President Donald Trump has "100 percent confidence" in FBI Director Christopher Wray — and if any staff shake-up is needed, "we'll leave that in his hands," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday.
"We have 100 percent confidence in Director Wray," Sanders told reporters. "If anybody is going to make that decision, it'll be the director.
"We're going to leave that in his hands."
Axios reported Monday that Wray had threatened to resign amid pressure from Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire his deputy, Andrew McCabe, who headed the Hillary Clinton email probe.
Wray relented when Sessions backed off after White House counsel Donald McGahn told the attorney general the issue was not worth losing the FBI chief over.
Sanders said President Trump's tweet Tuesday about missing texts by a former FBI senior agent who had been removed from Russia special counsel Robert Mueller's probe showed his "great cause for concern" about bias at the agency.
"He thinks that there's a great cause for concern that five months' worth of texts have gone missing, particularly given the individual that was part of that process has been shown to be extremely biased against the president and was involved in what seems to be very inappropriate behavior," she said.
". . . It looks like there could have been really inappropriate and possibly illegal behavior."
The Washington Post reported Sunday the FBI said it had "failed to preserve" the text messages involving senior agent Peter Strzok, who was removed from the Mueller probe after reports that he had made negative comments about President Trump.
Sanders, however, declined to call for a shake-up within the agency's top ranks by Wray.
"I haven't gone member by member of every single person in the top ranks of the FBI," she told reporters. "The president has a great deal and respect for the rank-and-file members of the FBI and a great deal of confidence in Director Wray.
"He feels that if any changes need to be made, the director will make that decision and carry them out."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.