Christopher Wray Forced a Confirmation for His Successor

New York Times: “By stepping down now, as the conservative writer Erick Erickson observed, Wray has created a ‘legal obstacle to Trump trying to bypass the Senate confirmation process.’”

“Here’s why. According to the Vacancies Reform Act, if a vacancy occurs in a Senate-confirmed position, the president can temporarily replace that appointee (such as the F.B.I. director) only with a person who has already received Senate confirmation or with a person who’s served in a senior capacity in the agency (at the GS-15 pay scale) for at least 90 days in the year before the resignation.”

“Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s chosen successor at the F.B.I., meets neither of these criteria. He’s not in a Senate-confirmed position, and he’s not been a senior federal employee in the Department of Justice in the last year. That means he can’t walk into the job on Day 1.”