GOP Senator Defends Wray as Trump Seeks Loyalist to Head FBI
Source: Bloomberg
December 1, 2024 at 10:53 AM EST
Updated on December 1, 2024 at 1:00 PM EST
A Republican senator said Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Wray is unobjectionable, though Donald Trump’s pick to head the FBI will get the “benefit of the doubt” if he’s formally nominated.
Kash Patel, a prominent critic of the FBI’s investigation into whether Trump’s 2016 campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in that year’s presidential election, is Trump’s choice for the agency, the president-elect said. If confirmed by the US Senate, Patel would replace Wray, a Trump appointee who still has years left in his term.
“It doesn’t surprise that he will pick people that are very loyal to himself,” but Trump also “picked a very good man” in Wray, Senator Mike Rounds, a Republican from South Dakota, said Sunday on ABC’s This Week. “Normally these are for a 10-year term,” Rounds said. “We’ll see what his process is and whether he actually makes that nomination.”
As the leading US law enforcement agency, the bureau has been at the center of the highest-profile investigations related to the president-elect. After Trump left the White House in 2021, FBI agents raided his Florida resort to seize classified documents, probed his efforts to overturn the 2020 election result and investigated people who stormed the US Capitol in his support.
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-01/gop-senator-defends-wray-as-trump-seeks-loyalist-to-head-fbi
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