Obeying in Advance: The Christopher Wray Story.
Eight years ago, then-FBI director James Comey tipped the election to Donald Trump. Today, his successor ensured that he will also be remembered for the destructive end of his tenure.
A recent photo of Christopher Wray, FBI director, who today announced that he would resign several years early rather than stand up to Donald Trump. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images.)
This is an atypical breaking-news post. Just a few hours ago, I put up a meaty report about promising advanced-tech startups making their mark around the country. These local developments are the main theme I want to pursue in the months ahead.
But this post is about a more discouraging, timely development. For the second time in a row, an FBI director has ensured that he’ll be marked in history for the way his term ended, and how he enabled Donald Trump.
The first time was of course James Comey. No one will ever be able to prove it, but I contend that if Comey had not gratuitously waded into the “but her emails!” swamp ten days before the 2016 election, the results would have been different—and in line with what nearly everyone expected, including Donald Trump himself. Namely, a Hillary Clinton win, and Trump’s full-time return to the info-tainment business. We’ll never know for sure. But Comey will always be marked by the catastrophic choice he made.
Comes now Christopher Wray. In principle—that is, according to the law—he has several years left in his term as FBI director. In the tumultuous aftermath of J. Edgar Hoover’s long reign at the FBI, the Congress of the post-Watergate era established ten-year fixed terms for the FBI director. The explicit idea behind this change was that FBI terms would span changes in administrations, and would not be part of normal partisan turnover.1
Despite these rules, eventually Trump would have found a way to fire Wray. OK. Wray should have made him do so, rather than removing himself.
Wray has done great damage with this decision and deserves to be scorned. Why?
1) Postponing the ‘inevitable’ can make a difference.
Maybe it is “inevitable” that Donald Trump would have gotten his way in controlling the FBI. But other people don't have to make it quick and easy for him. Which is what Christopher Wray has just done.
Resistance can change the calculations of “inevitability.” An extreme example is Ukraine. In the first few days after Russia’s invasion, it seemed “inevitable” that Kyiv would immediately fall. Then President Zelenskyy and his comrades made their unforgettable “everyone is here” video. What will happen in the long run is unknowable. The price has been severe on all sides. But by resisting, Zelenskyy changed everyone’s calculations. By caving in, Wray did as well.
One of Donald Trump’s main tools, as the GOP has collapsed into subservience, is the perception of un-stoppability. He’s going to get his way in the end. So why waste your time standing up to him? Thus Lindsey Graham, Nikki Haley, “Little Marco,” and countless others have etched their role in history.
By making it slower and harder for Trump to get his way with the FBI, Director Wray might have protected the institution itself, and its dignity, and its commitment to continued leadership through changes of administration, for that much longer.2 Crucially, he might have slowed down Donald Trump on other fronts, by inflicting on him another “loss.”
But he stepped aside. He gave Trump an easy and unnecessary win. Christopher Wray, please join James Comey in the ranks of FBI directors who went out having harmed the country.
2) ‘Do Not Obey in Advance.’
For the millionth time, I’ll quote Timothy Snyder, of Yale, from his best-selling book on “Twenty Lessons on Fighting Tyranny.” Christopher Wray has now given us what will stand as the classic example of violating Snyder’s Rule Number One:
1. Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.
“Teaching power what it can do.” That is the lesson Christopher Wray has given us. He magnifies Trump’s power. And demonstrates his own weakness, and by implication that of institutions more broadly.
The second lesson on Snyder's list is also relevant:
2. Defend institutions. It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. So choose an institution you care about and take its side.
I’ve been fired myself, over a much lower-stakes difference of principle. You can survive. Christopher Wray made the wrong choice.
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As it happens, the first person to serve nearly ten years as FBI director under these rules was William Webster. When appointed by Jimmy Carter, he was a federal judge; he remained a lifelong Republican; and he left the FBI post, after nine years, only when chosen by Ronald Reagan to head the CIA. Also as it happens, for many years he and his wife Lynda were immediate across-the-street neighbors of ours in Washington. William Webster turned 100 early this year.
His official line is that he was sparing the FBI being dragged into controversy. Oh, please.
I think there's a culture at the FBI that, actually, does require an outsider to come in and fix it. Just not the incoming outsider, who is a traitor to the United States.
I have a friend who works in politics who called me the Monday after Comey's announcement in 2016. He said it was over, the bottom had dropped out of the polls over the weekend, and Clinton would lose. I'll blame Comey, though The New York Times also deserves ample opprobrium.
So, so correct. It’s such a shame he’s resigning. Some courage from a prominent establishment figure like Wray would have been inspiring to others, including me. We need those Liz Cheneys.