Sitting in the Senate Judiciary Committee hot seat March 2, 54-year-old FBI Director Christopher Wray acted clueless why his agency didn’t warn and properly prepare for the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress to certify President Joe Biden’s win the in the Electoral College. When a couple thousand supporters of 74-year-old President Donald Trump’s supporters descended on the Capitol after his Jan. 6 speech at the Ellipse, the FBI, Capitol Hill and D.C. police didn’t anticipate the mayhem that followed. Wray was questioned why the FBI didn’t share its intel with Capitol Hill and D.C. police, doing what was necessary to secure the Capitol grounds. Wray admitted that he didn’t see a FBI Norfolk, Va., memo that shared intel about a possible riot at the Capitol Jan. 6 to disrupt the Electoral College vote tally. Wray called the Norfolk memo “raw and unverified” information.
Whatever Wray saw or didn’t see in a memo from the Norfolk, Va. Field office, there were obvious concerns about troublemakers appearing at the Capitol Jan. 6. Senators wanted to know why there was a lack of advanced planning to for the Jan. 6 riot and mob scene that left the U.S. Congress and Senate scrambling for their safety, whisked away to safe locations under the Capitol. “I didn’t see that report until some number of days after [Jan. 6],” Wray said. “But again, that information was passed, within 40 minutes to an hour, to our partners, including the Capitol Police, including [Metro] PD, in not one, not two, but three different ways.” Talking about when the Capitol or D.C. police were warned about a random Norfolk memo continues to blow smoke over the serious lapse in security afforded by the nation’s premier law enforcement agency.
Wray acts like it’s a matter of timing or notifying the Capitol or D.C. police about the prospects of a potential riot. Getting bogged down in the timing of law enforcement’s preparation for the Jan. 6 event defeats the entire purpose of having Wray testify. Former Capitol Hil Police Chief Steven Sund testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Rules Committees that he did not see any report from the FBI. But again, the FBI, Capitol and Metro Police knew that there were concerns about a possible violent incident, whatever the magnitude happening on Jan. 6. Wray has done everything to cover-up the FBI’s abysmal lack of advanced planning for the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress. “In a perfect world, we would have taken longer to figure out whether it was reliable,” Wray told Senators. Wray knows that FBI has months of “chatter” about a possible event happening on Jan. 6.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Il.), 76, said he was “surprised” that acting Metro Polcie Chief Robert Contee said he received an email the night before the Jan. 6 riot, saying at a Feb. 23 joint committee hearing that he thought a warning of that concern would have been conveyed in a phone call. “So, it comes down to the basic question of what the FBI knew, when they knew it, whether they shared it [and] why this didn’t rise to the level of a threat assessment,” Dubin asked, getting closer to how the FBI dropped the ball. Wray acted liked appropriate communications were made to Capitol and Metro police but, admitted that the “insurrectionists” planned the event for months. If Wray knew the event was planned for months, why didn’t he convey that to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) who accused Trump of “incitement of insurrection,” for incendiary speech at his Jan. 6 speech. Wray got caught in another FBI falsehood, like his predecessor, 60-year-old James Comey
Wray can’t have it both ways telling Senators under oath that he tried to convey an extraneous Norfolk-office memo warning about possible violence, while, at the same time, saying the mayhem was planned for months. “Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal,” said an online social network chat. If the FBI knew that possible violence existed for months since Trump lost the Nov. 3 presidential election, where was the advance preparation needed to secure the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6? Sen. Amby Klobuchar (D-Minn.) told Wray that the threats went “beyond aspirational in nature,” meaning, the threats were credible requiring plenty of advance planning. When Biden’s inauguration took place Jan. 20, the FBI made sure the National Guard were deployed to set an appropriate cordon around the Capitol to prevent another riot and mob scene.
When Wray was sworn in Aug. 2, 2017, he vowed to clean house at the FBI after the criminal conspiracy against former President Donald Trump led by former FBI Directory James Comey. Over the last four years, the FBI never came clean why Comey launched a counterintelligence investigation of Trump and his 2016 campaign. Wray knew intimately well about the illegal investigation that got Comey fired May 9, 2017, Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe fired March 17 ,2016, Agt. Peter Strzok fired Aug. 13, 2018, all of whom confirmed a conspiracy inside the FBI to prevent Trump from becoming president and, once elected, to remove him from office. Wray has done everything possible to cover-up FBI misbehavior. Now Wray’s making excuses about the abysmal law enforcement failure on Jan. 6., there are real question whether he’s fit to continue as FBI Director.
