Wray stonewalls House GOP on FBI FISA abuse, pipe bomb at Jan. 6 riot

FBI Director Christopher Wray shut down inquiries Wednesday from House Republicans about what the bureau knew about key events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot — including improper federal surveillance and an unsolved case involving unexploded pipe bombs placed outside political party headquarters.

In a heated Judiciary Committee hearing, GOP lawmakers noted that millions of illegal Foreign Information Surveillance Act authorizations that have occurred on Wray’s watch, while the person who planted the bombs outside the Democratic and Republican National Committees has eluded justice for more than 900 days.

“How many illegal FISA queries have occurred under your leadership of the FBI?” asked Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), before cutting Wray off to cite an inspector general’s report that found millions of warrantless searches via Section 702 authorization were conducted on Americans in 2021.

A Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruling from last year that was unsealed in May identified 278,000 incidents of improper FBI searches on both Jan. 6 riot attendees and those involved in the George Floyd riots of 2020.

Wray declined to answer the charge.

“Seems like a number you should know, how many times the FBI is breaking the law under your watch,” Gaetz said before showing testimony Wray gave last year to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), in which the director denied knowledge of FISA authority being granted for Jan. 6 investigations.

“Did you not know when you were answering these questions that the FBI was engaging in these illegal searches? Or did you perjure yourself to Senator Lee?” Gaetz asked again.

“I certainly didn’t perjure myself at the time that I testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee,” Wray replied. “I didn’t have that piece of information.”

“It was a court order,” Gaetz cut in. “You didn’t have that piece of information because the court hadn’t yet rendered a judgment. Did you not know when you gave the untruthful answer before Senator Lee that this was going on?”

“It was a truthful answer. I did not believe FISA had been involved in January 6,” Wray said.

“But it was,” Gaetz responded, adding that Wray had also refused to answer an earlier question about a WhatsApp message first son Hunter Biden sent to a Chinese businessman that used his father’s political status to close a lucrative overseas deal, according to IRS whistleblower testimony revealed last month.

“You’re blissfully ignorant as to the unlawful queries; you’re blissfully ignorant as to the Biden shakedown regime,” the lawmaker went on. “FBI personnel apparently conducted queries for improper personal reasons. People were looking themselves up. They were looking their ex-lovers up. Who has been held accountable or fired as a consequence of the FBI using the FISA process as their like, creepy, personal snooping machine?”

Wray noted that several agents have been disciplined for abusing their authority before being cut off again by the firebrand GOP congressman, who pointed to polls that show FBI currently registering its lowest level of public trust in US history.

“You give answers that later a court deems aren’t true,” Gaetz concluded. “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 the corrupt.”

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) also took the FBI director to task for not closing the case on pipe bombs left outside the DNC and RNC headquarters on Capitol Hill on the night of Jan. 5, 2021.

According to an interview the committee held with former FBI assistant director Steven D’Antuono, Massie said corrupted phone data made identification difficult and that footage from a nearby city camera captured a person alerting law enforcement to the DNC bomb.

If the bombs had gone off, they would have “cause[d] the maximum distraction from the events going on at the Capitol,” Massie added. “It appears to me that’s not a coincidence.”

Former Capitol Police chief Steven Sund said in his book “Courage Under Fire: Under Siege and Outnumbered 58 to 1 on January 6” that he believed the bombs’ placement was a diversion tactic.

Wray refused to speculate about the footage and said the bureau had pursued all leads but that he would not comment on an ongoing criminal investigation. He also told Massie the FBI had lawfully obtained hundreds of Americans’ private bank data to probe gun purchase records before and after the Capitol riot.

The director also dismissed as “ludicrous” the notion that rioting on Jan. 6 was “orchestrated by FBI sources and agents,” telling Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) that Ray Epps, a former Trump supporter who was seen at the riot but never entered the Capitol, was not a government agent.

Epps formerly headed Arizona’s chapter of the Oath Keepers, a national group with several other members indicted for their involvement in the riot, and was videotaped on the night Jan. 5 encouraging protesters to “go into the Capitol” the following day.

“I’m not sure that there were undercover agents on scene,” Wray told Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), emphasizing in a follow-up question that he “referred very specifically to undercover agents.”