Politico: “Then-President Donald Trump sought to oust FBI Director Christopher Wray last spring and replace him with counterintelligence head William Evanina, according to three former Trump officials familiar with the episode. Under the plan, the former officials said, Kash Patel – a former aide to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and a fierce critic of the Russia probe – would have become the bureau’s deputy director. Previously unreported details of the proposal reveal just how seriously the former president took his grievances against the intelligence and law enforcement establishment. It shows Trump at his mercurial peak, ordering up the removal of his own appointee in a fit of rage, only to back down when then-Attorney General William Barr threatened to resign if he followed through with the maneuver. (Aspects of this story were first reported by Business Insider.)”

“Trump’s ire at Wray was episodic, flaring up whenever the low-key FBI chief crossed his radar. Congressional testimony on Russia, always a sensitive subject, could provoke Trump’s anger. So could Wray’s pronouncements on election security or his defenses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a law the former president blamed for enabling Democrats’ supposed ‘spying’ on his 2016 campaign. Trump also thought Wray was weak, according to one of the former Trump officials. A former Trump White House official said Trump ‘had always flirted with the idea’ of firing Wray. But back in April 2020, Trump’s zeal to oust Wray ‘was intense as it ever was and pretty constant then,’ recalled another former senior Trump official. On this occasion, it’s unclear what exactly had sparked Trump’s anger. But at the time, the president had recently beaten back Democrats’ first effort to impeach him – and felt liberated, the officials said.”