Ray, the FBI Director, announced on Wednesday that he would resign before the end of his Cristóbal next month. This clears the way for president-elect Donald Trump to appoint a new FBI director without having to fire or force Ray to resign early.
“After weeks of careful consideration, I have made the decision that the correct course of action for the FBI is for me to serve until the end of this administration in January and then resign,” Ray said in a statement on the same day
He added that his goal was to keep the FBI focused on its mission of doing important work on behalf of the American people on a daily basis, and that resigning was the best way to keep the FBI from getting bogged down in political battles.
After winning the US election, Donald Trump has nominated Ka? Praful Patel to head the FBI, in a move intended to force Ray to step down before the end of his 10-year term, replace him with a loyal supporter who has promised to overhaul America’s leading law enforcement agency.
Donald Trump fired Ray’s predecessor, Comey, in 2017 and appointed him in his first term, leaving him with three years left in office.
But at the end of Donald Trump’s first term, he flipped over to the Democrats and co-ordinated a series of democratic investigations into Donald Trump that infuriated him.
In 2022, when the FBI raided Donald Trump’s private home, mar-a-lago, Donald Trump accused the FBI of a “Witch hunt,” saying it was politically motivated. “He broke into my house, he invaded Mar-a-lago,” Trump said this week
During Ray’s tenure, the FBI also played an important role in helping to investigate and arrest many of Donald Trump’s supporters, who stormed the capitol on January 6,2021, attempts to block Congress from confirming Biden’s election victory were unsuccessful.
Donald Trump’s appointment also heralds other big changes for the FBI as the president-elect threatens to retaliate against political opponents.
Praful Patel has said he will fire senior FBI and hold agents he considers Abuse of authority accountable as part of a broader plan to reduce the size and power of the FBI.
Praful Patel, whose appointment is subject to confirmation by the Senate, has never worked for the FBI before and spent only three years in the Justice Department’s National Directorate of Security early in his career. If confirmed, he promises to close the FBI’s Washington headquarters and radically redefine the agency’s role in intelligence gathering.
“The FBI has serious problems, and the American public knows it, and they want to see Radical Change,” Republican Senator Bill Haggerty said recently