Republican Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota stated on ABC News Sunday that FBI Director Christopher Wray is a “good man” and that he has “no complaints” about Wray’s performance, despite President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to dismiss him.
On Saturday, Trump announced his nomination of Kash Patel, his former chief of staff to the secretary of defense, as the new FBI director. During an appearance on ABC’s This Week, co-host Jonathan Karl asked Rounds for his initial thoughts on the nomination. Rounds noted that it is both within the president’s authority to make such nominations and typical for a president to seek loyal team members.
“I’ll also share with you — Chris Wray, you know, who the president nominated the first time around. I think the president picked a very good man to be the director of the FBI when he did that in his first term. When we meet with him behind closed doors, I’ve had no objections to the way that he’s handled himself. So I don’t have any complaints about the way that he’s done his job right now,” Rounds said.
Over the years, Republicans have consistently criticized FBI Director Christopher Wray, with all 2024 GOP presidential candidates—except former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie—pledging to dismiss him and either introduce structural reforms or dismantle the bureau entirely.
In 2022, the House Judiciary Committee published a 1,050-page report accusing the agency of being “broken” under the leadership of Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland. The report alleged that the FBI engaged in actions such as altering and mischaracterizing evidence in federal courts, bypassing safeguards, and exploiting policy weaknesses.
“Once again, the president has the right to make nominations, but normally these are for a 10-year term. We’ll see what his process is and whether he actually makes that nomination,” Rounds said. “Then if he does, just as with anybody who is nominated for one of these positions, once they’ve been nominated by the president, then the president gets, the benefit of the doubt on the nomination. But we still go through a process, and that process includes advice and consent, which for the Senate means advice or consent sometimes.”
Less than a year after the report’s release, Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia introduced an article of impeachment against FBI Director Christopher Wray. She accused him of leading the agency to intimidate, harass, and entrap “American citizens deemed enemies of the Biden regime.”
Wray has faced criticism over the years for various controversies, including the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago in search of national security materials, avoiding questions about whether the agency had informants in the field on January 6, refusing to confirm whether President Joe Biden mishandled classified information after leaving office in 2017, allegedly delaying investigations into Hunter Biden’s unpaid taxes from 2017 and 2018, and making comments during a hearing that questioned whether former President Donald Trump had been struck by an actual bullet during an assassination attempt.
Lawmakers criticized FBI Director Christopher Wray and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas last month for refusing to testify before the Senate on global threats to the U.S. homeland. They highlighted that this departure broke a 15-year tradition of transparency and oversight by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in addressing national security threats.
Kash Patel, a vocal critic of the surveillance state’s weaponization, recently outlined his proposed plans for reform during a podcast, should he assume the role of FBI director.
“I’d shut down the FBI Hoover building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state,” Patel said in the interview. “I’d take the 7,000 employees who work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals.”
