FBI Director Wray faces House Judiciary griling on bias, FISA, more: recap

Wray gave a preview of what he called the “real FBI” by recounting impressive feats from agents when asked near the hearing’s conclusion to respond to allegations from the GOP that the agency has been weaponized against the American people.

“The FBI that I see every day is working their tail off to protect the American people from a really staggering array of threats. They are an inspiring, incredibly dedicated group of people,” he said.

“The FBI I see is best captured by the Chicago agent who had his arm shot up by an AR-15 chasing a fugitive and retrained himself to shoot left-handed and then requalified for SWAT left-handed,” Wray said.

He also recounted how an agent experienced a broken pelvis after being caught by a car door as a fugitive gang member sped off onto the freeway, but still managed to apprehend the subject.

He noted another agent in Portland who helped rescue a mentally ill woman from an oncoming train as she sought to fight him off by biting him.

“That’s the FBI that I see. I could give you countless examples. That is the real FBI,” Wray said.

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), who had asked Wray for the response, thanked him for allowing his “loquaciousness to emerge during this hearing.”

—Rebecca Beitsch

Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) alleged that the FBI “misled” social media companies on the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

“When the court says the FBI misled, that’s a nice way of saying they lied,” Jordan said. “They lied, and as a result, important information was kept from ‘We the People’ days before the most important election we have — election of a president of the United States.”

Jordan also asked whether Wray instructed agents to provide a “no comment” response to questions over the laptop probe; Wray said he did not.

— Ella Lee

In an exchange about reestablishing trust between the FBI and American people, Wray defended the agency against claims that it has been unfairly targeting the political right and their opinions.

Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) pointed the finger at Wray for purportedly perpetuating a “two-tier justice system” and asked what he’s prepared to do to earn back America’s trust.

“The American people fully understand that there is a two-tier justice system that has been weaponized to persecute people based on their political beliefs, and that you have personally worked to weaponize the FBI against conservatives,” Hageman said.

Wray, who is a Republican and was appointed FBI director by former President Trump, hit back that Hageman’s allegations are “insane” given his personal beliefs.

“I would disagree with your characterization of the FBI and certainly your description of my own approach,” Wray said. “The idea that I’m biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me, given my own personal background.”

He added that reestablishing trust means encouraging agents to do the “right thing in the right way.”

“And that means following the facts wherever they lead, no matter who likes it,” Wray said.

— Ella Lee

Wray said the Supreme Court Dobbs decision that overturned federal protections to the right to an abortion has largely led to an uptick in the targeting of anti-abortion facilities.

Wray said the FBI has been in touch with a number of groups facing an increasing threat of violence, including the Jewish community as well as with historically Black colleges and universities.

“We also provide information about things to be on the lookout for in people’s communities,” Wray said.

“I would be remiss if I didn’t also point out that there has been a pretty significant uptick in violence going the other way since the Dobbs decision. And in fact, most of the investigations that we’ve opened since the Dobbs decision, probably about 70 percent of them, have been violence against pro-life facilities.”

A report by Trump-era special counsel John Durham that reviewed the investigation into former President Trump’s ties to Russia received scant mention Wednesday in a GOP-led House Judiciary Committee hearing.

Durham issued a scathing assessment of the FBI’s investigation and concluded that authorities didn’t have sufficient information to open the case in the first place.

The first mention of the report came roughly an hour and a half into the hearing, when Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.) asked FBI Director Christopher Wray to reiterate the report’s findings.

Under later questioning by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) over the report’s findings on the FBI, Wray said the agency’s conduct as detailed in the report “must never be allowed to happen again.”

“I consider the conduct that was described in the Durham report as totally unacceptable and unrepresentative of what I see from the FBI every day,” Wray said.

— Ella Lee

American domestic extremism was rising nationwide for “quite some time” before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Wray said Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee.

Wray said the FBI saw about a 40 percent increase in the number of domestic violent extremism investigations before any motivations tied to the Capitol attack came into the picture. The types of extremism “cut across the spectrum,” from extremism motivated by race, militia ideology, anarchist ideology, the environment and abortion views.

“It really covers a wide spectrum,” Wray said.

— Ella Lee

Wray received a rare thank you from a Republican for his leadership in helming the FBI.

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) noted Wray’s status as a Republican appointee leading an agency often attacked by the GOP.

“You’re still a registered Republican, and I hope you don’t change your party affiliation after this hearing is over,” Buck said.

“But I want to thank you. I want to thank you for leading an agency as you mentioned in your opening statement, that protects Americans from foreign terrorists, that an agency that protects Americans from spies from China, and Russia and cybercrime, and public corruption and organized crime and drug cartels and human traffickers and white collar criminals,” he added.

“And I want to thank you and the FBI for protecting law-abiding Americans from the evil that exists all around us.”

— Rebecca Beitsch

Wray pushed back on calls from some in the GOP that they should defund the FBI.

“It would be disastrous for 38,000 hardworking career law enforcement personnel in their families, but more importantly, in many ways, it would hurt our great state, local law enforcement partners who depend on us every day to work with them on a whole slew of challenging threats,” Wray said.

“It would hurt the American people, neighborhoods and communities all across this country, the people we’re protecting from cartels, violent criminals, gang members, predators, foreign and domestic terrorists, cyberattacks, I could go on and on. And the people that would help would be those same violent gangs and cartels, foreign terrorists, Chinese spies, hackers and so forth.”

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) called on congressional appropriators Tuesday to provide bare bones funding to the agency.

“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 said doing so would help with “reining in abusive federal law enforcement agencies.”

— Rebecca Beitsch

Questioned over the removal of content from social media platforms, Wray said the agency does not ask social media companies to censor or suppress information related to national security threats.

Wray said the FBI alerts social media companies when other intelligence agencies provide them with information about a foreign intelligence service operating accounts on the platform.

“We will call social media companies’ attention to that, but at the end of the day, we’re very clear that it’s up to the social media companies to decide whether to do something,” Wray said.

— Ella Lee

Wray is facing allegations from both Democrats and Republicans that the FBI hasn’t properly handled the investigation into former President Trump.

“Over and over again, the FBI delayed and showed unprecedented caution before investigating the ex-president even when there was a potential threat to national security. That’s my view. That’s very far from the assertion that there was unfair targeting,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said during her questioning.

Ranking member Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), in a similar line of questioning, broke down the timeline of the Mar-a-Lago case in an effort to review “all these the opportunities Trump had to produce these documents.”

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), conversely, accused the bureau of being “a political tool of the Biden administration” summarizing the Mar-a-Lago search as an example of “the homes of conservative political opponents being raided.”

— Rebecca Beitsch

In response to a line of questioning about the FBI’s knowledge surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, FBI Director Christopher Wray pushed back against claims that the FBI played a role in instigating the riot.

“This notion that somehow the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was part of some operation orchestrated by FBI sources and agents is ludicrous and is a disservice to our brave, hardworking, dedicated men and women,” Wray said.

He also said that the FBI did not, to his knowledge, know of a plan to breach the Capitol in advance of the attack. However, the agency was “concerned” about the potential for violence and released intelligence to that effect, he said.

— Ella Lee

House Republicans are taking aim at FBI Director Christopher Wray over a court order limiting the Biden administration’s communication with social media companies related to content moderation.

“It explains in detail that the FBI has been directly involved in what the court says is ‘arguably the most massive attack against free speech United States history,’” Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) said during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on oversight of Wray and the FBI.

A federal judge ruled that Biden administration officials cannot contact social media companies relating to “in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms.” 

The FBI was among the agencies barred from communicating.

The decision came after a GOP-led challenge of the administration’s efforts to combat disinformation, arguing attempts to do so violated protected speech.

The Justice Department filed a notice of appeal in the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and filed an emergency stay motion in that court after the federal judge denied a motion to stay its order.

— Ella Lee

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), ranking member on the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday that a committee hearing probing FBI Director Christopher Wray is “performance art” designed to protect former President Trump from the consequences of his actions.

“When in doubt, Chairman Jordan investigates the investigators,” Nadler said of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the Judiciary Committee chairman.

Nadler described Trump’s legal woes in a federal probe into the former president’s handling of classified documents. Trump faces charges alleging he violated the Espionage Act and obstructed justice in taking classified records from his presidency and not returning them. He has pleaded not guilty.

“You will hear claims today that this indictment against Trump was unfair – maybe even that it was unlawful, that the FBI should have just asked Trump a little more nicely… These claims, of course, are completely untethered from the evidence,” Nadler said.

The ranking member also called attention to threats Wray has faced since the FBI came into the GOP’s crosshairs, and he alleged that Republicans’ allegations are rooted in a failure to find wrongdoing committed by President Biden.

— Ella Lee

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) rattled off a series of GOP grievances with the FBI, pointing to short-lived memos to argue the bureau is improperly targeting conservatives.

One, from Attorney General Merrick Garland, asked the FBI to coordinate with local school districts as school employees faced a rash of threats driven in part by educators’ COVID-19 response.

Another memo, written by an agent in the Richmond, Va., field office, detailed growing overlap between white nationalist groups and “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics,” which it identifies as a small minority within the church.

“American Speech is censored,” Jordan said. “Parents are called terrorists; Catholics are called radicals.”

Though meant to bring the resources of the bureau to bear in instances where school officials were facing threats of violence, GOP lawmakers have claimed the memo opened the door for labeling parents as domestic terrorists, though no such charges exist under U.S. law.

The memo referencing Catholics was rebuked by FBI leadership.

“When I first learned of the piece, I was aghast, and we took steps immediately to withdraw it and remove it from FBI systems. It does not reflect FBI standards,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a March appearance before Congress.

“We do not conduct investigations based on religious affiliation or practices, full stop. We have also now ordered our Inspection Division to take a look at how this happened and try to figure out how we can make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.”

— Rebecca Beitsch

In his opening remarks, FBI Director Christopher Wray will offer a forceful defense of the bureau before the House Judiciary Committee, as GOP members pledged to highlight what they see as politicization of the investigative agency. 

“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.

The timing of Wray’s appearance before the panel comes as the GOP has fixated on the prosecution of former President Trump as well as Hunter Biden — cases they say show a bias toward the Republican former president while giving preferential treatment to the president’s son.

Read more here.

— Rebecca Beitsch