Chris Wray folds like cheap suit. Don’t be Chris Wray.
The FBI director obeys in advance.
🚔 Public Notice is made possible by paid subscribers. If you aren’t one, please click the button below to sign up and support our independent journalism. 🚔
FBI Director Christopher Wray became the latest public official to remove his own spine and dissolve into a puddle of genuflecting goo for the greater glory of MAGA with his announcement Wednesday that he’ll resign before Trump’s inauguration.
FBI directors are supposed to be independent, and Wray still has more than two years left on his term. But Trump loathes Wray, who, among other things, pursued an investigation of Trump’s mishandling of classified documents after he left the White House. And so it wasn’t surprising that Trump celebrated Wray’s resignation in a pack-of-lies Truth Social post.
As Trump mentions in his post, he plans to replace Wray with unqualified craven bootlicker Kash Patel, who has promised to use the agency to target Trump’s enemies, terrorize the media (including imprisoning journalists), and crush political dissent.
Wray’s resignation enables Trump’s authoritarian designs. It means he can install Patel without having to pay the political price that would’ve come with firing Wray, who has clearly done nothing to deserve it. It will make it easier for Republican senators who might’ve been on the fence about voting for Trump’s new henchman to go along with the program.
Wray said that, in light of Trump’s animosity, his resignation was “the best way to avoid dragging the Bureau deeper into the fray.” For Wray, apparently, the appearance of resistance is a bridge too far, so it’s best just to let the fascist win so he can impose the swift, unilateral peace of autocracy. (It should be noted that there is an alternative theory of Wray’s resignation. David French of the New York Times argues that Wray is actually defying Trump, because Patel might not be confirmed by Senate Republicans and now can’t serve in an acting capacity. It’s an intriguing theory, but the fact of the matter is there’s no reason at this point to believe that Senate Republicans are above confirming Patel.)
Wray is a Trump nominee in his own right who rose to the top of the bureau in 2017 during one of the orange menace’s previous power plays, when he ignored the norms protecting FBI directors and fired James Comey for refusing to stifle the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia. Wray was suitably supine for most of Trump’s term; at Trump’s behest, he undermined the FBI investigation into sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing.
Given that, it’s not necessarily surprising that Wray is eager to bend the knee to Trump. It does, though, underline the extent to which Trump relies on institutionalists and potential opponents to just give up. Historian Timothy Snyder has referred to this as “obeying in advance,” or “anticipatory obedience" — leaders, politicians, and institutions either fear what will happen if they resist, or think they can benefit from fascist takeover and so comply without a fight.
Trump blusters and threatens, and often, people like Wray transform into worms and crawl into their dank holes because they find the fight distasteful or beneath them. This is especially frustrating because there’s plenty of evidence Trump can be stymied. When people who purport to care about democracy or institutions are willing to fight, they can in fact win.
A note from Aaron: Working with brilliant contributors like Noah takes resources. If you aren’t already a paid subscriber, please sign up to support our work.
Trump is not invincible
Trump has already wracked up some Ls before he’s even before he’s sworn in. He wanted ghoulish MAGA hack Rick Scott for Senate majority leader. Instead, the GOP elected John Thune, who criticized Trump’s role in the January 6 coup attempt. (After Scott’s loss, Trump of course claimed he had not in fact backed him.)
Trump also demanded that the Senate allow him to appoint all his cabinet picks using recess appointments. That would mean the Senate would recess, abandon its constitutional role in approving nominees, and allow Trump to put in place anyone he wants. But Thune has sounded skeptical about that idea, pointing out that logistically, if you don’t have the votes to confirm someone in the usual way, you probably don’t have the votes to go into recess and let the president appoint them unilaterally.
The real signal that Trump isn’t going to just be able to appoint anyone he wants under any circumstance is that one of his appointments has already been defeated. Trump initially chose Matt Gaetz as attorney general, even though Gaetz has zero qualifications for such a position, and even though he was under ethics investigation involving charges of sexually abusing minors.
It quickly became clear that Gaetz, who’s loathed by his fellow Republicans, did not have the votes. Trump did not demand a recess appointment — he just gave up. Gaetz withdrew his nomination only eight days after it was announced in one of the quickest and most humiliating cabinet appointment debacles in history.
Dems are not powerless
Defeating Gaetz was mostly a matter of Republicans voicing opposition, since they have a majority in the incoming Senate. But where Democrats haven’t knuckled under, they’ve also been able to thwart Trump in a number of ways.
Trump, for example, demanded that Senate Democrats stop confirming judges ahead of his inauguration. Democrats could have taken the Wray approach and just obeyed even though Trump has no power to enforce his demand. Instead, they just … kept confirming judges. As if Trump didn’t have the power to stop them. Which he didn’t.
Another high profile example of Democrats not folding is Biden’s decision to pardon his son. Hunter Biden has been the target of rabid rightwing persecution for years. Incoming officials — like Patel — have promised to use the power of the DOJ to target him as a way to harm his father and threaten other political opponents.
Biden has been widely criticized for using his power as president to protect his son and prevent Trump from enacting revenge. Very serious people have also argued that Biden shouldn’t preemptively pardon other Trump targets, such as members of the January 6 Committee.
Like Wray, these furrow-browed pundits warn that opposing Trump would look bad and would drag the country deeper into the fray. But letting fascists steamroll the country unopposed isn’t good for America either. It is, in fact, worse.
You lose every battle you don’t fight
Not every effort to oppose Trump is going to be successful. Some of his other horrible nominations look like they’re in trouble. But with a three-vote Republican majority in the Senate, there’s a decent chance he’ll get all of them confirmed, and there’s not a whole lot Democrats can do about that.
In similarly bad news, Senate Democrats tried to lock in a majority on the crucial NLRB board this week, ensuring Democratic control through 2026. But Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema decided they wanted to get their potential lobbying careers off to a strong start, so they gave Democrats one last middle finger by voting no. That gives Trump a clear path to gutting labor power immediately.
These losses are frustrating and disheartening. But it’s perhaps even more frustrating and disheartening to see people taking the Wray path of anticipatory kowtowing.
Jim Clyburn has argued that Biden should pardon Trump, who was convicted of illegal hush money payments made during the 2016 election. Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders have praised conspiracy theorist and pro-measles hack Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who Trump picked to lead HHS/destroy public health in the US.
Democratic Reps. Ro Khanna and Jared Moskowitz and (again) Bernie Sanders have expressed limited support for Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s plan to use the (fake) Department of Government Efficiency they will co-lead to slash trillions from the federal budget. And while Chuck Schumer has done well in pushing through judicial nominees, he’s agreed to let Trump fill four crucial appellate judgeships as part of a controversial deal with Republicans.
People always have some reason not to fight. Clyburn wants to pardon everyone and start with a clean slate. Sanders and Booker are fond of RFK Jr.’s populist boilerplate about big corporations harming our food supply. Khanna and Moskowitz presumably figure that staying on the right side of oligarchs will be good for their reelection campaigns and give them some bipartisan credibility. But fascists never forget their grievances, oligarchs are notoriously fickle, and letting a bigoted ignorant fabulist discredit vaccines with the imprimatur of the federal government will not improve the health of the country.
Politicians, and lots of people who aren’t politicians, often dislike conflict. They want to be liked by everyone; they don’t want to be involved in any unpleasantness. Accommodation seems easier and safer.
But as Neville Chamberlain demonstrated, accommodating fascists, or appeasing them, leads to atrocity, not amity. Fascists are not interested in finding common ground, and Trump certainly is not. He has explained over and over that his main goal in office is to hurt his enemies, including Democrats, marginalized people, and anyone who has ever defied him, including lots of FBI agents.
Wray could have made it harder for Trump to target his own agents and employees. Instead, he chose to make it easier. Public officials at the federal and state level, and people in every institution, will be faced with the same choice. They can fight back or they can collapse. How much damage Trump does in the next four years will depend a good deal on who makes the first choice, and who makes the second.
That’s it for today
We’ll be back with more tomorrow. If you appreciate today’s edition, please support us by signing up. Paid subscribers make PN possible.
Thanks for reading.
Wray quitting makes himself look guilty for the lies Trump spews. He should have held out and stood up for himself and the institution. That's a shame.
Read NYT(!) and Mueller She Wrote for good reasons he might be defying Trump, not folding.