FBI Director Says He’s ‘Angry’ About Shutdown’s Impact on Workers

(Bloomberg) -- FBI Director Christopher Wray told his workforce Friday that he’s “angry” over the government shutdown but bureau leaders haven’t yet come up with an alternative way to pay agents and other personnel.

“Making some people stay home when they don’t want to and making others show up without pay, it’s mind-boggling, it’s shortsighted and it’s unfair,” Wray said in a video Friday to employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “It takes a lot to get me angry, but I’m about as angry as I’ve been in long, long time.”

Wray said FBI leaders thought they were close this week to having a way to give agents and other personnel at least one paycheck, but the plan failed. He said they’d keep working on it.

Bureau officials haven’t been publicly decrying the shutdown in order to stay out of the public spotlight, Wray said, making an apparent reference to partisan debate over the FBI’s role in the investigation of Russian election interference.

“You know better than most that we’ve been thrust into the political spotlight more than we would have liked over the past few years,” Wray said. “And the last thing this organization needs now is its leadership to wade right into the middle of a full-on political dispute.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Chris Strohm in Washington at cstrohm1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, Larry Liebert, Joshua Gallu

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