Shortly after Christopher Wray left King & Spalding to lead the FBI, he called about 250 senior officials in the bureau for a two-day “stand-down” in Quantico, Virginia, to emphasize the importance of impartiality and the need to avoid even the appearance of bias.

At the time, the FBI was dealing with the fallout from former Director James Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, which many Democrats blamed for the former secretary of state’s loss in 2016. At the same time, then-President Donald Trump was publicly haranguing the bureau almost daily over the Russia investigation and the leak of anti-Trump text messages exchanged between two senior officials.