'Angry' Trump will fire FBI chief for not treating him as a victim of the Mueller probe: Conservative columnist

Although special counsel Robert Mueller finished his Russia investigation, President Donald Trump is still angry that the investigation happened in the first place — and conservative writer David Frum, in a May 13 article for The Atlantic, speculates that FBI Director Chris Wray could be the next U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) official who Trump fires.

On May 12, Trump tweeted that “the FBI has no leadership.” And Trump, according to Frum, is “angry” because he “wants the FBI to endorse his own theory of victimhood — and it won’t. Worse, the FBI was embedded in the Mueller investigation.”

Frum stresses that Trump is big on holding grudges and notes how different his response to Mueller’s report has been from President Ronald Reagan’s response to “being absolved of direct personal responsibility for Iran-Contra” in the 1980s. Frum writes that like Reagan after Iran-Contra, Trump’s approach could have been to “acknowledge mistakes, apologize for them, vow that lessons would be learned.” But that, Frum stresses, “is not the Trump way. The Trump way is to escalate, always.”

Frum continues, “What Trump means by leadership is compliance. He wants an FBI director who serves him personally the way Attorney General Barr has served him personally. So long as the FBI retains its integrity, Trump feels unsafe.”

The DOJ officials Trump has fired range from former FBI Director James Comey in 2017 to former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe to former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Wray, Frum stresses, is likely to be next — and with Wray’s firing will come “another attack on the independence of law enforcement.”