Tag: FBI Director Wray

Wray grilled on FBI’s handling of Jan. 6

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FBI Director Christopher Wray was largely on the defensive Thursday as lawmakers and Democrats in particular picked apart the bureau’s actions surrounding the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, as well as its approach to domestic extremists.

Wray’s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee follows a report from senators investigating widespread failures across a number of intelligence and law enforcement agencies ahead of the riot.

“The FBI’s inaction in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6 is simply baffling. It is hard to tell whether FBI Headquarters merely missed the evidence — which had been flagged by your field offices and was available online for all the world to see — or whether the bureau saw the intelligence, underestimated the threat and simply failed to act. Neither is acceptable. We need your help to get to the bottom of it,” Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said. Continue reading.

FBI director says domestic terrorism ‘metastasizing’ throughout U.S. as cases soar

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FBI Director Christopher A. Wray on Tuesday defended the bureau’s handling of alarming intelligence leading up to the Jan. 6 mob attack on the U.S. Capitol, saying he has long warned about the rising tide of such threats as the domestic terrorism caseload roughly doubled over the past year.

“We have significantly grown the number of investigations and arrests,” Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee, his first testimony since the riot involving supporters of President Donald Trump. The FBI director testified in September that the number of such cases was about 1,000. By the end of 2020, there were about 1,400 such cases, and after Jan. 6 the figure ballooned again, the director said.

Domestic terrorism “has been metastasizing around the country for a long time now, and it’s not going away anytime soon,” Wray said. “Whenever we’ve had the chance, we’ve tried to emphasize that this is a top concern.” Continue reading.

Here’s the real reason Trump didn’t fire FBI director Chris Wray: NYT’s Haberman

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Rumors swirled in the months leading up to the 2020 presidential election that former President Donald Trump wanted to fire FBI Director Christopher Wray, with whom he openly feuded about the origins of the investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with the Russian government.

But after losing the 2020 election, Trump decided against firing Wray — and according to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, his restraint in this case was driven by self-interest.

“Trump made clear to aides a week after the election he wouldn’t fire Wray, in part because he was afraid a new FBI director would be more incentivized against him,” Haberman writes on Twitter. Continue reading.