In case you’re wondering how the FBI Director is supposed to handle political pressure, Jack Goldsmith and Benjamin Wittes on Lawfare talk about it in a larger article concerning how current FBI Director Wray is currently interfacing with Attorney General Sessions:
One of the underappreciated benefits of Senate confirmation and a 10-year term for the FBI director is that it gives him an outlook and perspective that favor the rule of law and the integrity of law enforcement over high-profile presidential pressure. An FBI director can afford to fight with the president. Louis Freeh had a famously bad relationship with Bill Clinton. Yes, the president can fire the FBI director. But he almost certainly won’t—unless he’s Trump—and the firing would martyr the FBI director, not disgrace him. Conversely, no FBI director can afford to be pushed around publicly by the president and attorney general at the expense of a popular FBI career official the president is bullying, especially when that bullying is related, at least in the president’s mind, to an FBI investigation that involves the president, his campaign advisers and others close to him. To maintain his internal credibility, Wray’s loyalties simply must be with the forces he is charged with leading for a decade, long after Trump has departed from the scene. That’s all before one considers the mainstream attitudes Wray almost certainly holds—and that he professed at his confirmation hearing—about the proper relationship between the political echelon and law enforcement professionals.
And another illustration of the GOP‘s un-American deference to their putative leader:
Finally, a word about Attorney General Sessions. It says a lot about the man that he was willing to pressure Wray to remove McCabe—and that he was willing to put sufficient pressure on him to provoke a conflict. Of course, in theory, the attorney general—who supervises the FBI director—should be able to discuss with the FBI director who the deputy director should be. But in context, when the president is attacking McCabe and explicitly tying the attacks to the Russia investigation, and when Sessions is recused from that investigation, the proper role for Sessions is actually the one that Wray played here. The job of the attorney general here was to try to uphold and defend the FBI’s independence. Not only did Sessions not do that, at least according to Axios, but Wray had to do it, to protect the FBI from the attorney general himself.
I hope that part of the conclusion of this dubious episode in American political history will include a strong discussion of the importance of the independence of the Justice Department from the President, even though he nominates and supervises the Attorney General. Most Presidents usually nominate strong candidates, but Trump nominated someone who supported him early on, expecting slavish loyalty, and was shocked when he didn’t get it.
And I’d never really thought about this complex balancing act. Most Americans are probably puzzled by this entire little dance, and it wouldn’t hurt if we were able to take the time to explain it in greater detail, after Trump is gone.
