FBI Director Christopher Wray has steered the most corrupt iteration of the Bureau in history, which is saying a lot about an organization that was born from corruption in the name of law enforcement. With Wray at the helm, even complicit corporate media has had a hard time covering up the various scandals and malfeasance that pop up on a seemingly daily basis.
Leave it to Bret Baier at Fox News to help him run cover in a great PR move for the Bureau. He pretended to be a journalist by asking some “tough” questions, but gave no pushback against blatant lies told by the Director. Breitbart transcribed arguably the most ludicrous exchange:
Host Bret Baier asked, [relevant exchange begins around 10:40] “Mark Houck, Pennsylvania pro-life activist arrested at his home in front of his family for an alleged violation of the [Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act], an alleged incident in which he was protesting in front of an abortion clinic. He was recently acquitted of all charges at trial. The show of force for that arrest, a lot of people said looked like what it looked like for a cartel boss who was holed up, that decision to use that force, was that by the book?”
Wray answered, “Those decisions are made, as they should be, by the commanders on the ground in the field office who have the expertise about when to conduct operations safely and securely for the safety of everybody involved, not just their own safety and the safety of the subject who’s being arrested, but anybody else who’s around. And, to my knowledge, those processes were all followed in this case.”
Baier then said, “Historically, FBI protocol is that a defendant has — if he has no criminal history, is not believed to be violent or pose a threat to public safety, that he or she is permitted to self-surrender rather than [be] subject [to] dynamic execution of an arrest warrant. Here’s what I’m talking about is the duel system, there’s that for a pro-life activist, but not that for a Black Lives Matter protestor who maybe torches a federal building over the summer. So that disparity, that dichotomy is what sticks in people’s mind if you listen to them.”
Wray responded, “I understand that people have their opinions. All I can tell you is that we have one standard, which is, irrespective of ideology, of politics, in this country, it doesn’t matter what you’re upset about or who you’re upset with, you don’t get to express that upset with violence. And so, we are agnostic as to the ideology and focused on the violence. And I will say, as to your description of FBI protocol, it is not unheard of for the FBI, for example, to use tactical agents, for example, — which is not what happened in Pennsylvania, by the way — for even a white-collar arrest. There are situations where white-collar arrests have resulted in shootings. So, there [are] a whole lot of things that [go] into the judgment about what is the way to conduct arrests safely and securely that are made, I think appropriately, by the career agents on the ground who have the closest visibility to the circumstances and the FBI has a long history of conducting those operations with a far better track record of safety than a lot of other agencies, precisely because those people take it so seriously and so meticulously.”
As Sundance noted at The Conservative Treehouse:
It is almost too difficult to encapsulate the amount of parseltongue that flows so easily from Director Wray. Even when given specific examples of FBI storm troopers over aggressive tactics against targets, and examples of hypocrisy within FBI actions of similar situations that were handled completely differently, Chris Wray swears there is no actual difference present.
When asked about documented evidence showing FBI agents requesting social media platforms to remove content and users (Twitter files), the FBI Director says the agents do not request social media platforms to remove content and users. That’s his story and he’s sticking to it. Director Wray maintains the same standard of denial when asked about FBI targeting parents at school board meetings. If being obtuse was a crime, Chris Wray would be a career criminal.
It’s ironic that the man in charge of the top law enforcement agency of the land likely deserves to be in jail himself.
Image from World Economic Forum via Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
