“60 Minutes” would like everyone to feel so very sad and sorry for poor beleagured FBI Director Christopher Wray, who is resigning before the Bad Orange Man fires him and replaces him with Very Scary Kash Patel.

The failures of Chris Wray are long and have been covered extensively – not just by this blog, but laid out in great detail by Senator Chuck Grassley, who told Wray and his deputy director Paul Abbate back on December 9th to not let the door hit them on the way out.

Grassley to Wray: “I reminded you that an FBI Director’s ten-year term is a ceiling not a floor… Rather than turn over a new leaf at the FBI, you’ve continued to read from the old playbook of weaponization, double standards, & a relentless game of hide-&-seek with the Congress.” pic.twitter.com/D6VRGUCtPu

— Jerry Dunleavy IV 🇺🇸 (@JerryDunleavy) December 9, 2024

Contrary to the assurances you made to gain confirmation to your position, the FBI has shown outright disdain for congressional oversight during your tenure. By doing so, it has hindered Congress in the exercise of its constitutional duty to oversee the actions of executive branch agencies and officials. You pledged under oath at your confirmation hearing to assist members of the Judiciary Committee and the entire Senate with oversight requests, and said you would do everything in your power to make sure the FBI is “appropriately responsive and prompt” in responding to these requests. You didn’t live up to your word. Promises made, promises broken has become a recurrent theme under your leadership.

In his letter, Grassley pointed out several specific failures by Wray as he led the FBI – his failure to respond to sexual harrassment claims by FBI employees, the vetting of Afghan refugees, and his lack of cooperation into anything remotely connected to investigating the Biden family business, among others. But somehow, Scott Pelley at “60 Minutes” would like to take a moment to pat poor widdle Wray on his poor widdle head. You see, being FBI director is SUCH A HARD JOB, and Donald Trump is SO MEAN AND SO ORANGE.

The FBI director, Christopher Wray, is stepping down, nearly three years early, because President-elect Trump is replacing him. Any change is consequential because the FBI is a top agency in crime fighting, counterterrorism and counterespionage. Americans rely on the director to save lives, jail criminals, and not abuse his tremendous power. Christopher Wray’s term was among the most politically fraught in the bureau’s 116 years, with investigations targeting Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Christopher Wray: Well, my decision to retire from the FBI, I have to tell you, was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make. I care deeply, deeply– about the FBI, about our mission– and in particular about our people. But you know the president-elect had made clear that he intended to make a change, and the law is that that is something he is able to do for any reason or no reason at all. My conclusion was that the thing that was best for the Bureau was to try to do this in an orderly way, to not thrust the FBI deeper into the fray.

“The fray” is all 58-year-old Christopher Wray has known since he was appointed by President Trump. It was 2017, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey as the FBI investigated whether Trump campaign associates schemed with Russia to sway the 2016 election. Wray had deep experience, Yale Law, a Justice Department official on 9/11, and years in private practice. But Trump soured on Wray after the FBI investigated the alleged plot to overthrow the 2020 election.

Pelley also pointed out that Biden dissed Wray and the DOJ as well when he pardoned his dissolute jackass of a son, but that’s okay, because THIS IS A HARD JOB. Oh, and he totally didn’t talk to the Biden White House about the Trump cases.

Scott Pelley: What influence did the Biden White House have on any of these Trump investigations?

Christopher Wray: I haven’t had any interaction with the Biden White House about investigations into the former president.

Scott Pelley: Anybody at the FBI?

Christopher Wray: Not to my knowledge.

Wray’s FBI also investigated President Biden for keeping classified documents, and separately, investigated Biden’s son, Hunter, who was convicted on gun and tax charges. Biden pardoned his son last month calling the investigation “raw politics.”

Scott Pelley: But you’re being criticized by a Democratic president and a Republican president. What does that tell you?

Christopher Wray: This is a hard job. You’re inevitably going to make different people angry, often very powerful people. But part of the essence of the rule of law is to make sure that facts, and the law, and proper predication drive investigations, not who’s in power, not who wants it to be so or not so.

That “not to my knowledge” comment is the wiggle room and the plausible deniability that Wray is giving himself. He cannot guarantee that NO ONE at the FBI talked to ANYONE in the Biden White House about the Trump cases. But the buried lede in this interview is that Wray admits that China has infiltrated American infrastructure and telecommunications.

Christopher Wray: Well, the greatest long-term threat facing our country, in my view, is represented by the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese government, which I consider to be the defining threat of our generation.

Scott Pelley: What has the FBI found about Chinese penetration of U.S. cyber and infrastructure?

Christopher Wray: China’s cyber program is by far and away the world’s largest– bigger than that of every major nation combined and has stolen more of Americans’ personal and corporate data than that of every nation, big or small, combined. But even beyond the cyber theft. There’s another part of the Chinese cyber threat that I think has not gotten the attention publicly that it I think desperately deserves. And that is Chinese government’s pre-positioning on American civilian critical infrastructure. To lie in wait on those networks to be in a position to wreak havoc and can inflict real-world harm at a time and place of their choosing.

Scott Pelley: The Chinese have already insinuated malware into critical American infrastructure?

Christopher Wray: That’s correct.

Scott Pelley: Like what?

Christopher Wray: Things like water treatment plants. We’re talking about transportation systems. We’re talking about targeting of our energy sector, the electric grid, natural gas pipelines. And recently we’ve seen targeting of our telecommunications systems.

Telecommunications, including intercepts at high-levels.

Scott Pelley: They have been listening to the telephone calls of people in the United States government?

Christopher Wray: Some people, we believe that they have collected their content, the actual communications of those people.

Wray wouldn’t say it, but we have confirmed China gathered communications of U.S. national security officials, the Kamala Harris campaign and Donald Trump himself. It’s part of a world of trouble, including the chaos in the Middle East—spawning new threats of terror.

*insert record scratch here* Hold the phone, please. Wray is right out admitting that the Chinese Communist government has planted malware into American infrastructure computer systems, has been spying on and collecting communications of American government officials, and Scott Pelley goes whistling past the graveyard to talk about how mean Donald Trump has been to Chris Wray. What the actual hell??? Maybe Pelley could commit an act of journalism and ask the obvious question here???

How were they allowed to get to that point? https://t.co/SxlOHxUZR2

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) January 12, 2025

Uh, Director Wray – what would you say that you do here? Whose job was it to THWART China from installing their malware? He doesn’t say that China tried, but that they had rooted it out, or any kind of reassurance that whatever China had planned has been blocked. Who, exactly, is supposed to be watching for this and preventing it? Who ALLOWED this to continue on? The Biden administration allowed a FREAKING SPY BALLOON to float over most of the United States before being shamed into shooting it down, but the damage was done. Joe Biden has insisted that we are in “competition, not conflict” with China, but it appears that the Biden way is simply to bend over for China because Hunter had “business” there, and write college recommendation letters for Hunter’s “business associate’s” kids. The FBI director admits that China is a threat that has malware targeting our water systems and energy infrastructure, and collecting data on Americans, and he never bothered to make a big deal about it before??? And Scott Pelley didn’t dig any deeper into this, but instead moves on to talk about how hard Wray has had to work???

If you wanted to know why Wray has to go, and why journalism is dead, look no further that this interchange.

Wray will be leaving his job in less than a week, and Joe Biden will be leaving his in exactly one more week. Change is coming at the FBI, and it will likely be named Kash Patel. Christopher Wray, you won’t be missed.

Featured image: FBI Director Christopher Wray, official portrait, cropped, public domain