‘They Lied’: Jim Jordan Unloads on FBI Director Wray to Kick Off Blockbuster House Hearing
House Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) got his chance to drill FBI Director Chris Wray on Wednesday, and he didn’t hold anything back.
In his opening remarks, Jordan dove into the July 4 ruling on alleged suppression of free speech, quoting the court as saying “the United States government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian Ministry of Truth,” further blaming the FBI for not conceding that the Hunter Biden laptop story was true and not disinformation:
When the court says the FBI misled, that’s a nice way of saying they lied. They lied, and as a result, important information was kept from “we the people,” days before the most important election we have. The election of the President of the United States, election of the commander-in-chief. …
American speech is censored, parents are called terrorists, Catholics are called radicals, and I haven’t even talked about the spying that took place on a presidential campaign or the raiding of a former president’s home.
Before the hearing, Jordan appeared on Fox News to outline his approach. Host Bill Hemmer pointed out that Wray was an appointee of former President Donald Trump:
Hemmer: Do you think in your heart that Christopher Wray is the guy that’s driving a lot of your problems with that agency?
Jordan: Well, this all happened under his watch. He’s the guy who created the foreign influence task force. The foreign influence task force was cited in the federal courts of opinion involved in censoring American speech. So, this is the guy who presided over when they raided President Trump’s home 91 days before a mid-term election. This is the guy who was presiding over the FBI when the Richmond field office put together this memorandum saying they were looking to put sources inside parishes, inside the Catholic Church to snitch on parishioners. You’ve got to be kidding me. So this all happened under his watch. So I don’t think it matters who appointed him or not. What we want to know is we want to know about all those things that have taken place, and we want them to stop, and we want him to give Congress the answers.
Jordan had been itching for this confrontation and has made no secret that he’s no fan of the FBI. As a key ally of Trump, he proposed that Congress stop funding investigations into political figures by the Department of Justice claiming that “politically sensitive” cases should be conducted by “non-partisan career staff.” It’s a direct rebuke of the Justice Department and FBI investigation into Trump’s Russia dealings and the plea deal struck by Hunter Biden, which was seen as evidence by the right as a “two-tier justice system,” a claim echoed by Jordan. Wray defended the Bureau in his opening statement, saying that 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.”
Watch Jordan’s opening remarks above via C-SPAN 3.
