Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., told FBI Director Christopher Wray that Floridians who have joined the FBI under his watch “deserve better” in a tense exchange during an oversight hearing before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday morning.
Republican committee members unleashed on Wray and the FBI for alleged politicization at the bureau. Gaetz began his questioning by highlighting the exchange before him between Wray and Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who asked Wray whether the FBI was purchasing location data on Americans.
Lofgren asked Wray: “Is the FBI purchasing location data from commercial sources without a warrant?”
“This is an area that requires a little more precision and context from me to be able to answer that fully,” Wray responded. “So let me have my staff follow back up with you, so that I make sure that I don’t leave something important out.”
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“The American people need to understand what just happened,” Gaetz began. “My Democrat colleague just asked the director of the FBI whether or not they are buying information about our fellow Americans, and the answer is, ‘Well, we’ll just have to get back to you on that. It sounds really complicated.”
Gaetz then pointed to messages uncovered in June by the House Ways and Means Committee via IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley Jr., who oversaw the agency’s probe into Hunter Biden. In the messages, Biden allegedly blasted Chinese business partner Henry Zhao for not fulfilling his “commitment” and said his father was with him. Republicans have likened the exchange to a “shakedown.”
“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” Biden wrote in a WhatsApp message to Zhao, the CEO of Beijing-based asset management firm Harvest Fund Management, on July 30, 2017, according to documents released by House Republicans. “And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”
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Gaetz recited parts of the messages to Wray and asked, “Sounds like a shakedown, doesn’t it, director?”
“I’m not going to get into commenting on that,” Wray replied.
“You seem deeply uncurious about it, don’t you?” Gaetz fired back. “Almost suspiciously uncurious. Are you protecting the Bidens?”
“Absolutely not,” Wray responded. “The FBI has no interest in protecting anyone politically.”
Speaking over Wray, Gaetz said he was refusing to answer the question because “everybody knows” the answer.
“Because to the millions of people who will see this, they know it is, and your inability to acknowledge that is deeply revealing about you,” he said.
“You preside over the FBI that has the lowest level of trust in the FBI’s history,” Gaetz continued later. “People trusted the FBI more when J. Edgar Hoover was running the place than when you are, and the reason is because you don’t give straight answers. You give answers that later a court deems aren’t true, and then at the end of the day, you won’t criticize an obvious shakedown when it’s directly in front of us. And it appears as though you’re whitewashing the conduct of corrupt people.”
Wray then argued that people in Gaetz’s home state of Florida are flocking to the FBI.
“Respectfully, Congressman, in your home state of Florida, the number of people applying to come work for us and devote their lives working for us is up over 100%,” Wray said.
“We’re deeply proud of them, and they deserve better than you,” Gaetz shot back.