No. of Recommendations: 19
Why not let Trump fire him? Do not capitulate in advance! Actually this turns out to be a middle finger to the incoming dictator. Not a big one, as options are limited, but the logic goes like this:
If Wray is in the job when Trump takes over, he will be fired. That means the administration has begun, and it sets up “a vacancy” which can be filled by recess appointment without having to go through Senate confirmation. By having the position open at the end of Biden’s term, Trump must nominate someone for the job and have that person vetted both by FBI background check and by Senate confirmation.
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.” https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/04/opinion/th...Trump, of course, is claiming victory (even though he’s the one who appointed him). You would expect nothing less, but the reality is that Wray just made it harder for Trump, not easier.
