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There’s no shortage of problems with the often bizarre Republican attacks against the FBI, but among the most obvious is that GOP officials are attacking an institution filled with its political allies. The idea that the bureau is a wildly liberal institution in league with Democrats has never made sense: The FBI, which has literally never had a Democratic director, has earned a reputation as one of the single most conservative agencies in the federal government.
As Joyce White Vance, former U.S. attorney and an NBC News legal analyst, explained last year, “The notion that the FBI isn’t, in essence, a conservative-leaning organization is really silly.”
Indeed, in recent months, we’ve learned that it was the FBI that went out of its way to oppose executing a court-approved search warrant at Mar-a-Lago — even after a surprised group of federal prosecutors presented the bureau with incriminating surveillance video and evidence of an intent to obstruct the subpoena.
But it’s one thing to be aware of these basic and uncontested details; it’s something else when the FBI director himself characterizes Republican theories as “insane” during sworn testimony on Capitol Hill. NBC News reported on the memorable moments from the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing yesterday with Director Christopher Wray.
At one point, he said it was “insane” that he was being accused of political bias against conservatives, given his own background: Wray, as Democrats noted at the hearing, is a registered Republican.
The context for the exchange helped drive the point home. Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman — perhaps best known for defeating then-Rep. Liz Cheney in a Wyoming primary last year — ran through a variety of partisan conspiracy theories before suggesting that many believe the director has “personally worked to weaponize the FBI against conservatives.”
Wray, looking rather annoyed, waited for the congresswoman to wrap up before responding, “The idea that I am biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me given my own personal background.”
He had a point: Wray was chosen for the job by none other than Donald Trump; he was confirmed with unanimous support from Senate Republicans; and Wray is himself a lifelong Republican and registered as a Republican voter.
And yet, if an average person watched yesterday’s hearing, and listened to GOP members’ line of questioning, they’d come away with the impression that Wray was a hair-on-fire leftist hellbent on making the FBI a “woke” weapon against innocent conservative patriots.
He’s not — and the director was occasionally candid while explaining reality to his far-right critics.
As a Washington Post analysis summarized, “[W]hile the Trump-nominated FBI director was characteristically even-tempered in his testimony, there were times in which his exasperation at his predicament came to the surface — and in which he showed his critics some teeth.”
Wray’s use of the word “insane” while pushing back against Hageman’s strange claims stood out, but the FBI chief also said Republican arguments about the FBI suppressing the lab-leak theory were “absurd,” and Republican claims about the FBI helping orchestrate the Jan. 6 attack were “ludicrous and a disservice to our brave, hard-working, dedicated men and women.”
Or put another way, Chris Wray has heard a lot of conspiratorial Republican nonsense, and he’s apparently sick of it.
One of the common threads tying together the GOP’s offensive against the director was, of all things, polling: Republicans kept pointing to survey data that showed the FBI’s reputation deteriorating in recent years, which conservative lawmakers saw as proof of ... something.
It was a curious line of attack: Republicans were effectively telling Wray, “Many Americans have come to believe the ridiculous allegations we’ve made against the bureau, which proves how right we are.”
But the FBI director was apparently prepared for these arguments, and reminded the GOP members pushing the line — most notably Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and Texas Rep. Wesley Hunt — that their constituents have applied to work at the FBI in greater numbers after Wray took office. The point was unsubtle: If the public held the bureau in such low regard, why are so many Americans applying to join the institution?
Republicans didn’t have a much of a response, which was par for the course during yesterday’s multi-hour circus.