The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Thursday in which Christopher Wray (FBI Director) testified at Capitol Hill.
Wray is still a symbol of the terrible personnel decisions made by Trump in his early years. In the wake of the disastrous James Comey, Trump needed to appoint someone focused on cleaning up the partisan sh**hole the FBI had become. Instead, he nominated a weak, milquetoast character like Wray, who was immediately captured by the agency’s power structure.
The Russia Hoax’s top movers were not hurt. No one was ever called to account for sending a SWAT team to Roger Stone’s home and coordinating with CNN to ensure it was caught on video. The FBI sanctioned former Trump official Jeffrey Clark’s public humiliation by releasing a body cam video showing him in his underwear. The lack of interest in the riots of the Summer of 2020 (riots that I firmly believe were at least partly a foreign intelligence operation) and vote fraud in the 2020 election contrast sharply with the dragnet executed for January trespassers and the institutional effort to manufacture a threat from “domestic violent extremists;” see More Whistleblower Info on FBI Padding Stats, Helping Biden Narrative on Domestic Extremism, and GOP Rep Demolishes FBI Flack Over ‘Domestic Terrorism’ Corruption. Two consecutive election cycles, the FBI was actively involved in our electoral process. They first started the Russia Hoax in 2015. First they treated allegations made in 2015 as valid, even though the were false. Then in 2020 the FBI suppressed Hunter Biden’s laptop investigation.
Ranking Member Chuck Grassley has announced that he intends to question Wray on what, if anything, he’s doing to depoliticize the FBI.
Last week, Grassley wrote to Merrick Garland and Wray asking for answers to several of his questions.
Grassley’s main concern is Hunter Biden and the FBI actions taken to protect Hunter Biden. Brian Auten, an FBI analyst who discredits the Hunter Biden laptop, is of particular interest to Grassley. Auten apparently tried to give a false impression about the laptop during a briefing to Grassley.
Meet Brian Auten. The FBI analyst is hardly a household name, but whistleblowers who contacted the office of GOP senator Chuck Grassley say he was behind an August 2020 report that FBI officials used as part of a “scheme…to undermine derogatory information connected to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation.”
The DOJ IG recommended Auten for disciplinary action for his involvement in mainstreaming Steele Dossier. He also pushed for FISA warrants based upon that fraudulent document, despite the fact it wasn’t reliable.
Grassley is also curious about Timothy Thibault (ex-Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Washington Field Office). Thibault’s social media profile shows that he is not apolitical. He personally intervened to close the investigation and to code them in such a way that they would prove difficult to open again. Grassley has gone so far as to accuse Thibault of likely violations of “federal laws, regulations and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) guidelines.”
Also in the spotlight is the former head of the “elections crimes branch,” Richard Pilger. Pilger quit in an explosion of indignation, and then stomped his feet after Attorney General Bill Barr gave the authority for US Attorneys in America to conduct investigations into voter fraud. Pilger was far from a hero for truth and light. He initiated an investigation into Trump’s campaign on the basis of an unverified allegation made by a left-wing activist group, while also preventing many investigations of voter fraud.
While we can applaud Grassley’s actions and cheer him on as he gives Wray some anxious moments as he reveals other “whistleblower” information his office has received, the fact is this is theater. Merrick Garland expects Wray to follow his instructions. The political operatives at work behind the scenes to quash investigations of prominent Democrats are doing Garland’s bidding. If the GOP wins the Senate, nothing will be different when Ron Johnson leads the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. It won’t even change if we have a GOP president in 2024 unless that president arrives in office with a clear agenda to gut the DOJ and FBI and remove anyone even vaguely connected with the partisan abuses by those organizations since at least 2015 (Trump Team Plans Post-Election Purge of Department of Justice, FBI, and the Intelligence Community).
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