FBI Director Wray faces grilling from House Republicans

WASHINGTON — FBI Director Christopher Wray facing an onslaught of critical questions from Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday amid GOP claims that federal law enforcement agencies have been “weaponized” against conservatives, including former President Donald Trump and his allies.

Wray is testifying at a hearing on congressional oversight of the FBI, which began at 10 a.m. ET. The hearing is being led by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who chairs the Judiciary Committee and has been critical of Wray and the FBI more broadly.

Wray, who has led the bureau since August 2017, defended his employees’ work in an opening statement and touted progress in addressing violent crime, seizing dangerous drugs like fentanyl and investigating the Chinese government.

“I want to talk about the sheer breadth and impact of the work the FBI’s 38,000 employees are doing, each and every day,” he said. “Because the work the men and women of the FBI do to protect the American people goes way beyond the one or two investigations that seem to capture all the headlines.”

Last year, the FBI arrested more than 20,000 violent criminals and child predators, Wray told lawmakers, “an average of almost 60 bad guys taken off the streets per day, every day.”

Wray said that the FBI is conducting more than 300 investigations into the leadership of drug cartels and has already “seized hundreds of kilograms of fentanyl this year alone.” The bureau, he said, also has thousands of active investigations into the Chinese government’s efforts to “steal our most precious secrets, rob our businesses of their ideas and innovation, and repress freedom of speech right here in the United States.”

“And that’s just scratching the surface; the men and women of the FBI work tirelessly every day to protect the American people from a staggering array of threats,” he said.

In a lengthier prepared statement submitted to the committee outlining the FBI’s top priorities, Wray emphasized the “urgent legislative matter” of renewing provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that are set to expire at the end of the year, including a statute, Section 702, that allows the federal government to conduct warrantless surveillance of foreigners outside the U.S., even if they’re communicating with Americans.

Wray warned, “Loss of this vital provision, or its reauthorization in a narrowed form, would raise profound risks.” It could “mean substantially impairing, or in some cases entirely eliminating, our ability to find and disrupt many of most serious security threats,” he said.

Jordan has criticized the FBI and Wray on numerous topics, including a federal investigation into Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, who is expected to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of failure to pay taxes. The president’s son also faces a separate felony gun possession charge that is likely to be dismissed if he meets certain conditions.

Earlier this year, Jordan subpoenaed Wray for documents after the GOP chairman said a withdrawn memo had focused on the FBI exploring possible domestic violent extremism in Catholic churches. He also subpoenaed Wray and other members of the Biden administration for documents related to local school board meetings amid claims that FBI divisions had focused on potential threats at such meetings.

A source familiar with the matter previously told NBC News that “everything is on the table” for discussion at the hearing.

The oversight hearing comes as special counsel Jack Smith pursues an indictment of Trump over his alleged mishandling of classified documents and an investigation of the former president for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Wray’s appearance also comes after House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., had threatened to initiate proceedings to hold the FBI director in contempt of Congress.

Those proceedings did not move forward after the FBI agreed to let Republicans view a document purportedly describing an unverified allegation that Biden was involved in a bribery scheme when he was vice president involving a foreign national. The FBI and a federal prosecutor reviewed the allegation when it was made in 2020, NBC News previously reported. The bribery allegation was not substantiated, a senior law enforcement official recently said.