The F.B.I. Director Said He Would Resign

Briefing|The F.B.I. Director Said He Would Resign

Christopher Wray, the F.B.I. director, told bureau employees today that he would resign before Donald Trump took office in January. In his address, Wray said he believed the move was “the best way to avoid dragging the bureau deeper into the fray.”

Wray still had more than two years left of his 10-year term, a length that Congress established in part to distance the bureau from partisan politics. But Trump announced last month that he planned to replace Wray, whom he said he was “very unhappy with,” with a longtime loyalist, Kash Patel. Trump greeted Wray’s announcement by declaring it “a great day for America.”

Wray, whom Trump appointed in 2017 after he fired James Comey, oversaw one of the most consequential and tumultuous periods in the agency’s history. His bureau juggled high-profile investigations of political figures, including Trump and President Biden, along with mass shootings, cyberattacks and threats from geopolitical rivals like China, Iran and Russia.

His apparent successor could not be more different. Patel, a former federal prosecutor and public defender, is a fierce critic of the F.B.I. and has vowed to fire its leadership and root out the president-elect’s perceived enemies in what he calls the “deep state.”