Christopher Wray testified before congress today. It was a remarkable contrast with James Comey. He did not grandstand. It was never about himself. He did not take any shots at anyone, including Trump and Comey. Instead he responded very professionally. While he defended the tens of thousands of FBI agents and analysts, he said something that should send chills down the spines of several people:
“We find ourselves under the microscope each and every day — and rightfully so. We do hard work for a living. We are entrusted with protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution and laws of the United States. Because of the importance of our mission, we are also entrusted with great power, and we should expect — and welcome — people asking tough questions about how we use that power. That goes with this job and always has.”
“The best way that I can validate the trust of the American people and the FBI is to ensure we bring the same level of professionalism and integrity and abjectivity and aherence to process in everything we do.”
One will note that he never said the concerns expressed by committee members were unimportant. He never said they weren’t being investigated. He just said he could not discuss this in a unclassified setting. He never got defensive. Wray said there was an ongoing investigation by the Office of the Inspector General and he took that very seriously.
He also admitted that there was an investigation into the Hillary e-mail server. That is really big news. He told lawmakers that while he agreed with the investigation into the handling of the server as well as the removal of the FBI agent, it would not be appropriate for him to speculate on the investigation.
In a comment that should terrify Hillary Clinton, Wray said that when the findings come to him he will take the appropriate action as necessary. He specifically said he would: “leave it to others to figure out if ‘gross negligence’ and ‘extremely careless’ is the same thing.”
Trump just may have appointed a very serious and capable person to be Director of the FBI. After this performance it is hard to imagine Christopher Wray ignoring the serious political bias in the Mueller investigation. We can expect to hear from him, at some point sooner rather than later. There are a lot of people who should be very concerned that they are in harms Wray.
TDM
Thank goodness, there are people in our government that speak with common sense, TOTALLY!!!