The power of Donald Trump pulsated through a Capitol Hill hearing Wednesday, as FBI Director Christopher Wray faced a Republican onslaught that showed how the ex-president turned Washington's traditional loyalties upside down.
Trump's allies -- and GOP lawmakers who seemed to be trying to catch his eye -- laid into the Trump-appointed Wray, portraying the bureau as a fully weaponized unit of the Biden administration that's seeking to prevent Trump from returning to power and is dedicated to persecuting his conservative supporters. The Republican Party's traditional reverence for law enforcement and backing of an agency long seen as one of the most conservative institutions in the federal government was forgotten. It was left to Democrats, who have often harbored their own suspicions of the FBI -- over its treatment of the civil rights movement and during the war on terror -- to come to Wray's defense.
It's hardly unusual for congressional hearings to degenerate into untamed partisan grandstanding. But the House Judiciary Committee's marathon session showed a deeper level of enmity, and displayed how Trump's years of seeking to discredit an agency called to investigate his aberrant behavior has challenged its reputation.
Wray confessed he was mystified by the hostility, which follows years of his agency being dragged into politics -- not just in the Trump era but after many Democrats blamed Wray's predecessor, James Comey, for stacking the 2016 race against Hillary Clinton when he reopened a probe into her email server.
"The idea that I'm biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me given my own personal background," said Wray, a Republican who served in President George W. Bush's Justice Department. He was responding to a volley of accusations of politicized justice from Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman, who won her seat by beating then-Rep. Liz Cheney in last year's primary after Cheney had spoken out against Trump's frequent challenges to democracy and the Constitution.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, the ranking Democrat on the panel, criticized the hearing -- part of a string of GOP efforts to show the "weaponization" of the Justice Department -- as "little more than performance art" and a transparent effort to protect Trump.
Indeed, the GOP charge that the bureau is acting like a pet agency of an authoritarian president bent on persecuting his enemies is not borne out by the facts. It's a picture that rings truer in the last administration than this one.
Republicans seek to absolve Trump on classified documents case
Republican after Republican on the panel enlisted in the effort to defend Trump -- over his role inciting the January 6, 2021, insurrection, or over his refusal to return classified documents to the government after he left office, which is at the root of one of his two recent criminal indictments. They also accused the FBI of trying to send Trump to jail while going easy on Hunter Biden, the son of the current president who recently reached a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and resolve a felony gun charge.
The attacks were consistent with Trump's core campaign strategy that he's a political target. Trump has pleaded not guilty in the classified documents case and in another prosecution in New York related to a hush money payment to an adult film star.
Trump's attacks on the FBI date to the investigation into his campaign's multiple links to Russians in 2016 at a time when Moscow was meddling in the US election.
But for his allies in the committees, the ex-president is beyond reproach.
"If you are a Trump, you will be prosecuted. If you are a Biden, you will be protected," said Rep. Wesley Hunt, claiming a double standard in the justice system. The Texas Republican also complained about the FBI search of Trump's Florida resort last year, and said Biden didn't get similar treatment after classified documents dating from his time as vice president were found at his home and in an office. "President Trump endured an unprecedented raid at his home in Mar-a-Lago. President Biden's home, however, was respectfully browsed," Hunt charged.
The characterization ignores the fact that Trump allegedly resisted handing over a larger trove of documents, while Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence cooperated with authorities over stray classified material. The search of Trump's home was conducted on the basis of a warrant obtained from a judge who had to be convinced there was probable cause to believe a crime had been committed. (A special counsel is still investigating classified documents found in Biden's possession, while the Justice Department closed a case on the possible mishandling of documents found at Pence's Indiana home.)
Wray sought to avoid commenting on specific cases before the courts. But he did express disdain for Trump's handling of classified material outside of a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) in a way that contradicted the GOP narrative that the ex-president is an innocent victim. "I will say that there are specific rules about where to store classified information and that those need to be stored in a SCIF. ... and in my experience, ballrooms, bathrooms and bedrooms are not SCIFs," Wray said.
House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan -- ever keen to defend Trump -- jumped in to bring up the documents found in Biden's possession. "How about a box in a garage? A beach house in Delaware? The Biden Center?" Jordan, of Ohio, said. (No documents were found at Biden's beach retreat in Rehoboth, Delaware.)
An FBI chief likely to be fired by a GOP president
Wray entered the hearing knowing he was on borrowed time. Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republicans have promised a comprehensive gutting of the FBI, Justice Department and other government agencies in response to what they claim is a wholesale effort to stop Trump winning the 2024 election. Some other Republicans want to defund or even eliminate the preeminent US domestic law enforcement and intelligence agency, claiming it is soaked in bias.
Presidents have the power to fire FBI directors but have generally sought to avoid interfering in the bureau's affairs in the post-Watergate era, after President Richard Nixon sought to weaponize the bureau and the Justice Department to pursue his political enemies. The standard 10-year term for FBI directors is meant to mitigate interference from the White House and to insulate the person who holds the post from politics.
Trump, however, smashed that tradition when he dismissed Comey and later told NBC he did so because the bureau was involved in investigating his 2016 campaign's links to Russia.
Wray's ordeal on Wednesday showed the extent to which Trump's claims that the FBI is part of a "deep state" conspiracy against him -- and the constant drum beat of conservative media accusations -- have tarnished the agency's reputation among Republicans.
"Are you protecting the Bidens?" another Trump ally, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, asked Wray.
Claiming that Biden is using the government as a political weapon is now an article of faith in the 2024 presidential campaign -- despite the fact that it was Trump who used the power of the presidency to try to get Ukraine to investigate his 2020 election rival and then sought to weaponize his Justice Department and presidential power to overturn the result of his loss.
Shortly after announcing his White House bid, DeSantis told Fox News: "No, I would not keep Chris Wray as director of the FBI. There'll be a new one on day one." The Florida governor also made clear that his objection was not simply to Wray, but to the notion that the FBI and the Justice Department should be walled off from the White House. His implication that those agencies should act at the pleasure of the president will inevitably raise fears that they would not be free to investigate any White House corruption.
"I think the DOJ and FBI have lost their way. I think that they've been weaponized against Americans who think like me and you," DeSantis told his interviewer, former GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy. "I think they've become very partisan. Part of the reason that's happened ... is because Republican presidents have accepted the canard that the DOJ and FBI are independent."
"They are not independent agencies. They are part of the executive branch. They answer to the elected president of the United States," he continued.
The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee is well within its rights to investigate the FBI -- it is their job to exercise oversight. And there are multiple times in American history -- most notably during the decades-long tenure of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover -- when the bureau was mired in politics and accused of corruption.
Some independent investigations looking at the Trump era have found wrongdoing or mistakes in the FBI. A Justice Department inspector general, for instance, concluded that while the start of the Russia investigation was justified, there were major errors in how the agency conducted the probe, including over the use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
And in May, Trump-appointed special counsel John Durham concluded that the FBI should never have launched a full investigation into connections between Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia. The FBI has since implemented what it says are scores of reforms. Wray said he considered conduct outlined in the Durham report "totally unacceptable."
Wray suffers a familiar fate as other Trump appointees
Wray is the latest Trump appointee to find out that attention from the former president and his supporters can soon turn sour when the facts contradict their preferred narrative.
When he was first nominated in 2017, Wray was hailed by Trump as "an impeccably qualified individual." But the then-president turned against him after the FBI director backed the inspector general's finding on the Russia probe. Wray's experience was shared by former Attorney General William Barr, who publicly shaped the outcome of the Russia investigation report to his boss' benefit. But Trump later castigated Barr when he denied there was widespread election interference in 2020.
Most recently, Trump has been slamming David Weiss -- the Delaware US attorney he appointed, who refuted allegations from IRS whistleblowers who said they witnessed political interference in the investigation of Hunter Biden. "Weiss is a COWARD, a smaller version of Bill Barr, who never had the courage to do what everyone knows should have been done," Trump posted on his Truth Social network this week, adding, "Two tiers of justice."
Wray used the hearing to push back on such perceptions -- even if his interrogators didn't want to hear it.
"Under my watch, we have one standard and that is we're going to pursue the facts wherever they lead no matter who likes it," he said. "I add that last part because, especially in sensitive investigations, almost by definition, somebody's not going to like it."