Following President Donald Trump’s criticism of the bureau, FBI Director Christopher Wray defended its reputation and that of his employees, who the president had accused of political bias in their investigations.
“There is no shortage of opinions out there. What I can tell you is that the FBI that I see is tens of thousands of agents and analysts and staff working their tails off to keep the American people safe from the next terror attack, gang violence, child predators, spies from Russia, China, North Korea and Iran,” Wray said in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.
He added that the agency was not “in tatters” as Trump had twitted.
In the past few weeks, Republicans, including President Trump, had directed their sharp criticism toward the law-enforcement agency and Special Counsel Robert Mueller who is heading the Russia investigation.
The move is believed to be a tactic used to subvert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in last year’s election, which has so far resulted in criminal charges against four people from the president’s inner circle, according to Reuters.
Wray faced question about the FBI’s investigation into former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s use of a private email server, as well as questions relating to the recent removal of a top FBI agent, but he declined to answer them.
Republicans attacked the bureau after news emerged that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had removed the agent, Peter Strzok, from his position following the discovery that he had exchanged anti-Trump text messages with another FBI employee during the campaign.
Strzok was a top supervisor into the Clinton investigation. The Justice Department has since then begun scrutinizing the agent’s messages as part of an investigation into FBI’s handling of the Clinton email probe.
Federal law allows FBI agents to express political opinions, and there is no apparent proof that Strzok or any other agent was led by political motivations in their decisions in the Clinton investigation. However, Republicans accused agents on Mueller’s team of being “tainted” by personal political opinions.
Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte said it was “absolutely unacceptable for FBI employees to permit their own political predilections to contaminate any investigation.”
Democrats dismissed the accusation as an attempt to undermine the special counsel’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“I predict that these attacks on the FBI will grow louder and more brazen as the special counsel does his work, and the walls close in around the president, and evidence of his obstruction and other misdeeds becomes more apparent,” Representative Jerrold Nadler, the committee’s top Democrat, said.
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