Wednesday morning, about 24 hours before former FBI Director James Comey was set to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, President Donald Trump announced on Twitter who he has picked to be Comey’s successor.
He wrote: “I will be nominating Christopher A. Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the new Director of the FBI. Details to follow.”
The White House has been silent since the president’s announcement. However, there is quite a bit we already know about Wray, who is a former assistant attorney general from the George W. Bush administration.
Wray is a graduate of Yale, earning his law degree in 1992. He was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and went on to clerk for Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig. He entered government service in 1997 as assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Northern Georgia.
In 2001, he was appointed associate deputy attorney general under President Bush and later was promoted to principal associate deputy attorney general. In 2003, he was nominated to succeed Michael Chertoff as assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division and was confirmed by a unanimous vote of the Senate.
His boss for the next two years was none other than Comey.
Among the many prominent investigations Wray led was the fraud case against Enron and its corporate leaders. In 2005, he was awarded the Edmund J. Randolph Award, the Department of Justice’s highest award for public service and leadership. Later that year, he entered private practice as a litigation partner for King & Spalding, which has offices in Washington, D.C., and Atlanta.
This is where the liberal mainstream media and Democrats are most likely to focus their obstructionist attention, however: Despite representing several Fortune 100 companies, and chairing the firm’s Special Matters and Government Investigations Practice Group, he also represented New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie during the “Bridgegate” scandal.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley has not yet responded to the president’s announcement. It’s likely he will not set a date for confirmation hearings until the president formally submits Wray’s nomination to the Senate. The process usually takes about two months, but could be drawn out by Democrat obstructionism. {eoa}
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