Jake Moody slipped on the opening kickoff. Deebo Samuel Sr. and Eric Saubert slipped while running routes. Brandon Allen slipped three times, resulting in a near fumble, an incompletion and an actual fumble. “Yeah it started snowing, raining, whatever, in the second half a little bit so it just made it a little bit slicker and it kind of killed us on one play where I could have got it to JJ ( Jauan Jennings ),” Allen said. “I started slipping on it and then the fumble. That one is so on top of my mind right now.” Brandon Allen slipped three times Sunday and teammates had trouble keeping their footing as well. It was reminiscent of the recent wet playoff game at Levi’s — the 49ers kept slipping, the Packers seemed OK. pic.twitter.com/HcqFzVMSk2 — Matt Barrows (@mattbarrows) November 25, 2024 Astute fans might remember that the San Francisco 49ers had slipping issues the last time the teams played, in the 2023 divisional round of the playoffs at wet Levi’s Stadium. As was the case in January, the 49ers had all sorts of footing issues but the Green Bay Packers had none. “There were definitely issues with the footing,” Kyle Shanahan said Monday. “It happened to our quarterback on a number of plays, but it happened to a bunch of guys throughout the game. Guys were fixing their cleats. Some did it pre-game, some did right after the game (started). But that’s an issue at Lambeau that time of year.” Advertisement The Packers had a 2-to-1 advantage in time of possession at halftime, and finished with an advantage of 36:43 to 23:17. Thanks to two fumbles, an interception and two turnovers on downs, Green Bay’s average starting position was their own 44. The 49ers’ was their own 25. The 49ers played 72 snaps on defense and 49 on offense, their fewest of the season. Here’s how the individual snaps broke down ... Quarterback: Allen 49 Shanahan said Brock Purdy (shoulder) did some light throwing on Monday and emerged from the session feeling good. The plan is to rest him on Tuesday and to see how it feels before Wednesday’s practice. “We didn’t push him that hard,” Shanahan said. “But he did some light throwing, which was a good sign. We’ll rest him tomorrow and see how he feels as the week goes.” Purdy had two MRIs last week — one on Monday and another Thursday after his throwing session that day went poorly. Neither revealed any structural damage. Allen, meanwhile, tried to push the ball down the field more than Purdy had in recent weeks but wasn’t always successful. One throw to Jennings over the middle was behind the receiver. One to Samuel was nearly intercepted by linebacker Quay Walker . Another to Samuel went through Samuel’s hands and was intercepted. Overall, Allen was 2 of 6 with a 53.5 passer rating in the middle of the field between 10 and 20 yards, which in previous years had been the sweet spot for the 49ers’ passing attack. As for the finger injury on Allen’s non-throwing hand, he popped up on the team’s practice participation report on the Thursday before the Nov. 10 game in Tampa. He said that week it was the result of a snap snafu and that he was fine. He was a full participant in practices that week and wasn’t part of the team’s practice participation reports beyond that week. Advertisement “He’s fine,” Shanahan said Sunday when asked about the finger. “He hurt his finger like three weeks ago.” Shanahan said Allen would remain the starter if Purdy can’t play Sunday in Buffalo. GO DEEPER 49ers fall apart in blowout loss to Packers: ‘The worst I’ve been a part of' Running back: Christian McCaffrey 40, Kyle Juszczyk (fullback) 20, Jordan Mason 9, George Kittle 2, Saubert 1 Mason got two snaps — including a team-best 16-yard run — in the third quarter, then got clean-up duty after McCaffrey’s fumble in the fourth quarter. The 49ers’ 44 rushing yards were their fewest since rushing for 39 yards in a Week 9 loss in 2021 to the Arizona Cardinals . Free, daily NFL updates direct to your inbox. document.querySelectorAll(".in-content-module[data-module-id='scoop-city-newsletter'] .in-content-module-img img ").forEach((el) => { el.setAttribute("style", "pointer-events: none;");}) Free, daily NFL updates direct to your inbox. Receiver: Jennings 45, Samuel 33, Ricky Pearsall 33, Ronnie Bell 5, Chris Conley 4 For the second straight week, the 49ers got little production from Samuel and Pearsall despite them combining for 66 snaps. Samuel was targeted four times, catching one pass for 21 yards on a gadget play — a nicely executed flea-flicker screen. Pearsall, meanwhile, was targeted six times in the Week 10 game against Tampa Bay . He had two targets and no catches last week and no targets on Sunday. Tight end: Kittle 39, Saubert 12, Jake Tonges 1, Brayden Willis 1 Kittle’s six catches against the Packers gave him 509 career receptions and moved him past Roger Craig and into third place in franchise catches. The only two ahead of him in that category are a pair of Pro Football Hall of Fame wide receivers, Terrell Owens (592) and Jerry Rice (1,281). Kittle, who missed last week’s game against Seattle , ranks third among tight ends in receiving yards this season (642) behind the Las Vegas Raiders’ Brock Bowers (744) and the Arizona Cardinals’ Trey McBride (685). Kittle’s eight touchdown catches trail only the Cincinnati Bengals’ Ja’Marr Chase (12) and the Detroit Lions’ Amon Ra-St. Brown (9). George Kittle ladies and gents. 📺 #SFvsGB on FOX NFL+ // https://t.co/KTh0i4nCVJ pic.twitter.com/YVJGOBSIy9 — San Francisco 49ers (@49ers) November 24, 2024 Offensive line: Jaylon Moore 49, Jake Brendel 49, Dominick Puni 49, Colton McKivitz 49, Aaron Banks 42, Ben Bartch 7 Moore, who was essentially the team’s left tackle in training camp as Trent Williams held out, got Pro Football Focus’ second-highest grade on Sunday behind Kittle. He allowed two pressures and graded well as a blocker, which isn’t supposed to be his strong suit. Advertisement Meanwhile, the 49ers might have to tap into their depth at guard this week. Banks had a concussion and is in the protocol. Puni, meanwhile, suffered a shoulder injury. He was getting an MRI when Shanahan spoke to the media Monday and the results were not available. Finally, the 49ers closed Jon Feliciano ’s practice window. Shanahan said Feliciano’s knee never responded the way the team hoped and he will now be shut down for the season. Feliciano, 32, is scheduled to be a free agent in March. He took to X as Shanahan was speaking Monday. Tried my hardest. Father Time real. Hoping this ain’t the end but if it is, Hell of a ride — Jonathan Feliciano (@MongoFeliciano) November 25, 2024 Others on the active roster who can play guard are Bartch, Spencer Burford and Nick Zakelj . Bartch filled in at left guard Sunday when Banks left the game. He had been inactive in the first 10 games but was in uniform due to Williams’ absence. Defensive line: Maliek Collins 47, Yetur Gross-Matos 46, Sam Okuayinonu 45, Leonard Floyd 44, Evan Anderson 36, Kalia Davis 30, Jordan Elliott 26, Robert Beal Jr. 21 Okuayinonu’s 45 snaps were a career high and it was a mild surprise when he, not Gross-Matos, started opposite Floyd at defensive end. Gross-Matos didn’t enter until the ninth play of the game. Floyd, meanwhile, has finished each of the last four seasons with at least nine sacks. A few weeks ago, it was hard to see him keeping that streak intact. But he had 1 1/2 last week and two more on Sunday and now sits at 6 1/2 with six games to go. It’s also noteworthy that Anderson, the undrafted rookie, out-snapped Davis (and also was tapped over newcomer Khalil Davis , who was inactive). Among defensive linemen, Anderson tied with Floyd and Gross-Matos for a team-high four tackles. Elliott is in the concussion protocol. After going through all of training camp and half the season without a concussion, the 49ers have had four in the last four games: Dee Winters (Week 8), Jacob Cowing (Week 11), Elliott and Banks (Week 12). Advertisement Quarterback pressures: Linebacker: Fred Warner 72, Campbell 67, Winters 22 The 49ers missed 10 tackles in the first quarter and the problems didn’t stop there. Per Pro Football Focus, they finished with 19, the most PFF has ever documented for a 49ers game since it started charting games in 2006. Warner led the way with four missed tackles, the most for any 49er in one game this season. Shanahan said the 49ers came up with a different number for missed tackles — 12 — and defended Warner’s play in recent weeks. “I still think Fred’s the man. I think Fred’s playing at a high level,” he said. “I know he had four missed tackles, which is too much for anyone, way too much for him. So obviously, he can do better in that way. But Fred’s still playing like one of the best linebackers in the league. I know he’s got a real high standard. So when he has something like (Sunday’s performance) it’s gonna stick out.” The 49ers plan to open Dre Greenlaw ’s (Achilles) practice window this week and he’s expected to practice on Wednesday. That will be his first practice since getting ready for the Super Bowl in February at UNLV’s practice fields. Missed tackles: Cornerback: Lenoir 67, Yiadom 59, Green 47, Rock Ya-Sin 19 Opponents have been picking on Green over the past two weeks. He’s allowed completions on 10 of 13 targets for 129 yards and opposing quarterbacks have a passer rating of 107.5 in those games. Green hurt his neck late Sunday and was replaced by Ya-Sin. Green is considered day to day. Lenoir, meanwhile, banged knees with an opponent during the game. He returned to the contest but, like Puni, was getting an MRI on Monday afternoon. Yiadom, meanwhile, gave up just one completion on three targets, though the outing could have been far worse. Receiver Christian Watson dropped what would have been a 49-yard touchdown at the end of the second quarter. Advertisement Safety: Brown 72, Mustapha 72, George Odum 1 There was one exception to Sunday’s missed-tackle convention: Mustapha. He prominently zipped in from the secondary to stop running back Josh Jacobs in his tracks on one play and finished tied with Yiadom for a team-high nine tackles. Brown? He had been on a four-game streak with no missed tackles but had three against the Packers. He also could not come down with a makable interception in the third quarter. Special teams: Odum 23, Beal 20, Conley 17, Winters 17, Saubert 16, Jalen Graham 16, Willis 15, Yiadom 13, Nick McCloud 10, Mason 10, Tonges 9, Isaac Guerendo 7, Ya-Sin 7, Campbell 6, Gross-Matos 6, Warner 6, Collins 6, Brown 6, Anderson 6, Moody 5, Pat O’Donnell 5, Taybor Pepper 5, Lenoir 5, Pearsall 4, Tashaun Gipson Sr. 4, Samuel 3, Davis 3, Elliott 3, Burford 2, Zakelj 2, Banks 2, McKivitz 2, Moore 2, Puni 2, Green 1 Samuel had an 87-yard kick return to begin the second half that would have continued the momentum the 49ers had built at the end of the first half. However, it was wiped away by a holding call on Saubert that seemed more like a pancake block upon review. Kyle Shanahan said Deebo Samuel’s 87-yard kick return might have changed the momentum of the game if not for a holding call on Eric Saubert (which seemed more like a pancake block). pic.twitter.com/lbpW0EFJUa — Matt Barrows (@mattbarrows) November 25, 2024 Guerendo, meanwhile, had his second kickoff fumble of the season in the second quarter. The 49ers didn’t lose this one, but Guerendo was out, and Samuel in, on kick returns from that point forth. (Top photo of Brock Purdy and Brandon Allen: Todd Rosenberg / Getty Images)Social media users are misrepresenting a report released Thursday by the Justice Department inspector general's office, falsely claiming that it's proof the FBI orchestrated the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. The watchdog report examined a number of areas, including whether major intelligence failures preceded the riot and whether the FBI in some way provoked the violence. Claims spreading online focus on the report's finding that 26 FBI informants were in Washington for election-related protests on Jan. 6, including three who had been tasked with traveling to the city to report on others who were potentially planning to attend the events. Although 17 of those informants either entered the Capitol or a restricted area around the building during the riot, none of the 26 total informants were authorized to do so by the bureau, according to the report. Nor were they authorized to otherwise break the law or encourage others to do so. Here's a closer look at the facts. CLAIM: A December 2024 report released by the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General is proof that the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was a setup by the FBI. THE FACTS: That's false. The report found that no undercover FBI employees were at the riot on Jan. 6 and that none of the bureau's informants were authorized to participate. Informants, also known as confidential human sources, work with the FBI to provide information, but are not on the bureau’s payroll. Undercover agents are employed by the FBI. According to the report, 26 informants were in Washington on Jan. 6 in connection with the day's events. FBI field offices only informed the Washington Field Office or FBI headquarters of five informants that were to be in the field on Jan. 6. Of the total 26 informants, four entered the Capitol during the riot and an additional 13 entered a restricted area around the Capitol. But none were authorized to do so by the FBI, nor were they given permission to break other laws or encourage others to do the same. The remaining nine informants did not engage in any illegal activities. None of the 17 informants who entered the Capitol or surrounding restricted area have been prosecuted, the report says. A footnote states that after reviewing a draft of the report, the U.S. attorney's office in Washington said that it “generally has not charged those individuals whose only crime on January 6, 2021 was to enter restricted grounds surrounding the Capitol, which has resulted in the Office declining to charge hundreds of individuals; and we have treated the CHSs consistent with this approach.” The assistant special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office's counterterrorism division told the inspector general's office that he “denied a request from an FBI office to have an undercover employee engage in investigative activity on January 6.” He, along with then-Washington Field Office Assistant Director in Charge Steven D'Antuono, said that FBI policy prohibits undercover employees at First Amendment-protected events without investigative authority. Many social media users drew false conclusions from the report's findings. “JANUARY 6th WAS A SETUP!" reads one X post that had received more than 11,400 likes and shares as of Friday. “New inspector general report shows that 26 FBI/DOJ confidential sources were in the crowd on January 6th, and some of them went into the Capitol and restricted areas. Is it a coincidence that Wray put in his resignation notice yesterday? TREASON!” The mention of Wray's resignation refers to FBI Director Christopher Wray's announcement Wednesday that he plans to resign at the end of President Joe Biden's term in January. Other users highlighted the fact that there were 26 FBI informants in Washington on Jan. 6, but omitted key information about the findings of the report. These claims echo a fringe conspiracy theory advanced by some Republicans in Congress that the FBI played a role in instigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when rioters determined to overturn Republican Donald Trump's 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden stormed the Capitol in a violent clash with police. The report knocks that theory down. Wray called such theories “ludicrous” at a congressional hearing last year. Asked for comment on the false claims spreading online, Stephanie Logan, a spokesperson for the inspector general’s office, pointed The Associated Press to a press release about the report. In addition to its findings about the the FBI's involvement on Jan. 6, the report said that the FBI, in an action its now-deputy director described as a “basic step that was missed,” failed to canvass informants across all 56 of its field offices for any relevant intelligence ahead of time. That was a step, the report concluded, “that could have helped the FBI and its law enforcement partners with their preparations in advance of January 6.” However, it did credit the bureau for preparing for the possibility of violence and for trying to identify known “domestic terrorism subjects” who planned to come to Washington that day. The FBI said in a letter responding to the report that it accepts the inspection general’s recommendation “regarding potential process improvements for future events.” — Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck .Pope to skip Notre Dame opening in Paris for Corsica visitWill Daboll Give Nabers Targets He Deserves?

Marcel Dzama remembers a day last year when wildfire smoke from Canada had settled thick and heavy over New York City, the place the Winnipeg-born artist has called home for 20 years. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * Marcel Dzama remembers a day last year when wildfire smoke from Canada had settled thick and heavy over New York City, the place the Winnipeg-born artist has called home for 20 years. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? Marcel Dzama remembers a day last year when wildfire smoke from Canada had settled thick and heavy over New York City, the place the Winnipeg-born artist has called home for 20 years. “I was driving my son to school at that time, and there was, like, zero visibility on the Brooklyn Bridge,” he recalls. It was an evocative, unsettling image, an existential threat made visible on the landscape. “And it was just like, ‘Oh, what is this terrible thing we’re just leaving for our kids?’” Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, 460 Portage Ave. To March 8, 2025 Live Chat, Nov. 23 , 2 p.m. Featuring Dzama, Wayne Baerwaldt, Guy Maddin, Alison Norlen and Robert Enright Existential threats abound in the surreal Canadiana landscapes that make up Dzama’s first major solo exhibition in Canada in a decade. There are moody skies and inky reflections of jack pines in lakes, but there are also floods and fires and a foreboding sense that all-out catastrophe lurks on the margins. Dzama, 50, was inspired by the Canadian landscape paintings by the Group of Seven — specifically those by Tom Thomson — as well as his own childhood spent in the harsh Prairie landscapes of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. (A magazine profile from 2005 has him down as “born in 1974 in the isolated Canadian wilds of Winnipeg...”) But one can’t paint contemporary landscapes without contending with, well, the contemporary landscape. The climate anxiety that hums through these works is palpable; the wilderness the Group of Seven immortalized on canvas, carving out a Canadian national identity in the process, has been altered forever. “It was my fear of what we’re doing to the environment and how we’re just throwing away one of the most important and beautiful things,” Dzama says. MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS Wnnipeg-born artist Marcel Dzama is back in his hometown this weekend for the opening of his first Canadian solo show in ten years. Dzama is in Winnipeg for this weekend’s exhibition opening at the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art; he’s taking this call on his dad’s landline. He gets back fairly regularly, but a long absence created by the pandemic had him thinking about the Prairies. During that same period, Dzama and his own family moved to Long Island and bought a small house in the woods, about a 10-hour drive southeast of where Thomson would have painted scenes from Algonquin Provincial Park, “and I just kind of was taken aback by looking at his work again,” he says. Thomson’s paintings, coupled with his physical surroundings, made Dzama think about the wild landscapes of his youth — at Birds Hill Park and at his grandparents’ farm. He thought about the stories his midwife grandmother would tell him about having to walk across the Saskatchewan plains during a snowstorm to help deliver a baby, braving both the elements and the bobcats. (Existential threats have always existed in the Prairies.) His work imagines her as a young woman, guided through a creepy, almost radioactive-looking forest by a shimmering constellation of stars. And he thought, too, about the vastness of these spaces. “We’re kind of close to the ocean over there in Long Island and it gives me that exact same feeling as when I go to my grandparents’ farm and just look at the stars in the sky — or you see the aurora borealis — and it’s just so vast and open and you realize how insignificant you are,” he says. “There’s something humbling about that, though. It feels scary, but there’s some weird comfort in there as well.” MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS Dzama’s exhibition, Ghosts of Canoe Lake, was inspired by climate anxiety and the iconic Canadian landscapes painted by the Group of Seven. Dzama spent a lot of time at his grandparents’ farm. “I think that’s where I gathered a lot of my strange mythology of animal-creatures,” he says with a laugh, referring to the bats and bears and deer and trees with faces that populate his works, which are held in museum collections all over the world and have appeared on the covers of many albums, those by The Weakerthans and Beck among them. Thomson, meanwhile, offered a different strange mythology to pull from. The Canoe Lake of the exhibition’s title refers to the lake in Algonquin Provincial Park where a 39-year-old Thomson’s body was discovered eight days after his upturned canoe was found in July 1917. There has since been more than a century’s worth of speculation about Thomson’s mysterious, untimely death in the very place that so inspired him. It was ruled an accidental drowning, but some people believe he was murdered. Others believe he died by suicide. Going to art school at the University of Manitoba, the Group of Seven seemed to follow Dzama around. “There are a few buildings named after the Group of Seven and you hear about them in art history, but at the time, I was almost rebelling against it. I wasn’t very painterly. I kind of had a more comic-book-quality to my work,” he says. Dzama was following twin obsessions when he began creating the works that would eventually become . He had been commissioned to make a film about Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca — another ghost that looms large in the exhibition — but that had fallen through, so he resurrected the idea to create the work , a film loosely based on Lorca’s 1929 screenplay . “At the same time, I was totally obsessed with Tom Thomson, and was reading all these possible narratives about his death. Lorca ends up getting killed at the end by the fascists before the start of (the Second World War) and so I kind of thought there was this kind of parallel tragedy with Tom Thomson’s mysterious death around (the First World War),” he says. “(Thomson) objected to the war and he’d get these chicken feathers and stuff from people. And I mean, that could have been one of the reasons he was killed. There’s multiple mysterious reasons why he could have been killed as well — but also, it could have been an accident.” MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS Dzama delivers an artist talk Saturday at the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art for opening of Ghosts of Canoe Lake. debuted last December at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection outside Toronto. Executive director and chief curator Sarah Milroy had talked to Dzama about doing an exhibition focused on his political art; he knew the McMichael was home to one of the largest Tom Thomson and Group of Seven collections in Canada and he wanted to continue to pull that thread. He ended up making 50 works in a year-and-a-half. “The obsession was kind of fuelling me, and there was kind of an energetic boost from looking at his work, and then also just looking back at my past in Canada,” he says. Dzama hadn’t visited here for more than three years owing to the pandemic. When he did finally return, he found himself searching for other ghosts. “So much had changed since I’d been back to Winnipeg. We’ve lost grandparents and a parent-in-law, and a lot of the places I thought would be around forever were just kind of gone, and so I kind of wanted to pay a little homage to my puppet of the past.” is on view until March 8. jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com Jen Zoratti is a columnist and feature writer working in the Arts & Life department, as well as the author of the . A National Newspaper Award finalist for arts and entertainment writing, Jen is a graduate of the Creative Communications program at RRC Polytech and was a music writer before joining the in 2013. . Every piece of reporting Jen produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print – part of the ‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about , and . Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider . 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(CNN) — When President Donald Trump was searching for a new FBI Director after firing James Comey in 2017, he wanted among other things someone who looked the part of America’s top law enforcement official. Christopher Wray, a 50-year-old Yale-trained lawyer, was at the top of the list thanks to his conservative credentials as a leading partner at one of the nation’s biggest law firms and experience running the criminal division in George W. Bush’s Justice Department. For Trump, who has always placed emphasis on people looking the part for their jobs, Wray’s square-jawed serious demeanor helped seal the deal, people close to the process told CNN at the time. Soon after he became director, however, Trump began grousing that Wray wasn’t doing enough TV, people briefed on the matter said. Trump’s view was that the FBI director should be seen publicly supporting the president, who was in the middle of the Russia investigation into his campaign. Years later, in the spring of 2022, Trump sent Wray a handwritten letter, according to one person familiar with the note, congratulating him on his recent appearance on “60 Minutes” in which Wray discussed Chinese espionage efforts directed at the US. What Trump didn’t know at the time was that the FBI was beginning a criminal investigation, based on a referral from the National Archives, into his decision to hoard classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. The FBI court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago that August led to a grand jury indictment against Trump — and ended any chance of Wray keeping his job in Trump’s second term. “He invaded my home,” Trump said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” this week, lambasting the director he chose . “He invaded Mar-a-Lago.” As Trump prepares to replace Wray with Kash Patel, a MAGA acolyte who has joined the president-elect in vowing to use the Justice Department to target political adversaries, Wray’s departure marks a clear end to a decadeslong era of independence for the FBI. When he first hired Wray, Trump’s expectations of unbridled fealty, a loyalty standard that Comey has said Trump also asked him to meet, were a sharp departure from the culture of the modern FBI, which has assiduously cultivated its independence since the Watergate scandal and the abuses of the 48-year reign of J. Edgar Hoover. It’s an independence that has irritated almost every president through the years. Compared to Comey, whose frequent media appearances caused some of the bureau’s problems, Wray preferred to keep a lower profile and avoided the press. That was not the type of director Trump was anticipating, according to senior administration officials. That mismatch in expectations helped create a tightrope Wray tried to walk during Trump’s first term, as he limited his direct interactions with Trump while focusing on priorities that were important to the administration. Wray is “an ideal person to run the FBI because he recognizes it’s a non-partisan job and he has the respect of the troops,” said a former Justice Department official who helped push for Wray’s hiring. While Trump and Republicans rail against the so-called weaponization of the bureau, the former official said, “Kash Patel is exactly what Trump says he doesn’t want in an FBI director: someone who is going to weaponize the FBI.” Wray’s tenure under Trump was punctuated by periods of significant tension. Unhappy about the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, and eventually their failure to support his claims of fraud in the 2020 election, Trump would often lash out at Justice officials, including at times at Wray. At least twice, Wray told aides that he was prepared to resign over Trump’s demands, according to a former US official briefed on the matter. “A couple times, it got to where he said ‘I’m not going to do that,’ and he was persuaded to stay,” the former US official said. A current senior FBI official said that employees are frustrated that some of the attacks against the bureau and Wray were for decisions by their bosses at the Justice Department, which the FBI sometimes disagreed with. Early in the Biden administration, for example, the Justice Department issued a memo suggesting parents protesting at school boards over Covid measures could be investigated if they made threats. The FBI distanced itself from the memo, which never produced any actual investigations. But the damage was done, and Republican lawmakers continue to cite the issue as an example of overreach. The pressures on Wray came into clear view in June 2020, days after riots erupted across the country following the police killing of George Floyd. Wray, along with Vice President Mike Pence and Attorney General Bill Barr, stood in the FBI’s command center in downtown Washington, DC. After riots swelled around the city, a few blocks away a fire was set in the basement of historic St. John’s Church as protesters gathered in Lafayette Square outside the White House. Barr took charge of the law enforcement response and ordered 150 FBI agents into the square to clear protestors that night, according to a person present, despite some agents raising concerns that FBI agents aren’t trained to do crowd control, noting the risk that an agent or a protester could be killed. The decision was made and agents were deployed to patrol the streets of Washington. Wray later apologized to agents, noting that orders weren’t coming from him or even Barr, but from Trump, according to the person present at the command post. Days later Wray spoke at a press conference alongside Barr and for the first time appeared to endorse the idea that Antifa was behind the violence, something Trump had been insistent on despite a lack of evidence to support his claims. “We’re seeing people who are exploiting this situation to pursue violent extremist agendas,” Wray said. “Anarchists like Antifa and other agitators. These individuals have set out to sow discord and upheaval rather than join in the righteous pursuit of equality and justice.” Inside the bureau, some officials were surprised that Wray had come to echo Trump and Barr’s claims about Antifa. But Wray’s words, temporarily at least, served to help bolster Trump’s confidence that Wray and the FBI were doing what he wanted. Months later at a congressional hearing, Wray told lawmakers that Antifa was an ideology, not a group, prompting criticism from Republicans. At the bureau, where Comey was well-liked as director, Wray’s arrival in 2017 was a sharp turn. But it was a welcome one for employees who hoped that a more understated director would lower the political heat on the bureau and refocus attention on its national security and criminal enforcement missions. Visibly uncomfortable in large crowds, Wray has a political gift in smaller gatherings, particularly rank-and-file employees who rarely get face time with the director, current and former FBI officials said. When he spoke to graduating classes of new agents at the FBI academy in Quantico, Virginia, Wray often compared the teamwork aspect of being an FBI agent to being on a rowing team, invoking his own time as a Yale crew team member. For each graduating class, Wray would eat lunch at the cafeteria with six to eight students who were viewed as leaders of their class, a former FBI agent who admires Wray told CNN. Like he did for all his meetings or when he was a trial attorney, Wray was known to prepare before even small gatherings at the academy. “He’s not a guy who works on emotion, he is very tactical, very prepared,” the former agent said. Former senior FBI officials said that while Wray didn’t like to speak publicly in the media, he was good at building relationships with local law enforcement agencies and with private sector companies that the FBI needs for its national security and counter-terrorism efforts. He often insisted to speak directly to current and former employees struggling with bereavement or health issues, notably former FBI employees suffering from post-9-11 illnesses. Every time a police officer was killed on duty anywhere in the US, Wray made calls to their family or police chiefs. “I cannot tell you how many deathbed calls he has made,” the former US official said. After Trump announced his intention last month to replace Wray with Patel, Wray wrestled with how to leave the bureau he had helmed for nearly eight years. He struggled with whether it was better for the FBI and its tradition of independence to stay and be fired, or to leave before Trump’s arrival to save the bureau from further attacks, people close to his thinking said. Ultimately Wray decided to announce his plans to resign to hundreds of FBI employees at the Washington, DC, headquarters, saying he would leave before Trump took office. His speech tacitly acknowledged the political headwinds the FBI will face under the new presidency. Wray also took the time during the speech to highlight the accomplishments by his agents throughout his years there, from thwarting terror plots to stopping cyber-attacks on US infrastructure and hospitals, fentanyl seizures and rescuing children from predators. “An awful lot of people are alive today because of your tireless efforts ,” Way told the audience. “As daunting as all that may sound, I’ve got enormous confidence in you and your ability to continue to meet the threats coming over the horizon.” Under Wray, the FBI stopped numerous foreign hacking operations from countries like China and Russia, alleged Iranian plots to kill current and former government officials, and opened up the largest investigation in FBI history, charging more than 1500 people in connection to the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack. Still, none of it was enough to save Wray, whose tenure ends the same way as Comey’s – with Trump angry about being investigated by what he sees as his own FBI. The-CNN-Wire TM & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.Percentages: FG .540, FT .720. 3-Point Goals: 11-23, .478 (Lilly 5-9, Erold 3-6, Lesburt 2-4, Cooley 1-3, Wrisby-Jefferson 0-1). Team Rebounds: 1. Team Turnovers: 1. Blocked Shots: 5 (Cooley 2, DeGraaf, Erold, Lilly). Turnovers: 10 (Jenkins 2, Lewis 2, Wrisby-Jefferson 2, Cooley, Erold, Lesburt, Lilly). Steals: 3 (Lesburt, Lilly, Wrisby-Jefferson). Technical Fouls: None. Percentages: FG .509, FT .833. 3-Point Goals: 8-19, .421 (Palesse 3-3, Benard 2-2, van der Plas 1-1, Kopa 1-4, Godfrey 1-5, Sangha 0-1, Thompson 0-1, McMillan 0-2). Team Rebounds: 6. Team Turnovers: 1. Blocked Shots: 1 (Kopa). Turnovers: 10 (Benard 3, McMillan 2, Sangha 2, Godfrey, Palesse, van der Plas). Steals: 5 (Benard 2, Kopa, McMillan, van der Plas). Technical Fouls: None. A_953 (2,176).