The announcement by Christopher A. Wray on Wednesday that he would step down as F.B.I. director ends a turbulent relationship in which President-elect Donald J. Trump repeatedly decried a law enforcement agency he could not control.
For years, Mr. Trump has complained that picking Mr. Wray to run the F.B.I. in 2017 was one of his worst personnel decisions as president. By the time Mr. Trump left the White House, he was eager to fire Mr. Wray, but he held back. His antipathy only heightened in the years after his presidency.
In selecting Mr. Wray, Mr. Trump believed he had found the antithesis of the F.B.I. director he had just fired, James B. Comey. The president derided Mr. Comey as a “showboat” and chafed at the F.B.I.’s investigation into his 2016 campaign and its possible ties to Russia.
Mr. Wray was no showboat. In his early television interviews as F.B.I. director, he often seemed uncomfortable and intent on avoiding making headlines. But the honeymoon was brief, because the F.B.I. Mr. Trump wanted was far different from the one Mr. Wray has run.
Here is how their relationship quickly went from bad to awful.
Russia, Russia, Russia
The two men were at odds in 2018 over efforts by Mr. Trump’s Republican allies in the House to declassify a memo that they said would show the Russia investigation was a politically motivated smear campaign.
The memo accused the F.B.I. and Justice Department of abusing their authority in securing a highly classified warrant to surveil a former Trump campaign adviser.
Mr. Wray, who inherited the Russia investigation from his predecessor, briefly considered resigning over the dispute, a person familiar with his thinking said at the time. He decided to stay, hoping to steer the agency to calmer waters.
Investigating the investigators
Mr. Trump’s anger over the Russia investigation continued into 2019, even after the special counsel in the Russia inquiry, Robert S. Mueller III, issued a final report finding insufficient evidence for charges of conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian agents.
A review by the Justice Department’s inspector general only seemed to deepen Mr. Trump’s distrust. It found serious failures in part of the F.B.I.’s investigation but concluded that the bureau had valid reason to open the inquiry. The report concluded the court applications to surveil a former campaign adviser, Carter Page, were plagued by errors and omissions.
“I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “With that kind of attitude, he will never be able to fix the FBI, which is badly broken despite having some of the greatest men & women working there!”
Civil disorder
Mr. Trump also took repeated issue with the bureau’s approach to nationwide protests in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd at the hands of the police. Mr. Trump demanded the agency aggressively hunt and arrest protesters he broadly categorized as part of the leftist antifa movement.
“I look at them as a bunch of well funded ANARCHISTS & THUGS who are protected because the Comey/Mueller inspired FBI is simply unable, or unwilling, to find their funding source, and allows them to get away with “murder”. LAW & ORDER!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media.
Testifying to Congress, Mr. Wray offered a very different view of antifa, describing it as more of an ideology than an organization.
After Mr. Wray addressed lawmakers, the president weighed in, saying, “I did not like his answers yesterday, and I’m not sure he liked them either.”
He added: “I’m sure he probably would agree with me. Antifa is bad, really bad.”
Search warrant
Mr. Trump’s biggest point of contention with Mr. Wray is the court-approved search for classified documents at Mr. Trump’s home that F.B.I. agents conducted in 2022. The case eventually led to dozens of criminal charges against the former president for mishandling national security secrets, and obstructing government efforts to retrieve the papers. While the search was authorized by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and carried out despite the concerns of some F.B.I. officials, Mr. Trump remains furious with Mr. Wray over it.
“I can’t say I’m thrilled with him — he invaded my home,” Mr. Trump told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview broadcast on Sunday. “He invaded Mar-a-Lago. I’m very unhappy with the things he’s done.”
A bullet point
Sometimes, Mr. Wray infuriated Mr. Trump without even trying — like when the director suggested in testimony in July that it was unclear whether a bullet grazed the presidential candidate’s ear during a failed assassination attempt in Butler, Pa.
“There’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear,” Mr. Wray testified. “As I sit here right now, I don’t know whether that bullet, in addition to causing the grazing, could have also landed somewhere else.”
F.B.I. officials later clarified that investigators do believe it was a bullet that nicked the candidate’s ear, but that did not assuage Mr. Trump’s anger.
In his interview with NBC, Mr. Trump made plain his lingering frustration with Mr. Wray.
“I certainly cannot be happy with him,” he said. “Take a look at what’s happened. And then when I was shot in the ear, he said, maybe it was shrapnel. Where’s the shrapnel coming from? Is it coming from heaven? I don’t think so.”
The post Why Trump Soured on F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray appeared first on New York Times.
