President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced he would nominate Christopher Wray to serve as the next FBI director as Congress prepares to hear from James Comey, who he fired from the job in May.
Comey is set to testify before the Senate Intelligence committee on Thursday. In his opening statement, Comey will detail his contacts with Trump — nine one-on-one conversations, according to the former director — and the president’s requests for “loyalty” from him.
Wray, who led the Justice Department’s Criminal Division under President George W. Bush, is currently a litigation partner at King & Spalding, and he chairs the firm's Special Matters and Government Investigations Practice Group. If he is confirmed by the Senate, Wray faces a number of significant challenges, according to John Perren, who served as the Assistant Director for the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate.
“The next FBI director has to dissolve the perception that's out there now that the Bureau is political,” Perren said. “It’s going to be a challenge not to be viewed as POTUS’ guy. The troops are going to look at any nominee very cautiously. They’re going watch everything he does.”
The president’s selection for Comey’s replacement came early Wednesday, just before testimony in Congress from acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, as well as National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. The intelligence chiefs said they would not speak to any aspects of the Russia investigation.
When asked about a memo he had written that had been used by the White House to justify Comey’s firing in May, Rosenstein said, “we have a special counsel who is investigating.” In the wake of Comey’s dismissal, Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special prosecutor to oversee the investigation into whether there was any coordination between Trump's campaign and Russia to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election.
In March, Comey confirmed the FBI’s investigation for the first time. The counterintelligence probe began in late July 2016.
According to Comey’s prepared statement for Thursday’s hearing, the former FBI director recalls several conversations with the president that he believes to be of interest to the Senate intelligence committee, from discussions regarding former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn to Trump’s requests for “loyalty” and to “get out” that he was not personally under investigation.
During a January 27 dinner, according to Comey, Trump told him “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.”
“I didn’t move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence. The conversation then moved on, but he returned to the subject near the end of our dinner,” Comey will say on Thursday, according to the prepared statement.
Trump later that evening again told Comey, “I need loyalty.”
“I replied, ‘You will always get honesty from me,’” Comey said. “He paused and then said, ‘That’s what I want, honest loyalty.’ I paused, and then said, ‘You will get that from me.’ As I wrote in the memo I created immediately after the dinner, it is possible we understood the phrase ‘honest loyalty’ differently, but I decided it wouldn’t be productive to push it further.”
According to Comey’s statement, Trump repeatedly described the Russia investigation as a “cloud.” During a March 30 phone call, Comey said Trump told him “he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia. He asked what we could do to ‘lift the cloud.’”
“I responded that we were investigating the matter as quickly as we could, and that there would be great benefit, if we didn’t find anything, to our having done the work well. He agreed, but then re-emphasized the problems this was causing him,” according to the prepared statement.
In his last call with the president on April 11, Trump asked Comey what he had done to “get out” that he was not personally under investigation.
“I replied that I had passed his request to the Acting Deputy Attorney General, but I had not heard back. He replied that ‘the cloud’ was getting in the way of his ability to do his job,” Comey will say Thursday, noting that the president then said he would have his team reach out to Justice Department leadership.
“He said he would do that and added, ‘Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal; we had that thing you know.’ I did not reply or ask him what he meant by ‘that thing.’ I said only that the way to handle it was to have the White House Counsel call the Acting Deputy Attorney General,” Comey will tell senators. “He said that was what he would do and the call ended.”
“That was the last time I spoke with President Trump,” Comey will say.
In announcing his choice for FBI Director, Trump posted a statement to Twitter calling Wray a “man of impeccable credentials.”
“I look forward to serving the American people with integrity as the leader of what I know firsthand to be an extraordinary group of men and women who have dedicated their careers to protecting this country,” Wray said in a statement.
According to his firm biography, Wray “helped lead the Department’s efforts to address the wave of corporate fraud scandals and restore integrity to U.S. financial markets.” Wray, a white-collar defense lawyer, recently represented New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who campaigned for Trump and initially led his transition team, in the federal investigation over lane closures known as the Bridgegate scandal. Christie was not charged in the case.
Perren said that while he does not personally know Wray, he spoke with a former Justice attorney who worked closely with him who “had only positive comments.” Wray has an “outstanding work ethic” and is “non-political,” Perren said the lawyer told him, and “will be a good leader for the FBI.”
“The broad base, as McCabe put it, really supported Mr. Comey,” Perren said. “He was not only fired, he was maligned. It’s going to be a challenge for any nominee to win the hearts of his employees. They have to respect you to want to go through a door for you. Looks like Chris Wray may be that guy.”
Mackenzie Weinger is a national security reporter at The Cipher Brief. Follow her on Twitter @mweinger.
