The NPR Politics Podcast - Exclusive: FBI Director Christopher Wray On Responding To Hate Crimes

Episode Date: March 19, 2021

FBI Director Christopher Wray sits down with NPR's Carrie Johnson for a wide-ranging interview about the role of the FBI, the mass shooting in Atlanta that killed 8 including 6 women of Asian descent, and the ongoing investigation into the Capitol insurrection.This episode: White House correspondent Scott Detrow and national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. And I'm Carrie Johnson, National Justice Correspondent. So Carrie, you had a big day. I did. Oh my God, I left the house. I'm not a shut-in anymore. So for the first time in a year, you physically went to FBI headquarters. You were with producer Barton Girdwood. You were both wearing masks, of course. Of course. I want to just talk to you about what it's like to be out in the real world,

but I think we should actually talk about why you were there, and that was to have an interview with FBI Director Christopher Wray. So he doesn't give that many interviews, does he? No, he's a laconic guy. He does not like the spotlight. In fact, my vision of him is running away from the spotlight rather than running toward it. Yeah. And that was a posture that, you know, was notable because of the position he was in for the last few years before Joe Biden took office. He was President Trump's FBI director. As we talked about a zillion times, President Trump did not much like the FBI. You know, Scott, my memory is that the world found out that Chris Wray was going to be the FBI director when President Trump tweeted it early one morning around seven o'clock

in June of 2017. This is after he had fired, of course, former FBI director Jim Comey. And, you know, shortly after Wray came onto the job, Trump kind of soured on him. He started to speak out against Chris Wray. and Chris Wray was largely protected by the former Attorney General Bill Barr. He kept his mouth shut and his head down. I'm a low-key guy, but nobody should mistake my demeanor for what my spine is made out of. And I made a commitment when I was nominated that I was going to do this job one way by the book. And that's the way I've tried to approach it since day one. That's the way I'm going to continue to approach it. It's been a little bit of a rough three and a half years in some ways.

The FBI has certainly had some criticism from the outside, but it's also had a few self-inflicted wounds. We had these texts between FBI employees talking about political candidates in 2016. We had some big mistakes in surveillance applications, and more recently, this guilty plea by a former FBI lawyer. I wonder whether you think the Bureau was moving on from some of that, and what needs to happen in order to rebuild some public confidence in the institution? We've been around for 112 years. We make mistakes just like anybody else does. And I think one of the things that defines the FBI at its best is we learn from our mistakes. And in the examples that you gave, I implemented, you know, over 40 corrective measures the same day the much-discussed Inspector General's report came out, adopted every recommendation he had, and then went above and beyond.

We've got a whole new leadership team, and we're moving forward. learning from the mistakes that that report sets out, which I consider to describe unacceptable conduct that I also think is unrepresentative of the FBI as a whole, and we're moving on beyond that. Now, as to the public confidence issue, I think a lot of the reporting about our public confidence level is somewhat overstated, to be honest. At the end of the day, I think public confidence is measured by two questions. If you were a victim or if one of your family members was a victim, who would you most want trying to seek justice on your behalf? And if you were a bad guy, who would you least want on your behalf? And if you were a bad guy, who would you at least want on your tail?

And I think the FBI is the answer to both questions 99 out of 100 times all over the country. And that to me is ultimately what really matters in terms of our brand. Now, Kerry, there's been some awful news this week that we have not yet talked about on this podcast. On Tuesday night, in and around Atlanta, Georgia, a white man allegedly went to multiple spas in the area and killed eight people. Most of the victims were Asian women. An investigation is ongoing and the motives and other factors are not fully clear yet. But what is definitely clear is that these shootings come at a time when there are rising attacks and hate being directed at Asian Americans.

What did Ray say about all of this? Yeah, you know, Chris Ray said that hate crimes had been on his radar. They were the highest priority for the civil rights division within the FBI. But he raised some questions or left open some questions about whether this series of shootings, this mass shooting in Atlanta, was going to be considered a racially motivated hate crime. Obviously, it's a heartbreaking incident. And it hits particularly close to home for me since I consider Atlanta home. And so I certainly grieve for the victims and their families.

The FBI is supporting state and local law enforcement, specifically APD, the Atlanta Police Department, and the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office. So we're actively involved but in a support role. And while the motive remains still under investigation, at the moment it does not appear that the motive was racially motivated. But I really would defer to the state and local investigation on that for now. What level of priority are hate crimes at your field offices around the country? And are you rethinking that given the number of violent incidents and verbal threats we've seen over the last year or so? So hate crimes are a priority for the FBI and have been. Within our civil rights program, which is one of our top programs. Hate crimes are the highest priority component of that and have been. In connection with the AAPI, the Asian American Pacific Islander community in particular, it's something we've been tracking, especially over the last year or so. And even

since March of last year, we've done over 60 different outreach events with that community around the country, partly because we want to try to get in front of this threat, this issue. We have also tried to tackle hate crimes, because a lot of times hate crimes and domestic terrorism, which you mentioned, start to conflate a little bit. And so one of the things that I did about a year, maybe two years ago now, was create a domestic terrorism hate crimes fusion cell, which brings together both our domestic terrorism expertise and our hate crimes expertise and ensures that the multidisciplinary nature of the problem is brought to bear.

And part of the goal of that is to be more proactive and preventative and not just reactive. So we're very pleased, for example, that that cell helped diffuse or prevent an attempt to blow up a synagogue in Colorado, for example, which is one of the first times I think the FBI has been able to prevent a hate crime, which is normally done in a more reactive, tragically reactive way. All right, we're going to take a quick break. When we get back, FBI Director Christopher Wray lays out the FBI's plans for combating domestic terrorism. Support for NPR and the following message come from BetterHelp, offering online counseling. BetterHelp therapist Hesu Jo explains the importance of creating a safe space for therapy. I can't tell you how many times I've

had clients that say that expression, like, I've never told that to anybody. That's when I know I've made some kind of momentous move with this person. They feel safe enough to expose that part of themselves, and doing that together with somebody else can be very powerful. To get matched with a counselor within 48 hours and save 10%, go to betterhelp.com slash politics. On NPR's Consider This podcast, we don't just help you keep up with the news, we help you make sense of what's happening. Like what the case about George Floyd's killing means for the ongoing fight for racial justice, or how to best navigate a pandemic that's changed life for all of us. All of that in 15 minutes every weekday. Listen now to Consider This from NPR.

And we're back, Keri. We're listening to an interview you conducted today with FBI Director Christopher Wray. It's been a little bit more than two months now, but obviously the January 6th attacks on the Capitol and what they mean for the domestic terrorism problem in this country are still looming really large. Absolutely. You know, the FBI director says the threat from domestic violent extremists is metastasizing like a cancer. And he says, you know, that the number of investigations have more than doubled to over 2000. That's not even counting the hundreds of cases that have emerged from the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. So they're really through the roof there. And what law enforcement seems to be especially worried about right now

are these kind of lone wolf people not connected to broader movements who go off on their own and are harder to attack from a law enforcement perspective, and also these armed militia groups, some of whom have military training and equipment that they can deploy against civilians. Our mission is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution. So when we see American people at risk and the Constitution at risk, it strikes at the heart of kind of what we're about. So we've been aggressively focused on responding to that siege. We consider it the form of domestic terrorism and we're treating it as such. We've arrested close to, with our partners, close to 400 people and we have hundreds

of investigations beyond that. You know, this to me is about the rule of law. Just like we tackled some of the violence that occurred over the summer in different parts of the country, targeting different branches of government, judiciary, the White House, etc. So too, it doesn't matter what your ideology is or what your motivation is. If you disagree with an election, there's a way to deal with it. If you disagree with the criminal justice system, there's a way to deal with it. But violence, destruction of property, attacks on government officials and law enforcement is not the way to do it. And we're going to have zero tolerance for that kind of violence. In recent court papers, the Justice Department talked about charging maybe another 100 people.

If 800 people stormed the Capitol that day, does that mean that half of the people who stormed the Capitol don't wind up getting charged? Or are you going to remain on the case? We intend to see this to its conclusion, no matter how many people it takes us to devote to it, no matter how long it takes us to do it, we're going to see it to the end. If we have the evidence to charge somebody and they committed a crime on that day, I expect them to be charged. Now, charging decisions ultimately are made by prosecutors, not by FBI agents. But my own impression is that we're going to be aggressive appropriately within the

law and see this through to the end. And we're determined to do that. What kinds of resources do you need now, given how big that January 6th investigation is? And are you asking explicitly for a domestic terrorism type statute? On the resources issue, I would say this. I elevated racially motivated violent extremism to our top threat priority level about a year and a half ago or so, and I've been trying to call out this threat for a number of years now since I've been in this job. We have doubled the number of domestic violent extremist investigations we've had since where they were when I started as director. And we were up to about 2,000. And that was before the January 6th siege. So I expect the numbers to be even higher this year. And arrests likewise went up dramatically from 2019 to 20. And so at the same time, the international terrorism threat, especially international terrorist organizations that inspire homegrown violent extremists here in the U.S., hasn't gone away by any stretch of the imagination.

So we clearly are making do right now with what we have, but we need and will need more resources to tackle that problem. On the issue of legislative authorities, as you may know, the administration has underway an assessment. The first part of it came out just, I think, yesterday, assessing the domestic violent extremist threat. And as that process continues, I expect that part of what will be considered is whether some form of domestic terrorism legislation makes sense and what would that look like. And we, the FBI, I would hope and expect would be active participants in that part of the process, just as we have been in the threat assessment part of it. You talked about how you've been an early warner, I think, for a couple of years now, at least since 2019, if not earlier, about this threat, about this white supremacist and militia threat. Jill Sanborn testified on the Hill this year from the FBI that, you know, the FBI had advance notice out to its agents and sources before January 6th to gather information about the threat,

a lot of people wonder how that could have happened, how January 6th could have happened with that level of interest out there. Does it say something about the nature of or weakness in your DT source network? Well, I would say this. We at the FBI aim to bat a thousand, we and our partners. And so anytime there's an attack, much less an attack on that scale, we're bound and determined to do our part to figure out how do we make sure that that doesn't happen again. Now, in the case of January 6th specifically, as you said, we had tasked all of our field offices to be on the lookout for information related to any threat to the capital and to the national capital region on January 6th and to feed that information back. We passed on the information that we did have, as best I can tell, in quite a number of ways.

And we had been reporting and warning for a good chunk of 2020, together with Department of Homeland Security in a number of instances, about the domestic violent extremist threat, about the possibility that the domestic violent extremist threat would carry into the election and beyond the election. We even put out a product, I think, in December. So we had been warning about this for some time. There's been a lot of discussion about a particular Norfolk report, and that too was shared, not one, not two, but three different ways with our partners. Now, what we did not have, as far as I can tell, is any indication that hundreds and hundreds of people were going to breach the U.S. Capitol. And so we'll be looking hard to figure out,

is there more we can be doing? How can we do more even better? How can our partners, I assume, will do the same thing to see how they can do things better? And the more resources we have, the more we can aggressively pursue this threat. Mr. Director, there are people on Capitol Hill and even some retired law enforcement officials who are suggesting that if some of these people who stormed the Capitol, some of the people in these movements were Muslim or Black Americans, there would have been a different law enforcement level of preparation and a different response on that day. What's your reaction to that? Well, look, I'm only going to speak to the FBI's

approach, the FBI's position. I know, you know, some of what people talk about has to do with crowd control tactics by law enforcement and defensive buildings and things like that. And that's not the FBI's role or responsibility, whether it's the Capitol, a courthouse, a church, anything else. Our approach, the FBI's approach, we have one approach, which is if you take the law in your own hands and commit violence, it doesn't matter what your motivation is, what your ideology is, we're going to pursue you to the fullest extent of the law. And that was our approach over the summer. That's been our approach with jihadist-inspired violent extremists, and that's been our approach to the seats on the Capitol. Thank you so much, FBI Director Chris Wray. We appreciate this opportunity. Okay. Thank you.

So, Kerry, Director Wray is clearly not wanting to get into whether the FBI made missteps, could have handled things better ahead of the January 6th attacks. There are still so many questions, though. Is there any sense we're going to get a full accounting in one way or another of what federal law enforcement could have done differently, should have done differently leading up to this attack? You know, Scott, it really seems from all the reporting out there so far, all of the congressional testimony and the like, that there was plenty of blame to go around here. Right. But what I was really struck by was how the FBI knew enough to go knocking on people's doors, a small number of people's doors before January 6th, telling them not to come to Washington and really getting the head of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, off the streets of Washington before January 6th. But

somehow, Scott, people at the highest levels of Congress, which you used to cover, didn't seem to understand how alarming and serious the threat was. And five people wound up dead. I have so many questions still, both for the FBI and for everybody else. And the likelihood of a comprehensive congressional report on this seems less and less likely. But that is another podcast topic for another day. But, Carrie, this was a great interview with Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI. Thanks for bringing it to the podcast.

Thank you. My pleasure. All right. That is a wrap for today. We'll be back tomorrow with our weekly roundup. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. And I'm Carrie Johnson, national justice correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.