President-elect Donald Trump has announced his intention to nominate his confidant Kash Patel to head the FBI.
21:19•Updated 22:25
Director of the FBI, the United States Federal Police Christopher Wray intends to leave his post before the next president Donald Trump will return to the White House in January, reports The New York Times on Wednesday.
Wray’s announcement follows Trump’s public statements, in which the future president has announced his intentions to appoint his confidante to lead the FBI By Kash Patel.
Patel is known as a supporter of the deep state conspiracy theory and he wrote a book on the subject. Trump has often accused the deep state of conspiring against him.
Patel served in the US National Intelligence Service and the Department of Defense during Trump’s first term as president. According to The New York Times, he has also harshly criticized the FBI, calling for its Washington headquarters to be closed and its leadership to be fired.
Patel’s appointment as FBI director still needs US Senate approval.
Trump appointed Wray in his first term
Wray, who has been in charge of the FBI since 2017, says he will leave his position in January, at the same time as the power in the country changes. Wray is stepping down about two years before his ten-year term would have ended.
Trump appointed Wray to his post during his first term as president. However, things have since cooled down, for example after the FBI carried out court-authorized searches in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022, where Trump was suspected of keeping secret documents.
The searches by the FBI led to another of Trump’s federal indictments, but neither of them ended up in court.
Trump himself has described the accusations as politically motivated.
Source: Reuters