i mean, he is “besties” with Hannibal Lector…
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this is very likely a bad thing. here’s hoping (against hope?) that kash-patel is blocked by the senate; or else there’s your !#$@!n gestapo right there
# FBI Director Christopher Wray Is Resigning
Trump previously said he planned to replace him with his loyal ally, Kash Patel.
Dec 11, 2024, 02:20 PM EST
FBI Director Christopher Wray announced Wednesday that he plans to resign ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration next month.
Wray’s announcement follows Trump publicly saying he plans to nominate former federal prosecutor and Trump loyalist Kash Patel to head up the agency, replacing Wray more than two years before the expiration of his 10-year term. …
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Why or how could his resigning be a bad thing? I mean, a thing that’s any worse than his already imminent replacement by Patel or some other Tromp pick? Didn’t he resign because he knows he’ll be replaced?
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Yeah, his replacement was probably inevitable but still, why make it easier for Trump? If he’d stuck around until Trump actually was inaugurated and went through the process of firing him it seems like that’s a little bit less time for his replacement to do damage.
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I wonder whether being fired has implications for his pension? I wouldn’t give Trump the satisfaction of taking away my retirement money either, if I were him
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The common assumption (without knowing the exact laws/rules) is that Wray’s resignation leaves a “vacancy” and a vacancy can be filled on a temporary basis without Senate confirmation. And it’s well known that the trumpies really like such a system as that way even more stooges can be funneled through positions of power and dispensed with even more readily. -sigh-
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Traditionally, FBI Directors weren’t fired. They serve 10 year terms, which means, if they serve their entire term, they are guaranteed to serve under at least two different Presidents. These would often be Presidents from different parties. The job isn’t supposed to be partisan. It’s supposed to have some degree of independence from the President. Now, that wasn’t really formalized. The President could fire the FBI Director, but that never happened without cause. It could, but it didn’t. It’s another one of those norms that was never codified, that Trump is ignoring.
That’s called a recess appointment. However, by the time Trump takes office, the Senate is supposed to be back in session, making a recess appointment impossible. Trump has been trying to get the Senate to delay the start of the next session so he can make all of his Cabinet appointments (and other positions like FBI Director, which isn’t a Cabinet level position) as recess appointments, but I don’t think they seem likely to do that right now.
ETA: This will show you how Trump has disrupted this position:
Directors of the FBI
Hoover 1935-1972 FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon
(After Hoover, they changed the position so that it was appointed to a 10 year term and confirmed by the Senate)
Kelley 1972-1978 Nixon, Ford, Carter
Webster 1978-1987 Carter, Reagan
Sessions 1987-1993 Reagan, Bush, Clinton (Sessions had some ethical issues and may have been fired by Clinton had he not resigned)
Freeh 1993-2001 Clinton, Bush
Mueller 2001-2013 Bush, Obama
Comey 2013-2017 Obama, Trump (fired by Trump)
Wray 2017-2024 Trump, Biden
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(it turns out) There’s something relevant called the “Vacancies Reform Act” and here’s a clip from a “live” NYT article about that and Wray’s resignation - which they’re apparently thinking was the best possible move against trump-ism (here’s a paywall avoiding NYT link to the article)
By stepping down now, as the conservative writer Erick Erickson observed, Wray has created a “legal obstacle to Trump trying to bypass the Senate confirmation process.”
Here’s why. According to the Vacancies Reform Act, if a vacancy occurs in a Senate-confirmed position, the president can temporarily replace that appointee (such as the F.B.I. director) only with a person who has already received Senate confirmation or with a person who’s served in a senior capacity in the agency (at the GS-15 pay scale.)) for at least 90 days in the year before the resignation.
Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s chosen successor at the F.B.I., meets neither of these criteria. He’s not in a Senate-confirmed position, and he’s not been a senior federal employee in the Department of Justice in the last year. That means he can’t walk into the job on Day 1. Trump will have to select someone else to lead the F.B.I. immediately, or the position will default to the “first assistant to the office.”
In this case, that means the position would default to Paul Abbate, who has been the deputy director of the F.B.I. since 2021, unless Trump chooses someone else, and that “someone else” cannot be Patel, at least not right away.
The bottom line is that the Senate has to do its job. Wray is foreclosing a presidential appointment under the Vacancies Reform Act, and — as I wrote in a column last month — the Supreme Court has most likely foreclosed the use of a recess appointment to bypass the Senate.
…
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Sure. As long as the Senate and SCOTUS do what they’re supposed to do instead of doing what Trump wants. Because what are they going to do if he appoints Patel as acting FBI Director anyway?
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Maybe they’ll refuse her credentials. If she gets approved.
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Oh my God, for real? Jesus. I have a good friend in Athens. I should apologize to her, even though this isn’t my fault.
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I don’t know if this belongs here, but I’m putting it here.
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Here’s one perspective on the Wray resignation:
I guess it can be argued that it really doesn’t make any difference whether the media treats this as another scandal or not. Media coverage ultimately didn’t really affect much when he fired Comey, and there are too many scandals for anyone to keep track of all of them anyway. But still, I sure hope that this isn’t making things easier for Trump.
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Donald Trump said he doesn’t want to talk about transgender rights issues anymore, despite demonizing the transgender community throughout his 2024 campaign.
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Can baseless claims really be “undercut”?
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Right. “Disproving” or “debunking” are instead correct words.
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yeah, yeah… fake news!
/S
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