Opinion: Trump's FBI Move Is a 'Constitutional Crisis'

President-elect Trump's choice of Kash Patel to lead the FBI is drawing plenty of criticism on the left and plenty of praise from the MAGA wing. But in the Atlantic, David Frum argues that the real controversy isn't the decision to pick Patel but to fire current FBI chief Christopher Wray. Modern FBI directors serve 10-year terms that overlap presidencies, but Trump plans to replace Wray upon taking office even though he has three years left. The danger, in Frum's view:

• "Trump is declaring his intention to reinvent the FBI as something it has never been before: an instrument of personal presidential power, which will investigate (or refrain from investigating) and lay charges (or refrain from laying charges) as the president wishes," he writes.

Frum sees this as a "constitutional scandal far greater than Watergate" and wonders if members of Congress, the press, and Wray himself will allow it to happen without a fight. A counter to this view comes from GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, who would eventually be voting on any confirmation and who is enthusiastically behind the switch, notes the New York Post:

• "I gotta say, all of the weeping and gnashing of teeth, people pulling their hair out, are the people dismayed about having a real reformer come into the FBI and clean out the corrupted partisans who sadly have burrowed into senior career positions at the FBI," he said on Face the Nation Sunday.

(More Kash Patel stories.)