by Sharon Rondeau
(Jul. 9, 2023) — On today’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Republican presidential primary candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told host Maria Bartiromo that if he wins the nomination and general election, he will “clean house” to end corruption in the federal government, rein in spending and “take executive action” against China.
Regarding the FBI, Bartiromo asked DeSantis if he would retain Director Christopher Wray, who oversaw the raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home last August which seized alleged “classified” documents Trump took with him after leaving the White House.
Comparing himself to Trump, DeSantis responded by stating that while Trump maintains “the jury is still out” on Wray, he would “fire” him, as he said in May.
The statement about Trump was accurate if referring to that which Trump said in May 2020, but by December that year, Trump wanted to fire him.
“President Donald Trump has come so close to firing FBI Director Christopher Wray in recent months that the White House counsel’s office has warned him not to do so because it could put him in potential legal jeopardy, according to a senior administration official with direct knowledge of the discussion and a U.S. official familiar with the discussion,” NBC News reported on December 16, 2020.
Further, NBC wrote:
White House lawyers “strongly” advised Trump against firing another FBI director out of concern that doing so would risk creating the perception that a “loyalty test” was being imposed on a position that traditionally has maintained independence from the White House, according to the senior administration official.
The lawyers, led by White House counsel Pat Cipollone, specifically said that firing Wray could spark legal issues similar to those raised after Trump ousted James Comey as FBI director in 2017 in the midst of the Russia investigation, the officials said.
Their concern was that firing Wray could be seen as retaliation because the president has publicly pressured him to take specific actions on certain investigations — such as announcing a probe into President-elect Joe Biden’s son — and then expressed frustration that Wray has not followed his suggestions.
Wray was recommended in part by another 2024 Republican presidential primary candidate, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, once a Trump supporter and now a vocal adversary.
In recent TruthSocial posts, Trump has been highly critical of the FBI and its parent agency, the Justice Department, over “corrupt” practices and “WEAPONIZED law enforcement.”
On November 16, 2021, Business Insider reported that according to a book Christie published in late 2021 titled, “Republican Rescue: Saving the Party from Truth Deniers, Conspiracy Theorists, and the Dangerous Policies of Joe Biden,” Trump vehemently expressed his displeasure with both Christie and Wray in the wake of Christie’s recommendation of the FBI director who presided over the FBI’s three-year investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign’s alleged ties to the Russian government which proved false.
“Former President Donald Trump told Chris Christie that FBI Director Christopher Wray was the ‘worst member’ of his administration and blamed Christie for recommending Wray for the role, the former New Jersey governor wrote in his forthcoming memoir,” BI reported.
Christie, who is polling in single digits and may not qualify for the first Republican debate next month, is also author of the book, “Let Me Finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey, and the Power of In-Your-Face Politics” while still acting as an adviser to Trump.
The first introductory paragraph to the book reads:
After dropping out of the 2016 presidential race, Chris Christie stunned the political world by becoming the first major official to endorse Donald Trump. A friend of Trump’s for fifteen years, the two-term New Jersey governor understood the future president as well as anyone in the political arena–and Christie quickly became one of Trump’s most trusted advisers. Tapped with running Trump’s transition team, Christie was nearly named his running mate. But within days of Trump’s surprise victory over Hillary Clinton, Christie was in for his own surprise: he was being booted out.