So many fucking cowards in key positions.

Obeying in Advance: The Christopher Wray Story

James Fallows

Despite these rules, eventually Trump would have found a way to fire Wray. OK. Wray should have made him do so, rather than removing himself.

Wray has done great damage with this decision and deserves to be scorned. Why?

1) Postponing the ‘inevitable’ can make a difference.

Maybe it is “inevitable” that Donald Trump would have gotten his way in controlling the FBI. But other people don’t have to make it quick and easy for him. Which is what Christopher Wray has just done.

Resistance can change the calculations of “inevitability.” An extreme example is Ukraine. In the first few days after Russia’s invasion, it seemed “inevitable” that Kyiv would immediately fall. Then President Zelenskyy and his comrades made their unforgettable “everyone is here” video. What will happen in the long run is unknowable. The price has been severe on all sides. But by resisting, Zelenskyy changed everyone’s calculations. By caving in, Wray did as well.

One of Donald Trump’s main tools, as the GOP has collapsed into subservience, is the perception of un-stoppability. He’s going to get his way in the end. So why waste your time standing up to him? Thus Lindsey Graham, Nikki Haley, “Little Marco,” and countless others have etched their role in history.

By making it slower and harder for Trump to get his way with the FBI, Director Wray might have protected the institution itself, and its dignity, and its commitment to continued leadership through changes of administration, for that much longer.² Crucially, he might have slowed down Donald Trump on other fronts, by inflicting on him another “loss.”

But he stepped aside. He gave Trump an easy and unnecessary win. Christopher Wray, please join James Comey in the ranks of FBI directors who went out having harmed the country.

2) ‘Do Not Obey in Advance.’

For the millionth time, I’ll quote Timothy Snyder, of Yale, from his best-selling book on “Twenty Lessons on Fighting Tyranny.” Christopher Wray has now given us what will stand as the classic example of violating Snyder’s Rule Number One:

1. Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.

“Teaching power what it can do.” That is the lesson Christopher Wray has given us. He magnifies Trump’s power. And demonstrates his own weakness, and by implication that of institutions more broadly.

The second lesson on Snyder’s list is also relevant:

2. Defend institutions. It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. So choose an institution you care about and take its side.

I’ve been fired myself, over a much lower-stakes difference of principle. You can survive. Christopher Wray made the wrong choice.

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