We come on the air today with the breaking news
that FBI Director Christopher Wray has today announced his resignation.
Ray made that announcement at an all hands meeting a
few hours ago, saying he will leave when the Biden
administration comes to an end and saying this quote.
After weeks of careful thought, I've decided the right thing
for the Bureau is for me to serve until the
end of the current administration in January and then step
down.
My goal is to keep the focus on our mission,
the indispensable work you're doing on behalf of the American
people every day.
In my view, this is the best way to avoid
dragging the Bureau deeper into the fray while reinforcing the
values and principles that are so important to how we
do our work.
It remains to be seen whether the FBI can even
attempt to avoid being dragged deeper into the fray, as
Ray seems to be suggesting, or whether his resignation simply
plunges it deeper into uncertainty and leaves the workforce without
its leader.
Ray had three years left on a 10 year term.
It's a 10 year term that is put in place
to ensure departures don't line up with the end of
a current administration.
It's to ensure the independence of the FBI from all
partisan politics.
He was though, appointed by Donald Trump, who initially approved
of him quite a bit.
Here's what he said about Ray in 2018.
I think Christopher Ray is a very different from comedy,
which is what you need.
You need different.
You need like the opposite.
And he's moving step by step, and you're going to
see a whole new very proud FBII think that the
Justice Department will end up being great.
It's all going to happen.
It's all going to work out.
But I tried to stay as much uninvolved as I
can.
It wasn't true at the time and certainly isn't now.
But back to Ray.
What changed?
New York Times report says, quote, it was the bureau's
scrutiny of Trump that almost certainly cut short Ray's tenure.
Here's what he told our colleague Kristen Welker this past
Sunday.
I can't say I'm thrilled with him.
He invaded my home.
I'm suing the country over it.
He invaded Mar a Lago.
What I'm going to say is I certainly cannot be
happy with him.
The facts are this.
The FBI conducted a court ordered search of Mar a
Lago after months of wrangling in which the National Archives
and the Department of Justice repeatedly tried to get back
sensitive national security documents and secrets from Donald Trump.
But it was the facts as they were revealed by
the work of the FBI that so enraged Donald Trump
that he has now appointed a loyalist, a man named
Cash Patel, to run the FBI.
Patel's road to confirmation is lined with red flags being
waved by his former Trump administration colleagues, including a dire
public warning from former Trump national security adviser John Bolton.
He writes this in today's Wall Street Journal.
Quote, too many of Trump's personnel selections evidence his assiduous
search for personal fealty, not loyalty to the Constitution.
Cash Patel's nomination as director of the FBI squarely fits
this pattern.
To resolve questions over his integrity and fitness, a full
field FBI investigation, as prior nominees have undergone, is warranted.
With more facts available and less rhetoric, the result will
be clear.
I regret I didn't fully discern Mr.
Patel's threat immediately, but we are all now fairly warned
senators won't escape histories judgment if they vote to confirm
him.
End Quote.
That breaking news about Chris Ray is where we start
today with some of our favorite experts in France.
Former CIA Director and MSNBC senior national security analyst John
Brennans here.
Also also joining us, Assistant director for counterintelligence at the
FBIMSNBC, Senior national security analyst Frank Figliuzzi's here and former
acting assistant attorney general for national security at the Justice
Department.
MSNBC legal analyst Mary McCord is here.
Also joining us, former chairman of the RNC now Co
host of MSNBC's The Weekend.
Michael Steele is here.
Director Brennan, I start with you.
Leaving at the end of a current president's term is
the opposite of what the 10 year service window is
about.
And we've covered the cross pressures on the FBI.
But I wonder what it is like for the workforce
to see their leader leave.
I think it's going to be very difficult.
And I'm very disappointed that Director Ray decided to resign.
I think Director Ray has carried out his responsibilities with
integrity, professionalism during very difficult and challenging times over the
last seven years.
And he was appointed to A10 year term and he
accepted A10 year term.
And right now his his decision to leave tends to
legitimize what Donald Trump is doing in terms of appointing
someone else.
I don't think it would be any problem if he
stayed in place and had Donald Trump remove him.
I mean that that certainly is a president's prerogative, even
though there is a 10 year term on the FBI
directorate role.
But by doing this, I do think it's going to
leave the men and women of the FBI sort of,
you know, wondering what their future is going to look
like, particularly if somebody like Kach Patel, a real sycophant
of Donald Trump, is actually going to get through the
confirmation process.
So although I I respect Director Ray and I'm sure
that his decision was based on what how he evaluated
the impact on the Bureau and the workforce, I just
think that was a decision that should not have been
made at this point and he should have stayed through
the the transition to the new administration.
Frank Figluzzi, any viewer of this program knows I spend
a lot of time with Tim Snyder really trying to
understand a country's lurch toward autocracy.
It's not a light switch.
It happened slowly.
And one of the most haunting things he writes about
is obeying in advance.
And I don't know that I've seen in terms of
the facts as they've been reported to me so far.
I don't know that I've seen a more crystallized example
of that than someone atop an agency whose workforce, whose
rank and file workforce is under constant menacing threat and
disdain from an incoming president and his most prominent public
and vocal supporters.
To leave in advance of that confrontation to even if
Chris Ray viewed his firing is imminent.
Why not stay as a show of support for your
workforce, which is clearly in the crosshairs of the incoming
president?
Why not indeed?
I share John Brennan's discouragement here.
And I've previously said publicly that I hope that Ray
stays until he has to be fired, until Trump has
to fire him.
I would be proud to be fired by Donald Trump.
And I think the minimum of the FBI probably expected
that to happen in that way.
But while we can't get inside Chris Ray's head, I
think this resignation or announcement of the resignation tells us
more about Donald Trump than about Chris Wray.
I think, you know, it gives us a look into
the future here because we've got an FBI director who
felt compelled to resign before the end of his tenure
term because a president-elect and a nominee for FBI director
are saying they want to turn the FBI into some
kind of secret police agency that pursues political enemies for
the president.
The nominee for attorney general has used the exact same
language as well.
And I I think when we look at why there's
dismay with Chris Wray regarding from Donald Trump, we got
to look at this House of Cards that that everything's
based on you.
You had the audacity to begin this segment by injecting
facts into a perfectly good conspiracy theory, which is that
somehow the FBI quote, raided Mar a Lago.
Did it without, you know, without a joke judge's approval,
did it without the, the processes in place.
They, they did not.
In fact, ironically, this thing that upsets Donald Trump so
much, Chris Wray actually made a deliberate choice to stay
out of the the mechanisms of the deliberations over this.
You'll recall when the Washington Post reported that there was
this loud, tough meeting between DOJ executives and Washington field
office executives at the FBI over whether to search Mar
A Lago or not.
Chris Wray responded, I, I wasn't there at that meeting.
I, I, I stayed out of that meeting.
I wasn't aware that that happened.
That's on purpose.
He's, he's not getting in the weeds on.
He just allows the process to take place as if
it were just you or me that were storing documents
at our home.
So the other criminal sin in Trump's mind was when
Chris Wray went to Capitol Hill and said emphatically, what
happened on January 6th was domestic terrorism.
Those two things, I think, is what has caused Donald
Trump to say I'm inserting a guy who doesn't give
a damn about the Constitution or the rule of law.