FBI Director Christopher A. Wray declined to say in an interview broadcast Thursday whether his agency would investigate the anonymous author of an op-ed who claimed there is a “resistance” within the Trump administration. Wray cited the need for evidence of a crime to proceed.

Last week, President Trump called on the Justice Department to launch an investigation amid an all-out White House campaign to root out the author and discredit the piece in the New York Times, which was said to have been written by a senior administration official.

During an interview on “CBS This Morning,” Wray flatly denied being the author and declined to say whether Trump’s request would meet a threshold to investigate.

“First off, I can tell you I didn’t write it. I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Wray said. “Second, I would tell you we’re not really in the practice of confirming or discussing whether we’re going to be conducting a particular investigation. I would tell you that we’re going to make decisions about that kind of thing based on all the factors we normally do, which is whether or not we have sufficient evidence of federal crime.”

Wray’s statement might disappoint some who have been hoping the Justice Department would forcefully reject the idea of a politically driven investigation. But his hint that the FBI needs to find evidence of a crime might be read as a gentle way of saying no to Trump’s demand.

Under normal circumstances, if an agency saw classified information in a newspaper article, that agency would send a letter to the FBI requesting an investigation, and the Justice Department’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section would generally conduct an initial assessment to see whether a case should be opened.

The section would look to confirm whether the information that was published was actually classified, and how widely it was distributed — which might give investigators a sense of the challenge it might take to make a case.

The op-ed published by the Times, though, contains no apparent classified information, nor any evidence of a crime, analysts have said.

Speaking to reporters on Friday aboard Air Force One, Trump argued that there is a national security imperative to unmasking and punishing the person responsible for the op-ed, which depicted a “two-track presidency” in which some top staffers make up a “resistance” force working to thwart Trump’s “misguided impulses.”

“We’re going to take a look at what he had, what he gave, what he’s talking about, also where he is right now,” Trump said during the flight from Billings, Mont., to Fargo, N.D., on a fundraising trip for Republican candidates.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the Justice Department should “look into” an anonymous op-ed published by the New York Times. (Reuters)

In the same interview, Wray was asked about the president’s repeated attacks on the FBI. As he has done in past public appearances, Wray defended those who work under him without directly taking aim at Trump, saying the FBI was full of people “of character, of courage, of professionalism and diligence,” working to keep the U.S. safe. He said his “focus was on having a very professional relationship with the president.”

Asked why he had never been personally targeted by Trump’s tweets, Wray said he was “not much of a Twitter guy.”

“I just find that I’ve got enough to do all day long running the FBI without getting too hung up on worrying about what’s on Twitter,” he said.

Just minutes before the clip aired, the president — as he has done many mornings — had attacked the FBI in a tweet.