Nominee did it the right Wray
President Trump’s pick to head the FBI, Christopher Wray, rose through the ranks of the Justice Department to oversee major corporate-fraud probes and a multi-agency task force that helped convict nearly all the top execs in the Enron stock scam.
Wray, 50, began his law-enforcement career as a federal prosecutor in Atlanta, where he won the conviction of the Braves pitcher-turned-countysheriff, Pat Jarvis, in a corruption scam that involved cash payoffs hidden in a foam cup.
Wray wound up as assistant attorney general in charge of the Criminal Division, where he sided with then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey — whom he is poised to succeed as FBI director — during a 2004 crisis over a warrantless domestic-surveillance program.
After Comey helped block White House officials from getting ailing AG John Ashcroft to sign off on extending the program from his hospital bed, word spread that top officials would quit in protest if then President George W. Bush reauthorized it anyway.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but before you guys all pull the rip cords, please give me a heads-up so I can jump with you,” Wray told Comey, according to the 2008 book “Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency” by Barton Gellman.
Upon leaving the DOJ in 2005, Wray received the Edmund J. Randolph Award, the department’s highest honor for public service and leadership.
Since then, the Yale College and Yale Law School grad has been a King & Spalding partner and chair of the international firm’s Special Matters and Government Investigations Practice Group.