Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

FBI Director Chris Wray Announces Plans To Resign; NYPD: Gun On Mangione Matched Casings At Scene Where CEO Killed; Source: Mangione's Notebook Pages Contained To-Do List for Act; Rep. Warren Davidson (R- OH) Discusses About Christopher Wray's Resignation Decision; Source: Hegseth Meeting with Three Critical Senators Today. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired December 11, 2024 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:01:17]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN BREAKING NEWS.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Our breaking news, FBI Director Christopher Wray says he will resign at the end of the Biden administration. It's an announcement that came just last hour. President-elect Donald Trump had already made it clear he would replace Wray with loyalist Kash Patel.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: It's important to remember that it was Trump himself who appointed Wray, a fellow Republican who still has three years remaining on his 10-year term. We're, of course, covering all the angles of this story. CNN's Evan Perez, Kristen Holmes and Lauren Fox are on the story.

Evan, first to you at the Department of Justice. What are you hearing?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Boris, this was a little bit of a surprise. The FBI Director does an annual all-hands meeting with employees around the country. And what happened today was he moved up that traditional meeting that he does. And in this case, he announced that he was planning to resign. He's resigning at the end of the Biden term, which is, of course, January 20th, and ahead of the arrival of the new president, Donald Trump.

Now, as you pointed out, Donald Trump had already made clear that he plans to replace Christopher Wray, that he was unhappy with the leadership of the FBI. And he had already chosen Kash Patel, who has begun making the rounds on Capitol Hill, to be confirmed as the next FBI director. The FBI director held a meeting last hour with employees and here is some of what he said.

He said, "After weeks of careful thought, I have decided the right thing for the Bureau is for me to serve until the end of the current administration in January and then step down. My goal is to keep the focus on our mission - the indispensable work you're doing on behalf of the American people every day. In my view, this is the best way to avoid dragging the Bureau deeper into the fray, while reinforcing the values and principles that are so important, so - to how we do our work."

Now, one of the things that we know behind the scenes that's been happening, Boris, is that the director has been meeting with people he knows, people he trusts inside the Bureau, to try to figure out how best to do this. The consideration here was, do you resign before January 20, or do you wait for Donald Trump to come in and do the actual firing?

And in the end, the director decided that one of the things he wanted to do was to find a way to say goodbye to the employees. He's been serving there, obviously, close to seven years, off the 10-year term. Part of the pushback that he was getting inside the Bureau and from people here at the Justice Department was, you know, you can't just leave, because that normalizes the idea that you can just replace FBI directors when you just don't like the - what they're doing or their work.

Donald Trump, of course, fired James Comey in 2017, and he appointed Chris Wray. Chris Wray still had three more years left on that 10-year term. But some of that consideration, I think, changed over the last few days. You started seeing Republicans in Congress, Chuck Grassley, for instance, sending a letter saying that he lacked confidence in Chris Wray and the FBI leadership. That is part of what you see maybe changing the calculation here for the FBI Director.

KEILAR: Yes, no doubt. Evan, thank you so much. Stand by for us, if you would. Let's go to Kristen Holmes, who is live near Mar-a-Lago. What's the reaction like coming from inside of Trump's circle, Kristen?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna and Boris, we just got a statement from Donald Trump on Truth Social moments ago where he is essentially celebrating the resignation of Christopher Wray. Unsurprisingly he says, "The resignation of Christopher Wray is a great day for America as it will end the weaponization of what has become known as the United States Department of Injustice."

[15:05:08]

Obviously, we've heard him say this before. "I just don't know what happened to him. We will now restore the rule of law for all Americans. Under the leadership of Christopher Wray, the FBI illegally raided my home without cause, worked diligently on illegally impeaching and indicting me, and has done everything else to interfere with the success and future of America." It goes on and on.

But I do want to kind of stop here because I think this is really the key of where Donald Trump's head was at when it came to Christopher Wray and the FBI. This was the real turning point with Christopher Wray, was when his house was searched, not raided, but searched in 2022 for classified documents by the FBI. This ultimately led to his indictment, Donald Trump's indictment in 2023. But this was clearly a turning point for Donald Trump when it came to Christopher Wray.

Now, it was unsurprising to some in Donald Trump's circle that Christopher Wray decided to resign because there really were only two options, as Evan said, to resign or Donald Trump was going to fire him so that he could install Kash Patel or at least nominate Kash Patel officially and have him go through the process. Donald Trump was intent on getting rid of Christopher Wray and starting over at the FBI.

And what we have seen on Capitol Hill, and I know Lauren will probably talk more about this, was a more receptive audience to this idea of getting rid of Christopher Wray and putting in Kash Patel, more receptive audience among senators when it came to Kash Patel than even Donald Trump's transition team was expecting.

And I will remind you that just a few days ago, Donald Trump was point blank asked if he was going to fire Christopher Wray and what he said was, well, I'm putting up Kash Patel for the job, so it would seem that he has to have a job to take. There has to be an opening there and we're going to get to that opening either way.

And clearly the way Christopher Wray decided on his own accord was to leave with a resignation rather than wait for Donald Trump to take action and fire him.

SANCHEZ: Yes, the writing was on the wall for Wray.

Kristen Holmes, thank you so much.

Let's go up to Capitol Hill now with CNN's Lauren Fox. Because Evan alluded to this a moment ago, Lauren, lawmakers had kind of been telegraphing to Wray that he should consider resigning.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: Yes, exactly. And just a few minutes ago, I actually talked to Sen. John Cornyn. He's a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. And I asked him, you know, what is your initial reaction to this news? And he said, this is probably for the best.

Now, he called Wray an honorable guy. He said the politicization of the Justice Department was something that in his view had happened before Wray had actually taken over. But he said clearly Trump did not have confidence in the current FBI director. And he said this was probably the most straightforward and best thing for the department. I think you heard that echoed in what Evan said that Wray delivered to his employees earlier today.

But one thing to keep in mind here is that this was all coming amid the backdrop of Republican senators like Sen. Cornyn meeting this week with Kash Patel. And Cornyn told me just a couple of days ago that barring any unforeseen circumstances, he was prepared to potentially vote for Kash Patel.

Now, he was asked, you know, if Kash Patel gets this job, are you confident that he is going to be able to return the Department of Justice to being an agency that Americans, including MAGA World, can support and think is not politicized? And he said time is really going to tell.

He did not give a definitive answer. And that is coming from someone who said that he is prepared to vote for Kash Patel in this moment, barring any unforeseen circumstances.

I also talked to Sen. Ted Cruz, another member of the Judiciary Committee, who is a Republican, who said, look, this is the best thing, because the writing was on the wall. This is where we knew it was headed. It's better for Christopher Wray, perhaps, that he'd make this decision, rather than be forced into it in just a couple of weeks.

KEILAR: Yes. Lauren, thank you so much. Let's go back to Evan Perez now at DOJ.

Evan, you have some more on what it was like inside the room as Wray announced this. This was a bureau kind of town hall event.

PEREZ: Right, Brianna. It was a standing room only crowd inside this conference center there at the FBI headquarters just across the street from where I'm sitting. And we're told that, you know, there were people who were anticipating that perhaps something might be coming today.

And certainly, once he was finished with his remarks, there was a standing ovation, a full standing ovation for several minutes. There were some people who were seen crying in the room, you know, again, to reinforce that there is this - there is a lot of respect for Chris Wray inside the FBI. I will say that, you know, some - among the retired FBI core (ph), the people who have left the Bureau, there is a certain amount of dissatisfaction with Chris Wray.

[15:10:02]

And part of it because a lot of them, frankly, are Trump supporters and they don't like some of what the FBI has been doing the last couple of years. And so what you see, though, from the troops, the people at the FBI, is certainly a lot of respect for Chris Wray. He's well-liked among those FBI employees, and you saw that today as he made his remarks. Brianna, Boris?

SANCHEZ: Evan Perez, live for us from DOJ. Thank you so much.

Let's get into this further with retired FBI Special Agent, Daniel Brunner. He's also the president of The Brunner Sierra Group.

Dan, thanks so much for being with us.

Your reaction to this news, are you surprised by this resignation of FBI Director Wray?

DAN BRUNNER, RETIRED FBI SPECIAL AGENT: No. To be honest with you, Boris, I'm not. I expected this to be coming down the pipelines. I had hoped, I did not know where it would be, whether he was going to stick around to be fired. You know, a lot of those individuals were saying that he should stick around and not change the precedents. But I'm glad that he is going out on his terms and he's setting the tone.

The FBI was under very good leadership under Director Wray for seven years and most and half of my career. So it was a good administration, it was a good organization. Like any other organization, there's always room for improvement. And I believe a new director will change some things up and it will be an improvement. But I'm not too surprised about this resignation.

He does these town halls from time to time. I had heard rumors this morning that this could be coming, it could be an announcement today, so I'm not surprised at all.

KEILAR: What are your concerns about - or maybe you don't have concerns, what are you thinking about Kash Patel as potentially the next FBI director?

BRUNNER: I think Kash Patel has got a, you know, he's got a large desk to fill. I think he's coming in with a lot of loud ideas. He has yet to prove himself, obviously. And I think he's going through up on the Hill, talking to the senators and trying to convince them. You know, he's got a large step from what he was doing as a chief of staff to running a 35,000-person organization.

I think a lot of his statements that he said in podcasts before, I don't think he can - he can't do that. He can't shut down the FBI headquarters and send all 7,000 employees into the field. Because 6,000 of them - 6,000 of those employees are not gun-carrying agents, so that can't be done.

So I think that he, you know, can come in. I hope he listens to those that are there. I hope he learns about the organization from the inside. He has his opinions about the organization, which are rightfully so. The FBI needs improvements. And I will be the first one to say that there are problems at the DOJ, there are problems at the FBI, and that those things can be changed.

But the most important thing is I hope he comes in, listens to those that are there and he changes - he makes the changes he wants to change. But at the end of the day, no matter what - I know that the - and I talk to a lot of the street agents that are still in the field, they're going to continue to uphold the Constitution, and they're going to continue to follow the lawful orders, all of those that are above them.

SANCHEZ: Speaking to some of those lawful orders, and it's mentioned specifically in the social media post that Donald Trump just made, Dan, the chief criticism that we've heard from Donald Trump of Christopher Wray was the FBI searching Mar-a-Lago, and as Trump describes it, illegally raiding my home without cause. He talks about illegal - working diligently to illegally impeach and indict him. I wonder what you make of those criticisms of Wray, if fundamentally that search of Mar-a-Lago was ordered by a court, it was approved by a grand jury, signed off on by a judge. Was there much that Christopher Wray could have done to please Donald Trump in that situation?

BRUNNER: No, I believe that he was just in a position where he was going to be the fall guy. And he had those searches of Mar-a-Lago and the other things surrounding that investigation and other investigations that are under question were all legally obtained in front of a judge. Evidence had to be shown, probable cause had to be shown, all the tracks of the investigation up until that point had to be shown to the court before it was a legally signed off warrant, a search warrant, and to conduct a search at Mar-a-Lago.

So I believe that Director Wray, and I'm sure he had the final approval on the search, and at the end of the day, he's going to be the fall guy because he's the director of the FBI at the time of the search. So there had to be someone to take the brunt of the storm.

SANCHEZ: Dan Brunner, very much appreciate your perspective, thanks for joining us.

BRUNNER: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Still to come, officials now telling CNN about a shell casing and - or rather multiple shell casings and fingerprint evidence that they believe could tie Luigi Mangione to the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

[15:15:04]

This as investigators track down new clues about a potential motive. The latest on this investigation when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:19:20]

KEILAR: Some breaking developments now about perhaps the most damning evidence yet against Luigi Mangione, who is the 26-year-old man accused of assassinating UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. New York Police say the gun that was found on Mangione when he was arrested in Pennsylvania on Monday has been matched to evidence at the crime scene. Here's the Police Commissioner.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COMMISSIONER JESSICA TISCH, NEW YORK POLICE: First, we got the gun in question back from Pennsylvania. It's now at the NYPD crime lab. We were able to match that gun to the three shell casings that we found in Midtown at the scene of the homicide.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[15:20:00]

KEILAR: CNN Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst, John Miller, is here with us.

John, these shell casings that the commissioner is talking about here, are these - those ones that had been marked with words, we would expect by the gunman, that were found at the scene?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Two of them are, and one of those unfired bullets was also marked with writing. But what you've seen here is a couple of turns today. First, yesterday, with the matching of the fingerprint found on the phone and the water bottle and other evidence they collected from the scene to the prints taken in the arrest.

So, that puts, in theory, allegedly, the suspect they have in Pennsylvania at the scene of the New York murder. But the gun is with him in Pennsylvania. How does that tie to the New York murder?

Well, with the ballistic match to the shell casings found on the ground there, that puts the gun and the prints in New York, and then the gun and the person whose prints they - those are in Pennsylvania. So, when you hear statements that the defense attorney is making, and that's his job, which is, you know, there's no indication that my client is the person involved, if this physical and forensic evidence is what it - is meant to be, that puts him in both places. He and the gun in Pennsylvania, and he and the gun in New York.

KEILAR: And what are we learning about fingerprint evidence, John?

MILLER: Well, the fingerprint evidence was a match that was made yesterday from the latent prints that they picked up at the scene, principally off a discarded burner phone, which could have belonged to somebody else. It had a print on it.

But remember, until they had this arrest the other day, they didn't have anybody to compare that to. They ran it through the AFIS system that runs prints against all of the known people who have been arrested across the country, just like they ran those shell casings through the NIBIN system, ATF's National Integrated Ballistic Network, to see did they match any shell casings that were found at other crime scenes anywhere in the country. And both of them came out not in the records.

So, in this case, they now know who that print belongs to, according to police, and they now know that those shell casings belonged to the gun that was with him when he was picked up in McDonald's. Now, the third piece, of course, is going to be DNA. DNA that they recovered from a number of surfaces, including the phone and the water bottle at the scene, versus the DNA that they take from him when they extract it.

KEILAR: And what have you learned about a notebook that contained evidence of a potential motive?

MILLER: When he was arrested, according to people briefed on the case, he had a three-page document, you know, that was handwritten. But separate from that, there was a spiral notebook. And in the notebook, there were basically his notes for the preparation of the assassination of Brian Thompson, to-do lists, things he needed to obtain, places he needed to go, items that, you know, needed to be checked off, but also some thoughts on justification, comparing what he is doing against health care executives to what the Unabomber, what Ted Kaczynski was doing to other big businesses when he was sending out those kind of random bombs to executives.

But he said, in a bombing, I could have collateral damage. I could end up killing innocents who were not my target. He said, what better way to do this than to shoot the CEO of the largest company at his own bean-counting conference, to paraphrase. KEILAR: Wow. John Miller, thank you so much for the very latest here, such intense interest on this, and we do appreciate it.

MILLER: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Turning now back to our top story, FBI Director Christopher Wray announcing his intention to resign. Wray still had three years remaining on his 10-year term, although President-elect Donald Trump previously announced that he would nominate Kash Patel for that role. Let's discuss with Republican Congressman Warren Davidson of Ohio. Congressman, thank you so much for sharing part of your afternoon with us.

Your reaction to FBI Director Christopher Wray announcing that he will resign at the end of the Biden administration?

REP. WARREN DAVIDSON (R-OH): Yes, it's welcome news. We're very excited about it. The FBI is broken. We need Kash now.

SANCHEZ: What is it about Kash Patel that makes Republicans like yourself excited about? Is he, in your eyes, the most qualified nominee to lead the FBI in the agency's history, as President Trump just put it on social media?

DAVIDSON: Well, let's look at when Donald Trump nominated Christopher Wray, he was an insider. He was supposed to be a trusted, reform- minded insider to kind of restore trust of the American people after James Comey had undermined that trust.

[15:25:04]

He had Republicans and Democrats that were frustrated in the 2016 election cycle because they felt Comey had overly politicized the FBI. So Wray came in and was supposed to restore trust. I think objectively, anyone has to say that has completely failed. Trust in the FBI is at all-time lows. Christopher Wray made things worse, not better.

So now you'll see a very consistent theme from the incoming Trump administration. They're trying proven, trusted outsiders who know they intend to reform things. When Donald Trump said drain the swamp, he was over the target. And this time he's finding outsiders who are very committed to that.

SANCHEZ: Trump described Wray as a man of impeccable qualifications when he nominated him. He got confirmed by the Senate 92-5. What is it that you say he objectively did wrong?

DAVIDSON: He failed to restore trust in the FBI. He was clearly politicizing it. They were weaponizing the FBI against all kinds of folks.

Remember, not long ago it was a conspiracy theory to say that the FBI was working with tech companies to silence, you know, political opponents. And then Elon Musk bought Twitter, rebranded it as X, and we had Matt Taibbi come testify before the House Weaponization Committee. The very day he's testifying before the committee, the IRS serves a warrant to search his previous tax returns. They want to do an audit on him. Or not the FBI, the IRS comes in and wants to audit him.

So they said, oh, we weren't doing that. By the end this Congress ...

SANCHEZ: What does that have to do with Christopher Wray, though?

DAVIDSON: Mark Zuckerberg is out there saying - no, because he leads the FBI, and who was leading the ringleader for silencing speech? It was the FBI. Mark Zuckerberg saying, yes, this was going on and we were being asked to do it. Look at what was made public by the Judiciary Committee about banks. They would say to banks, hey, we need your records on so-and-so. And they'd say, yes, that's fine, give us a warrant or subpoena.

And instead of doing that, they would pick up the phone and say, hey, you don't really need a warrant or subpoena, do you? Could you just hand over the files on this? Create some suspicious activity reports. And, look, we talked about Operation Chokepoint, how people were being debunked for years and it got no traction.

Suddenly it goes on Joe Rogan with Marc Andreessen, and now people go, oh, yes, it's actually happening. The New York Times just this week finally reported the truth. It's not a conspiracy theory. So who's at the center of all this? It's all these three-letter agencies like the FBI, led by people like Chris Wray. So all these consummate insiders that were supposedly 92 to 5 no-brainers to be confirmed, they haven't been proven trustworthy. They've completely destroyed the trust of the American people, and we need people to come in from outside to do what they failed to do.

SANCHEZ: So some of your Republican colleagues in the Senate especially, like Chuck Grassley, Lindsey Graham, and others, who have described Christopher Wray as an honorable man, as someone who has done good things for the agency, you don't agree with him at all?

DAVIDSON: I think, look, prior to being picked as director of the FBI, he did have the confidence of a lot of people, but his performance on the job was terrible. And so, frankly, I thought that President Trump should have fired him in his first term, let alone you see how he continued to conduct himself.

Really, you're going to provide a list of pro-life Catholics to the FBI, and you're going to put them on watch lists? I mean, you're going to go after parents who show up at a school board meeting, and you've got the FBI pushing out the field offices to target people that show up - working with the Department of Education to create a pretext to investigate American citizens who make their voices heard at school board meetings?

And that says nothing of how they've targeted people who committed trespassing acts on January 6th. So they've completely used the power of the office to undermine the trust of the American people. And meanwhile, they denied that crime was getting worse. This was on Christopher Wray's watch, and it had to be fact-checked right in the closing days of the election. So every way he could undermine trust, he did. So he started out fine, but no, we don't trust him anymore.

SANCHEZ: Some of those folks were accused of very serious crimes that you just ran through, and also the folks that were trespassing on January 6th. I mean, the legal system essentially adjudicated what they deserved. They were tried, and many of them were convicted. Some of their cases are still being figured out. But they were - they went through a legal process. I don't know if all of that falls on Christopher Wray. Nevertheless, I ...

DAVIDSON: The largest spend of resources in America's history, the biggest spend of resources, the largest manhunt in America's history is going after people ...

SANCHEZ: Perhaps one of the biggest stains in its history as well is what happened on January 6th. Nevertheless, sir, we brought you on to talk about Pete Hegseth ...

DAVIDSON: We talk - this is about as bad of a misuse of power ...

SANCHEZ: ... and I want to ask you about that before we go, sir.

DAVIDSON: Yes, okay.

SANCHEZ: You've expressed support for Hegseth as the secretary of defense, arguing that he's been wrongly criticized as a lightweight. The Department of Defense is the biggest employer in the country.

[15:30:02]

There's something like 2 million service members, plus hundreds of thousands of civilian employees and contractors.