The Final Call

New top FBI nominee flies under the radar

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WASHINGTON—The Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination of Christopher Wray to be President Donald Trump’s new FBI director almost slipped under the news media radar in a week when reports revealed more details about possibly illegal meetings involving Trump campaign officials and Russian agents in June 2016.

Mr. Wray served as assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush from 2003 to 2005. This was at the time when the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel signed off on the use of torture against detainees in CIA and military custody.

If the Senate confirms him, Mr. Wray would replace James Comey, who was fired by the president in May, and he would oversee the investigation about Mr. Trump’s connection to Russia while overseeing the country’s highest intelligence branch.

Mr. Wray, attended Yale University and Yale Law School, served Mr. Bush from 2003 to 2005. In 2004, Mr. Wray was among the top Justice Department officials, including Mr. Comey and then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, who threatened to resign after the Bush administration tried to bring back the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program that the organization found illegal.

After he left the Justice Department in 2005, Mr. Wray went back to private practice and specialized in white-collar investigations. He is probably best known for representing New Jersey Governor Chris Christie during the so-called “Bridgegate” trial in which two of the governor’s former aides were found guilty of scheming to shut down gates on the George Washington Bridge to retaliate against a Democratic mayor.

“I’m kind of uneasy with him because, anytime the conservatives like him,” Ronald Hampton, former president of the National Association of Black Police Officers said in an interview. “And he also served at the time of the war on drugs and all that kind of stuff. I really don’t think that he’s going to be good for our community. Especially, while we’re still working on reform, restructuring of the criminal justice system. He’s not necessarily in that mode.”

Mr. Wray benefits, from, among other things, he is not at all like Mr. Trump and therefore looks good by comparison. “That’s true. That’s how sometimes we get lulled to sleep,” Mr. Hampton continued. “We fall asleep at the wheel because we’re looking at somebody like Trump and Sessions over at the Justice Department, and somebody comes along like Wray who is a little less toxic than they are, then we sort of think that he’s going to be alright.”

Mr. Wray won bi-partisan praise during his confirmation hearing when he expressed his independence from President Trump. It was a day when the president again called the Russia investigation “a witch hunt.” Mr. Wray said he disagreed, telling senators that no one at the White House had asked him to pledge loyalty to the president and he vowed to resign should the president ask him to do anything illegal.

“I will never allow the FBI’s work to be driven by anything other than the facts, the law and the impartial pursuit of justice. Period,” Mr. Wray told senators. Republican senators were pushing for a speedy confirmation vote, and at least two Democrats including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) the ranking member of the committee support granting Mr. Wray a speedy confirmation vote.

But an area which concerns human rights observers about Mr. Wray’s career is his involvement in torture of detainees. “During the period he was the assistant attorney general for Criminal Division, he oversaw a deal with Chiquita, the banana company. Chiquita, as you recall, had been materially supporting terrorism in Colombia, both sides, so both the right-wing terrorists and the left-wing terrorists. And the company itself paid a penalty, but no Chiquita executive was held accountable for that,” Marcy Wheeler, an independent journalist in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who covers national security and civil liberties told Democracy Now!

“So, you know, it’s this classic case of double standard of justice. If a young Muslim man had been found to have done the kind of material support for terrorism that Chiquita did, that young man would be facing 30 years of prison time. But when they’re White Republicans, they end up facing no punishment at all for knowingly supporting terrorism. And he was very much involved in that negotiation.”

Throughout his career in private practice, Mr. Wray also defended Fortune 100 companies embroiled in various investigations, and he donated thousands of dollars to exclusively Republican candidates according to published reports.

“I don’t know. I’ve been around a long time. I’m not sold that he ought to be the person running the top federal law enforcement agency in the country. I’m just kind of skeptical about it,” said Mr. Hampton.

The news of the president’s son, son-in-law and then-campaign manager meeting with apparent operatives in June 2016 dominated news coverage.