President Donald Trump will nominate Christopher A. Wray to be the next director of the FBI , he announced on Wednesday.
Wray served as assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush from 2003 to 2005. The Yale Law School graduate now works as an attorney in private practice .
During his previous service at the Department of Justice, Christopher was the leader of major fraud investigations, and was a key part of the team overseeing the Justice Departments actions in the war on terrorism following the 9/11 attacks, Trump said in a statement. He is an impeccably qualified individual, and I know that he will again serve his country as a fierce guardian of the law and model of integrity once the Senate confirms him to lead the FBI.
Wray represented New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) in the wake of the Bridgegate scandal. Christie told NorthJersey.com that he had the utmost confidence in Chris.
Hes an outstanding lawyer , Christie said. He has absolute integrity and honesty, and I think that the president certainly would not be making a mistake if he asked Chris Wray to be FBI director.
Wray was interviewed for the job last week, the White House said. Trump was also said to have considered politicians including Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and, mostly notably, former Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.). He appeared to reverse course following pushback from Democrats .
Trumps critics on both sides of the aisle including Matthew Miller, who served as Justice Department spokesman under former Attorney General Eric Holder, and Jack Goldsmith, who served alongside Wray in the Justice Department during the Bush administration praised the presidents decision to tap Wray.
Wray is smart, serious, and professional. He doesnt have quite the range of experiences that his two predecessors did. But he has deep experience with federal criminal law and the FBI, Goldsmith wrote . I think Trumps firing of [former FBI Director] James Comey was a travesty. But Wray is a good choice, a much better choice than any name I previously saw floated, and a much better choice than I expected Trump to make. Without prejudging what will surely be a probing confirmation process, I think Wray is qualified to be Director of the FBI.
Wray called the nomination a great honor in a statement.
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, he said.
He co-signed a letter of support for then-deputy attorney general nominee Sally Yates. Trump fired Yates after she refused to defend his Muslim immigration ban. Yates has also said she raised concerns that then-national security adviser Michael Flynn was compromised by the Russians , but that the White House ignored her warnings.
Wrays name came up in a 2008 Justice Department Inspector General report on allegations of politicized hiring in the Attorney Generals Honors Program and Summer Law Intern Program. The hiring process, the report concluded, was fundamentally changed to give political appointees more input. Data showed that applicants with Democratic or liberal affiliations were deselected at a significantly higher rate than candidates with conservative or neutral affiliations. Wray told the IG that politics and ideology only came up as part of an effort to make the programs more inclusive.
From the report:
He said there was a perception that in past administrations the career employees doing the screening may have weeded out candidates because the selecting officials were not comfortable with their political persuasion. He said the political persuasion he was referring to pertained to candidates who had been in the military or law enforcement, whether you call that conservative or not.
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