When Donald Trump named Christopher Wray to replace James Comey, the F.B.I. director he had apparently fired for not playing ball on the Russia investigations, the most recent item on Wray’s résumé looked like an ominous sign of things to come: he had represented New Jersey governor Chris Christie during the Bridgegate investigations. Last week, though, a little-noticed episode in Wray’s professional life suddenly became far more relevant. In 2004, when then-president George W. Bush’s White House attempted to re-authorize warrantless wiretapping over the objection of the Justice Department, Wray, then the head of its criminal division, was ready to resign—alongside then-deputy attorney general Comey.

Wray played the integrity card again recently, and this time he wasn’t a bit actor in the drama. When Attorney General Jeff Sessions pressured Wray to clean house and get rid of Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, a target of Trump’s angry tweets, Wray threatened to quit. “Chris comes out of a Republican legal establishment world—or what used to be that world,” says Sam Buell, a former federal prosecutor who worked with Wray on the Enron investigation. “Prep schools, Yale Law School, a line prosecutor in Atlanta, mentored by Larry Thompson, who is a very respected guy across the political and legal spectrum. Solid, not ideological. Knowing what I do about the guy, I wrote—seven months ago!—that he’s going to be prepared to quit if it comes to that.” Sessions, after consulting White House Counsel Don McGahn, has backed off pressuring Wray, according to Axios. For now, anyway.

The Trumpist campaign to discredit the Justice Department, the F.B.I., and, in turn, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, has been underway for more than a year now. But it is ratcheting up as Mueller’s investigation closes in on the White House. Missing texts between the F.B.I.’s Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and a joking reference to a “secret society,” fueled dark accusations, including from Trump. Yet the noisiest manifestation—well, aside from the nightly rantings of Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs—has been the Nunes memo. This mysterious four-page document, written by staffers for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, purports to contain devastating evidence of corrupt F.B.I. efforts to abuse surveillance rules and target Trump’s presidential campaign. Never mind the fact that if such a plot existed, the F.B.I. did a lousy job carrying it out, waiting to unveil damning connections between Trump’s campaign and Russians until after Trump had been elected. The Nunes memo has nevertheless become a right-wing crusade, spawning hours of talk-radio fulminations and a #ReleaseTheMemo push that looks to be aided by Russian bots.

During the weekend the government shutdown, Democratic Congressman Mark Pocan, of Wisconsin, went to a secure room on Capitol Hill to actually read the memo. On Thursday, Pocan called for it to be released publicly. “Let everyone look at it,” he told me, “so they can enjoy the piece of lettuce between two buns that’s there. It’s subterfuge.”

Yet it has already been effective. No one is attributing this level of strategic brilliance to Nunes, but basing the memo on classified material is borderline evil genius: if the memo is released, refuting it will be difficult without burning confidential sources. For Republican propaganda purposes, however, it will be even better if the Justice Department succeeds in suppressing the document: then Fox News will likely “obtain” a copy of “the memo Democrats and the Deep State don’t want you to see!”