Joseph Sabino Mistick: Wray hits back at FBI weaponization accusations

Only in an upside-down world would the Republican-­controlled House Judiciary Committee accuse conservative Republican FBI Director Christopher Wray of weaponizing the Justice Department against conservative Republicans. But that is what happened last week.

Wray testified for five hours before the committee, spending most of his time discrediting and fending off assaults on the FBI and his leadership. As desperate people often do, Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and fellow Republican committee members resorted to personal insults and petty sniping for want of substance. And this was against one of their own.

“The American people fully understand that there is a two-tiered 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,” said Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo.

Wray would have none of that, replying, “The idea that I am biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me given my own personal background.”

Wray has a point. He served as assistant attorney general in the administration of Republican President George W. Bush. In 2017, he was nominated by Republican President Donald Trump to head the FBI. Trump then said Wray was “an impeccably qualified individual, and I know that he will again serve his country as a fierce guardian of the law and model of integrity once the Senate confirms him to lead the FBI.”

Wray’s nomination passed the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously, and he was confirmed by the full Senate, 92-5, after testifying that “my loyalty is to the Constitution and the rule of law, full stop.”

When it was Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu’s turn to question Wray, he threw even more cold water on the Republicans’ misplaced accusations. He pointed out that Trump’s friends and advisers Roger Stone, Elliot Broidy, Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort were all charged and convicted under Trump-appointed attorneys general. `

“It is not the fault of the FBI that Donald Trump surrounded himself with criminals. Donald Trump brought that upon himself,” Lieu said.

And Jordan showed that he and his committee are swinging wildly when he proposed defunding the police in a letter to the appropriations committee on Tuesday. You heard that right. After accusing “woke” Democrats of wanting to defund the police for years and predicting crime run rampant if the police are defunded, Jordan asked the appropriations committee to use the “power of the purse” to bring the FBI to heel, suggesting specific cuts in the FBI budget.

When Lieu asked Wray at the hearing how those cuts would affect the operations of the FBI, Wray said, “We would have hundreds more violent criminals out on the street, dozens more violent gangs terrorizing communities, hundreds more child predators on the loose, hundreds more kids left at those predators’ mercy instead of being rescued, scores of threats from the Chinese Communist Party being left unaddressed.”

The FBI is not perfect, and, as with all large human enterprises, the people who work there and the organization itself have stumbled and made mistakes. Wray met those questions head on and conceded that the bureau should have done better at times.

But by the end of this hearing, it was clear that no thinking American could be buying what Jim Jordan was selling.