s pick to serve as FBI director, L. Patrick Gray, destroyed documents related to the bureau’s investigation of the Watergate scandal and gave Nixon’s administration briefings on the investigation. The term limit is meant to assert the independence of FBI directors from any political leader or party.

Trump, who has long claimed without evidence that the Justice Department has been weaponized against him, has frequently made the FBI a target of his anger. While in office and afterward, Trump derided the country’s premier law enforcement agency as “badly broken” and said it “lost the confidence of America.”

Trump has also singled out Wray, whom he picked to be the FBI director during his first term, for criticism over the years. During his first administration, Trump claimed that Wray was not doing enough to help his reelection effort and expressed disappointment that Wray would not launch an investigation into Joe Biden, his opponent in the 2020 election.

“Christopher A. Wray, of course, is a Republican appointed by a Republican,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But apparently [he] has demonstrated too much independence and objectivity in the job for Donald Trump, who wants much more of a personal loyalist in the position. And that’s why he’s gone to Kash Patel.”

Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, noted Sunday that Biden did not seek to replace Wray, choosing instead to adhere “to the long-standing norm that FBI directors serve out their full terms because the FBI director is a unique player in the American government system.”

“He relied upon him to execute his responsibilities as the director of the FBI and allowed him to serve out the fullness of his term,” Sullivan told NBC News’s “Meet the Press.” “So that’s how we approached things, and we would like to ensure that the FBI remains an independent institution insulated from politics.”

Patel, a fervent Trump loyalist, has, like the president-elect, suggested seeking retribution against perceived enemies. Appearing on a podcast last year, Patel talked about targeting what he called “conspirators not just in government, but in the media.”

A former public defender and federal prosecutor, Patel worked in Trump’s first administration, serving as a counterterrorism adviser in the White House. He also held various stopgap national security posts, including chief of staff to acting defense secretary Christopher Miller in the final months of Trump’s White House term after he lost the 2020 election. Patel also served as senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council and as a senior adviser to acting director of national intelligence Richard Grenell.

Patel also advised then-Rep. Devin Nunes (R-California) while the congressman was taking aim at the investigation into whether Trump’s 2016 campaign coordinated with Russian interference in that year’s presidential election. That investigation incensed Trump, who mentioned the topic in his statement announcing plans to install Patel as the FBI director. Patel, the president-elect wrote on Saturday, “played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax.”

But critics have noted that Patel has little of the law enforcement and management experience that is often typical of those tapped to lead the nation’s top law enforcement agency. Before leaving office in early 2021, Trump suggested appointing Patel as deputy director of the FBI.

That move was blocked by Attorney General William P. Barr, who reportedly told the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, that Patel would be deputy director “over my dead body.”

While some in Washington are expressing doubts about Patel, some Republicans strongly defended him on Sunday, calling him a qualified candidate who would fulfill Trump’s campaign promises to reform the agency that he has criticized as being riddled with political bias.

Speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called Patel a “strong nominee” with a “serious professional background” and predicted he would be confirmed by the Senate if Trump formally nominates him.

“All of the weeping and gnashing of teeth, all of the people pulling their hair out are exactly the people who are dismayed about having a real reformer come into the FBI and clean out the corrupted partisans who sadly have burrowed into senior career positions at the FBI,” Cruz said.

And Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tennessee) said he “encouraged” Trump to name Patel as FBI director because he “represents the type of change that we need to see in the FBI.”

Hagerty told NBC News’s “Meet the Press” that “this entire agency needs to be cleaned out.”

“It’s not doing its job,” he said. “There are serious problems at the FBI. The American public knows it. They expect to see sweeping change, and Kash Patel is just the type of person to do it.”

Trump’s announcement that he wants Patel to lead the FBI comes weeks after the president-elect sought to nominate then-Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida), a Trump ally and fervent critic of the Justice Department, to serve as attorney general.

Gaetz withdrew amid allegations that he had paid women, as well as a 17-year-old girl, for sex. Trump then said he would nominate Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general. In his statement Saturday evening, Trump said Patel would work with Bondi to “bring back Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity to the FBI.”

In the years since Trump left office, the FBI has led investigations into his holding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago - his Florida home and private club - and his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The bureau’s actions have sparked Trump’s ire, leading to allegations without evidence that the country’s law enforcement, legal and intelligence apparatuses are biased against him.

Pressed on Wray’s fate, Cruz told CBS, “I think either he will resign or President Trump will fire him. But it’s no secret to anybody, including Chris Wray, that he is not going to continue to serve as the head of the FBI under Donald Trump.”

If confirmed to lead the FBI, Patel could have the power to carry out Trump’s threats to go after his political opponents and punish those involved in what Republicans have described as unjustified investigations and prosecutions of Trump and his allies.