FBI's Wray cops to not having read 'every single word' of Mueller report

You can add one more name to the list of prominent government officials who haven't read the Mueller report: FBI Director Christopher Wray.

“I’ve — I’ve reviewed it, I wouldn’t say I’ve read every single word,” the director told Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) when asked if he’d read the 448-page document made public this spring.

But the head of the FBI is not alone.

Wray is one of a slew of Washington power players who have admitted to not having consumed the entire report cover to cover. More than a dozen members of Congress have told POLITICO that they hadn't read former special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings in their entirety, despite all the hype about it over the last two years.

Though President Donald Trump has claimed to have read the report, which lays out multiple potential instances of obstruction of justice and pointedly declines to exonerate him on such charges, he has repeated multiple incorrect statements about the report's contents — most notably that the report does clear him of any wrongdoing.

And fewer average Americans are intimately familiar with Mueller's findings: An Economist/YouGov poll conducted late last month found that half of respondents had read none of the report themselves.

House Democrats hope to counter that dire reality when they get the former special counsel face to face for the first time on Wednesday.

Those hoping for Mueller to drop a bombshell not contained in his findings are likely to be disappointed, however.

Mueller himself is only providing testimony begrudgingly, under threat of subpoena, after giving a surprise press conference last month during which he insisted he would go no further in public testimony than the pages of his report. And the Department of Justice has asked Mueller to do the same, a move blasted by Democrats ahead of the highly anticipated testimony.

Congressional Democrats have argued that if nothing else, Mueller will be able to bring his report to life in a way that reading the massive, redacted document can't, comparing his testimony to the political equivalent of seeing the movie version of a book.

But though Wray copped to not having read his colleague's report in full, he expressed confidence in Mueller's work.

Wray said he found the former special counsel to be a “consummate professional and a straight shooter,” telling Hirono in a Senate Judiciary hearing that he had no reason to doubt the integrity of Mueller’s work, which has been pilloried by Trump and is set to be challenged by Republicans throughout Wednesday's joint House Intelligence and Judiciary hearing.