When Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, in 2017, I was about to drive my daughter and some of her friends to a soccer tryout. I remember that the news came moments before we left; once we arrived, I sat on a bench next to the soccer field, scrolling through incredulous and fearful reactions on Twitter. The news was widely considered akin to Richard Nixons Saturday Night Massacre, one of the most odious scandals in American history. TRUMP FIRES COMEY AMID RUSSIA INQUIRY , screamed a banner headline on the front page of The New York Times.
Now Trump, preparing for his second term as president, has decided to replace the FBI director again. The figure he picked to replace Comeythe lifelong Republican Christopher Wrayproved unable to meet Trumps expectations for the position, which are (1) to permit Trump and his allies to violate the law with impunity, and (2) to investigate anybody who interferes with (1). Wray, wrestling with the problem of Trumps desire to separate him from a job he apparently liked, chose to step down on his own. This raises the likelihood that the media will treat the replacement of Wray as normal administrative turnover rather than as a scandal.
But a scandal it most certainly is. By tradition, FBI directors serve 10-year terms, a norm designed to insulate the FBI from pressure to serve the presidents whims. Trump supporters have two philosophical rationalizations for his demand to violate that tradition. The lowbrow, populist version favored by Trump cultists is that Trump is beset by a deep state conspiracy that has kneecapped him at every turn because it is loyal to globalists, neoconservatives, or some other corrupt network. The highbrow version, preferred by conservative-movement elites, is that presidents possess an inherent right to control the executive branch from top to bottom, and all norms designed to prevent the president from abusing that power are an affront to the Constitution.
Neither theory can explain why Trump continues to go to war with people he appointed himself. Wray is not a Democrat, nor is he a Never Trumper. Hes a Republican picked by Trump. So was former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a Trump loyalist, and his successor, William Barr, who auditioned to succeed Sessions by performing even more obsequious loyalty to Trump.
The problem that keeps arising is that there is no way to remain in Trumps favor while following the law. In a celebratory statement posted to Truth Social, Trump claims, Under the leadership of Christopher Wray, the FBI illegally raided my home, without cause. Had the FBI raid actually been illegal, he could have proved that in court. He didnt, because by taking massive troves of classified documents when he left office, keeping them in a wildly unsecured location, refusing multiple requests to return them, lying repeatedly about it, and engaging in a clumsy cover-up, Trump had given the bureau no other choice. For Wray to allow this brazen defiance of the law would have been to simply admit that the law doesnt apply to Trump, in or out of office.
David Frum: A constitutional crisis greater than Watergate
But that is precisely the credo Trump demands that the bureau follow. It is why he has selected Kash Patel, a sycophant so childishly worshipful that he spelled out his loyalty to Trump in a literal childrens book portraying Trump as a virtuous king and himself as Trumps loyal wizard. Perhaps Patel (or whomever Senate Republicans ultimately confirm for the position) will, once in office, somehow develop an adult, professionalized understanding of the rule of law. More likely, Trumps FBI director will discover that actually locking up Trumps enemies is hard. This was the anticlimactic outcome of the Durham investigation, Trumps first-term campaign to imprison his foes, which resulted, after months of conservative-media salivating, in two embarrassing acquittals in court.
Still, the risk of turning the bureau over to a director who intends to abuse its powers is quite serious. Republicans tended to downplay these risks during the campaign, pointing to Trumps first term, when Democrats and the media loudly decried Trumps norm-violating authoritarian gambits, only for the system to hold. The fact that Trump is hunting down the very people who made the system hold is a logical flaw these Republicans have steadfastly refused to consider.
Discouragingly, Republican willpower to resist Trumps most corrupt impulses appears to be a finite resource. When Wray announced that he was stepping down, three years short of completing his standard 10-year term, he poignantly confessed his regret: It should go without saying, but Ill say it anywaythis is not easy for me.
It is, however, easy for Donald Trump. The president-elect had been facing the unpleasant task of firing a lifelong Republican whom he had selected himself, inviting the national media to raise ugly questions about his oft-confessed desire to turn the federal criminal-justice apparatus into a weapon of political vengeance. Instead, Wray, like so many Republicans who couldnt stomach Trumps demands, decided to go gentle into that good night. Nobody except Wray will remember where they were when Christopher Wray resigned.
