Trump’s FBI pick faces questions on independence versus loyalty

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI will hear two questions repeatedly from senators at his confirmation hearing Wednesday: Did the president demand loyalty in exchange for his nomination, and can he stand up to the White House when the job requires it?

Trump’s pick, Christopher Wray, will step into a precarious job if confirmed to succeed James Comey, who was fired by the president in May after increasing frustration over a federal probe into Russia’s election-meddling and possible links to Trump associates. Comey said the president sought assurances of his loyalty at a private dinner meeting and later encouraged him to drop an investigation into fired National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

Wray, 50, has a history of taking on politically tough assignments. A former Justice Department official who helped the U.S. respond to the Sept. 11 attacks, Wray represented Credit Suisse Group AG before its main unit pleaded guilty in 2014 and paid $2.6 billion for helping thousands of Americans evade taxes. He also represented New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in the so-called Bridgegate scandal investigation of politically motivated traffic delays in 2013.

“He will not be influenced by politics in any way,” said Andrew Hruska, a former partner of Wray’s at King & Spalding LLP who has known the FBI nominee since Wray was 5 years old. “I have absolute confidence that Chris will keep the law first. He will do what is required of him under the Constitution at all times.”

Yet Wray’s nomination comes at a tumultuous time for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is still reeling from Comey’s dismissal and the subsequent appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel overseeing the federal Russia probe. Some agents have said they believe the FBI is at a historic tipping point of asserting its independence versus becoming politicized, as it was for decades until revisions in the mid-1970s.

Trump has continued to rail against the Russia probe, calling it “fake news” propagated by Democrats and an adversarial media frustrated about Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the 2016 election. He said Comey’s decision to leak notes he took about their meetings to the media was illegal, though it is still not clear if the material was classified. That leak, which Comey exposed in his own testimony to the Senate last month, may serve as a key point Republicans will raise during the Wray hearing.

Regardless, after meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Germany last week, Trump signaled that he’d like to move on from the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Moscow meddled in the election with the goal of helping defeat Clinton.

“What the two presidents, I think, rightly focused on is, how do we move forward?” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters in Germany. “Because it’s not clear to me that we will ever come to some agreed-upon resolution of that question between the two nations.”

The choice of Wray last month took many senators by surprise but was generally received positively. Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona said Wray “looks like he’s well credentialed,” while Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said, “I hear he had a good reputation.” House Speaker Paul Ryan said he “seems like the right person” for the job.

“I felt we should have a career person take over the FBI, someone with a deep bench of experience,” Ryan said June 7, when the nomination was announced. “He certainly seems to fit that bill.”