FBI Director Chrisopher Wray offered a forceful defense of the bureau in opening remarks before the House Judiciary Committee as GOP members pledged to highlight what they see as politicization of the investigative agency.
The timing of Wray’s appearance before the panel comes as the GOP has fixated on the prosecution of Donald Trump as well as Hunter Biden — cases they say show a bias towards the Republican former president while giving preferential treatment to the president’s son.
“The work the men and women of the FBI do to protect the American people goes way beyond the one or two investigations that seem to capture all the headlines,” Wray said in prepared opening remarks.
Wray rattled off the breadth of the FBI’s work, from targeting cartel leaders smuggling fentanyl to managing thousands of investigations into Chinese government-led efforts to steal U.S. trade secrets.
“That’s just scratching the surface; the men and women of the FBI work tirelessly every day to protect the American people from a staggering array of threats,” Wray said.
In a subtle nod to the district occupied by committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Wray highlighted a recent drug bust that led to 31 arrests of those accused of fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine “throughout the area around Marion, Ohio.”
“In that one investigation, run out of the FBI’s two-man office in Mansfield, we worked with partners from multiple local police departments and sheriff’s offices to take kilograms of fentanyl off of Marion streets — enough lethal doses to kill the entire population of Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati combined,” Wray said.
“And that’s just one investigation led by one small office in Ohio.”
Jordan on Tuesday previewed his own plans for the FBI, sending a letter to House Appropriations Committee Chair Kay Granger (R-Texas) calling for “reining in abusive federal law enforcement agencies.”
“The Committee and Select Subcommittee have received startling testimony about egregious abuses, misallocation of federal law-enforcement resources, and misconduct within the leadership ranks of the FBI. We recommend that the appropriations bills eliminate any funding for the FBI that is not absolutely essential for the agency to execute its mission,” Jordan wrote.
Jordan also called for “eliminating taxpayer funding for any new FBI headquarter facility and instead examining options for relocating the FBI’s headquarters outside of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.”
GOP lawmakers are expected to ask for details about a number of Justice Department and FBI investigations, including the recent indictment of Gal Luft, a former think tank leader who raised claims that President Biden took a bribe.
Luft is now accused of numerous crimes, including failing to register as a foreign agent while recruiting a high-ranking former U.S. official and brokering illicit arms deals.
He is also accused of violating Iran sanctions by setting up meetings between Iranian officials and a Chinese energy company to discuss oil deals.
The FBI has countered that any of its investigations have been tainted by politics, with Wray pointing to the backgrounds of the bureau’s leadership.
“Just taking our top eight leaders as an example, they all came up through the bureau as line Agents,” he said.
“Not a single one is a political appointee — not one.”
Updated at 10:14 a.m.