America's Talking - Wray Faces Questions Over FBI’s Alleged Bias, FISA Abuse From Republicans

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I am Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me again today is Casey Harper, the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. Casey, there was a pretty significant hearing in Congress. FBI director Christopher Ray faced some tough questions from Republican lawmakers, essentially over law enforcement agencies alleged bias against conservatives and Republicans. You covered this hearing. Tell us about it. That's right. This is a... something we've been covering extensively at the center square.com. The FBI has a series of missteps, what you could call bad behavior. I would say that really became prominent in the American mind around the 2016 election because infamously, Dan, I'm sure you remember just days before, I guess it was weeks before Hillary and Trump faced off in November. The FBI came out and said they might be investigating Hillary Clinton's emails. Comey said there might be something there.

Starting point is 00:01:05 I think in his mind he was diffusing it, but the way he put it actually gave more credence to it just days before the election. And so the FBI was under, you know, huge attack for potentially being politicized there. And then there's been a lot of examples of alleged bias against conservatives in particular that we can, you know, we can dig into. But again, next, the last election, just weeks before now President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump were to face off. The Hunter Biden story

Starting point is 00:01:35 is about to break. It could influence and sway the whole election. And what happens? Now we know that the FBI pressured social media companies to call this story basically misinformation, disinformation, to censor it and to cast a lot of doubt on it as a conspiracy theory.

Starting point is 00:01:52 Even though pretty reputable outlets like the New York Post reported it out. And we had to have since been validated in their reporting. But if you remember, Dan, you know, the New York Post's Twitter account, for example, was frozen over that story. And we now know that the FBI was largely behind that. So these are the kind of things that Republicans were pointing to when FBI director Christopher Ray testified before Congress, before the House Judiciary Committee this week. You know, in watching this hearing, you know, a few takeaways were that Republicans are pretty angry, pretty upset about this. And Democrats were willing to defend the FBI, although they would not, I didn't see them really wanting to get into a lot of the weeds of explicitly defending specific examples. Maybe a little bit of that, but they just pointed to, you know, kind of Trump's wrongdoing and some of the alleged wrongdoing of Trump's associates and how that was investigated. And so Republicans came into the hearing laying out all these examples of, you know, FBI bias. There's a lot of smaller examples about,

Starting point is 00:02:53 you know, where parents are called, you know, terrorists or the way that January 6 rioters were basically tracked down very methodically and very deliberately, whereas, you know, Black Lives Matter rioters seemingly got a free pass, even, you know, so were they really treated equally? But Democrats just made it about Trump and about his wrongdoing. So in some ways, that's pretty predictable. But I don't think this investigation to FBI is going away. This is a top of priority for Republicans, the more they dig into it, the more they find evidence of this alleged bias. And so I don't think the story is going away. Just to cite a couple of quick other examples, you had the confidential federal documents found at Trump's Mar-a-Lago home where Trump has been

Starting point is 00:03:39 charged with the crime. But at the same time, Biden's home and office had classified documents that were found by the FBI. He was not charged. Former Vice President Mike Pence also had classified documents that he shouldn't have had stored at his own. He was not charged. And then you have the ongoing investigation into Hunter Biden and potential in his international business dealings and potential briborries paid to him and the president by Chinese outlets.

Starting point is 00:04:06 Some FBI whistleblowers have said the upper leadership of the FBI has suppressed that investigation. But one, you know, Ray on the stand, I'm going to quote from your story here at the center square.com. When pressed, he said, the idea that I am biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me, given my own personal background. Ray apparently is a registered Republican.

Starting point is 00:04:28 Casey, did he sound believable there? You know, it's funny. I read a lot of the mainstream media's reporting on this, and they were very quick to point this out. I could see kind of behind the reporting of some of the major outlets that they really wanted to point out that Christopher Ray was a registered Republican. I did feel it was a relevant enough fact to include in my story. But, you know, I don't think that does much to make.

Starting point is 00:04:52 any conservative Republicans feel better because it doesn't actually go against any of the narrative that they already believe, which is the moderate Republicans and the Democratic Party are teamed up against the populist movement within the Republican Party, which is Trump. So the fact that Trump can be, as you laid out, Trump can be charged by the FBI, but Biden, who's a Democrat and Pence, who you could say represents a more palatable mainstream, though he is pretty socially conservative, he wasn't charged, but Trump is. Right. So it just kind of of backs it up. I mean, what, you know, they could easily just say Christopher Ray is like a Mitt Romney Republican who would vote for Trump to be impeached. And so I don't think it did much to,

Starting point is 00:05:31 I'm changing anyone's minds who sees the FBI is pretty biased on this. Interesting. And I'm sure the conflict between Republicans and the FBI will continue in the future. Listeners can keep up with this story at thecenter square.com. But we are out of time for Casey Harper. I'm Dan McKeel. Thank you for listening. And please subscribe. You know,

America's Talking - Wray Faces Questions Over FBI’s Alleged Bias, FISA Abuse From Republicans

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