Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee can’t wait to cross-examine Chris Wray. The alleged FBI Director has some explaining to do in front of irate congressional Republicans. Jim Jordan wants to put him in the hot-seat about some “discrepancies.” Something along the lines of “is the internal agency audit lying now? Or, were you, yourself, lying to us last year?”
What Wray knew when
Christopher Wray is about to be hauled in front of the House Judiciary Committee. On Monday, March 21, Jim Jordan and his buddies wrote him a little nastygram, inviting him to “explain potential discrepancies between his testimony last year to Congress and the findings of a 2019 agency audit that revealed rules-breaking by agents.”
The review “also showed agents failing to receive approval before starting investigations, agents failing to document a necessary legal review before opening an investigation, and agents failing to tell prosecutors what they were doing, among other things.” Just which side of the law is the Federal Bureau of Instigation on? Inquiring minds want to know.
In the letter, “the lawmakers asked for information about the bureau’s misconduct.” What they want to know about is whether the investigations were as much of a weaponization of the justice system as it seems.
Wray needs to come up with some answers about the shady “investigations involving politicians, candidates, religious groups and others” that they’re hearing about from an audit report published in The Washington Times.
They want Wray to discuss the “internal review.” The one “which you never disclosed and which shows fundamental errors with FBI investigations.” Not just any investigations, ones “touching on sensitive political and constitutional matters.”
That, the lawmakers write, “calls into question the reliability of your statements.” Liar! You’re just a damn liar! Which side are you on? “The committee must examine whether the FBI is taking seriously its compliance with its own rules intended to protect American civil liberties.”
FBI hid misconduct from public
Another thing uncovered in the audit that the conservatives are “concerned” about is “other misconduct that the FBI is keeping from the public.” Mike Johnson and Andy Biggs signed off on Jordan’s letter. The core of the matter involves what the bureau calls a “sensitive investigative matter.” They say SIM for short.
What they are is “an action that may affect Americans’ constitutional rights because they involve people engaged in activities such as politics, government, news media or religious expression.” Freedom isn’t a crime yet, no matter how much Chris Wray thinks it should be. “Ten cases involved political candidates and 11 cases involved news media.”
Auditors working inside the FBI itself “discovered a ratio of slightly more than two “compliance errors” per SIM that the auditors examined from Jan. 1, 2018, to June 30, 2019.” That means for every file they picked up they found at least two critical mistakes. They only spot checked a few, which indicates the problem is pervasive.
Last year, Wray told the same committee different things from what the report says. Alleged “Director Wray was brought in to clean up FBI abuses, but we keep seeing the same things,” Russell Dye said. “There’s a lot of concern among Republicans about the politicization of the FBI and its out-of-control nature.”
Last time on the witness stand, under oath, Wray swore up and down that “the FBI investigates individuals “with “proper predication” or a basis for doing so, and that “the bureau does not” probe “First Amendment groups” for “speech, association, assembly or membership in those groups.”
The audit “provided a categorical breakdown showing dozens of cases involving religious groups or their prominent members and dozens of cases involving political organizations and individuals.” In total, “the 2019 audit showed agents violating FBI rules 747 times in 18 months while conducting sensitive investigations.“
