President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to end business-as-usual at the Justice Department apparently include replacing FBI Director Christopher Wray, Vice President-elect JD Vance indicated in a social media post on Tuesday.
Vance revealed he and the president-elect were conducting interviews for the crucial FBI position in a since-deleted post on X. The post was responding to criticism the vice president-elect received for missing a Monday Senate vote that confirmed one of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees to the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“When this 11th Circuit vote happened, I was meeting with President Trump to interview multiple positions for our government, including for FBI Director,” Vance wrote. “I tend to think it’s more important to get an FBI director who will dismantle the deep state than it is for Republicans to lose a vote 49-46 rather than 49-45. But that’s just me.”
Trump nominated former federal prosecutor and Justice Department official Christopher Wray as FBI director in 2017 after abruptly firing his predecessor, James Comey.
However, in recent years, Trump and many in his orbit have soured on Wray, alleging that he hasn’t done enough to root out alleged corruption and political bias at the law enforcement agency. They also fault Wray for allowing his agents to participate in the court-ordered search at Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 that led to Trump’s prosecution on charges of hoarding classified documents and obstruction of justice.
In July, after a congressional hearing during which Wray vouched for Biden’s mental acuity, Trump said Wray should step down. “Wray has to resign, and NOW, for LYING TO CONGRESS!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Wray, whose term runs through 2027, suggested in an interview last spring that he’d like to stay in his job if Trump wins, as long as the FBI is permitted to maintain its longstanding standards to keep investigations apolitical.
“As long as I think I can continue doing that in a way that adheres to all those rules and norms, it’s what I’d like to keep doing,” he told NBC. A spokesperson for Wray did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
Vance’s disclosure about the FBI interviews came as he unleashed fury at Grace Chong, a producer for the daily “War Room” webcast anchored by former Trump White House aide Steve Bannon.
Chong had earlier taken to X to urge Vance and other GOP senators to “show up and do your one fricken job!!” Although Trump publicly urged a halt to all judicial confirmations during the transition, Chong’s tweet prompted the vice president-elect to call her “a mouth breathing imbecile who attacks those of us in the fight rather than make herself useful.” Both Chong and Vance later deleted their posts.