Matt Gaetz Humiliates FBI Director During His Testimony at House Judiciary Committee Hearing
Christopher Wray better have better aim on the FBI’s practice range.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation director tried to get in a parting shot at the end of a heated Capitol Hill exchange Wednesday with Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz.
But he only sealed his own humiliation.
The moment came when Gaetz, a GOP firebrand taking on the culture of corruption surrounding President Joe Biden’s administration, used his fives minutes of questioning during a House Judiciary Committee hearing to pin Wray down on the bureau’s handling of the Hunter Biden laptop investigation and abusing the rights of Americans with warrantless searches.
He started with the now-infamous WhatsApp message recovered from the Biden laptop, in which Hunter threatened to use his father’s influence to punish a Chinese business partner if an issue wasn’t resolved to his satisfaction.
“You seem deeply uncurious about it, don’t you? Almost suspiciously uncurious,” Gaetz said. “Are you protecting the Bidens?”
It was a devasting five minutes for Wray, and satisfying to millions of Americans who have watched the Washington establishment operating with impunity in the service of the Democratic Party agenda and the Biden White House.
Check it out here:
Every minute of Wray’s testimony is worth watching, but the final exchange starts at about the 4:40 mark, when Gaetz points out that Wray’s evidently dishonest, talk-to-the-palm answers are why the FBI has lost the trust of the American public.
(A Harvard-Harris poll from May showed a full 70 percent of Americans are either “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about the FBI meddling in elections. The citizens of East Germany probably felt the same about the Stasi.)
Gaetz was typically blunt: “You preside over the FBI that has the lowest level of trust in the FBI’s history,” he said. “People trusted the FBI more when J. Edgar Hoover was running the place than when you are.
“And the reason is because you don’t give straight answers. You give answers that later a court deems aren’t true. 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 corrupt people.”
A better man than Wray would have kept his mouth shut at that. A better man would have taken the well-deserved tongue-lashing and moved on. Of course, a better man would also have come clean.
Wray did none of the above.
Instead, he reached for a line that sounded like it might have come from NBC’s loathsome Stephen Colbert. (Maybe his writers are killing time during the strike with pro bono political work?)
“Respectfully, congressman,” Wray said, with the smarm and sarcasm of a 16-year-old who just thought up a good one in study hall, “in your home state of Florida, the number of people applying to come work for us and devote their lives working for us is up over 100 percent.”
It’s not clear what Wray was trying to do there except blurt out some irrelevant factoid that — given the source — may or may not be true.
What was clear was the response Gaetz delivered.
“We’re deeply proud of them,” he shot back. “And they deserve better than you.”
They might or they might not. Florida is a vast state with a diverse population and, despite Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ thumping victory in November and the GOP monopoly on power in the legislature, it still has a criminally large population of Democrats. There could well be an influx of Sunshine State liberals into what appears to be the burgeoning business of domestic spying.
But cynicism aside.
The fact is that all Americans — Republicans and Democrats — deserve to have an FBI that can be trusted to perform its law enforcement duties without engaging in rampant political opportunism.
Americans don’t need a federal law enforcement director who specializes in urinating on legs and then claiming it’s raining.
At the moment, the country has the Bidens for that.
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