FBI Director Christopher Wray to face GOP critics this week

For six years, FBI Director Christopher Wray has kept a low profile and taken a no-drama approach to the job. even as his agency has become a regular punching bag for Republicans and right-wing media figures.

This week, however, Wray will come face to face with one of his fiercest critics, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

It will be a test of Wray’s ability to face tough questions in real time, from Jordan, who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Wray took the job in 2017, after then-President Trump fired his predecessor, James Comey, who had been vilified by Republicans and Democrats alike for different reasons, and whose significant public profile intensified the effect.

Comey’s public-facing leadership style drew criticism from Democrats who saw him as feckless and Republicans who believed him to be a menace. By contrast, Wray was described as “understated” when he took the job. He has lived up to that label.

“Think about how few public statements you have heard from Chris Wray,” Benjamin Wittes, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and founder of the national security publication Lawfare, told Yahoo News. “Think of how the Bureau has been under attack from Jim Jordan, from Fox News, from everybody. It's an organization that the right-wing attack machine has identified as public enemy No. 1, other than Joe Biden.”

But Wray’s modest and workmanlike manner has left the FBI vulnerable to attacks from Republicans, including top presidential hopefuls. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Sunday that if he were president, he would fire Wray and install “a new FBI director on day one.”

Jordan himself issued a report late last year that said the “rot within the F.B.I. festers in and proceeds from Washington.”

Wray “has not conducted any kind of public defense,” Wittes said. “The answer that, ‘Well, we don't want to be like Jim Comey,’ is a real non-answer. You're the leader of an organization, and the organization and its people are being attacked, and you're not really doing anything about it other than keeping your head down.”

The FBI Agents Association, however, defended Wray’s leadership.

“Director Wray has been diligent and steadfast in his support for FBI Agents. During his visits to all 56 FBI field offices, the Director has said he wants Agents to keep their head down, ignore the sometimes-heated political rhetoric, and follow established processes and procedures. This is also the approach Director Wray has chosen for himself over the past six years,” FBIAA President Brian O’Hare said in a statement provided to Yahoo News.

Much of the right-wing animus toward the FBI originated from mistakes that the agency made in its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, which were documented in a report released in May by special counsel John Durham.

After the 2020 election and the assault on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters, many conservative media figures such as Tucker Carlson implied — without evidence — that the attempted insurrection had been fomented by undercover FBI agents.

During this week’s hearing, Republicans are likely to ask Wray about the FBI’s raid last summer of Trump’s compound in Florida, in a search for classified documents. Jordan has written to Attorney General Merrick Garland about objections to the raid by one FBI agent.

Jordan sent that letter the same day that Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury in Florida on charges that he illegally removed top secret documents from the White House after he left office and obstructed government efforts to retrieve them.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr, typically a Trump ally in the past, said the indictment is “very detailed and very damning.”

The saga of Hunter Biden is likely to take up the most time at the hearing. Jordan and other congressional Republicans have floated a series of accusations about Hunter Biden’s links to foreign business deals and whether his father, President Biden, was connected in any way.

In particular, Republicans have trumpeted the existence of an internal law enforcement form that documents an allegation that President Biden was paid $5 million by a foreign source in exchange for government favors. The FBI has said the allegations on this form, known as a FD-1023, are “unverified.”

Hunter Biden is facing federal felony charges on tax evasion and illegal possession of a firearm but has reached a plea deal with the Justice Department to avoid jail time.

Wray, 56, is only the eighth director of the FBI in its nearly 100 years as an independent arm of the Justice Department. He was an assistant U.S. Attorney in Georgia from 1997 to 2001, and then worked his way up into the senior ranks of the Justice Department during George W. Bush’s presidency.