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‘It’s Just Wrong!’: Sen. Whitehouse Lays Into Wray Over Stonewalling on Questions

FBI Director Christopher Wray is facing questions about the agency’s apparent failure to respond to questions from lawmakers while allegedly prioritizing providing information to Republicans. During a hearing on Tuesday…

Bradley CortrightMar 2, 20213 min read

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The Rhode Island senator continued to note that lawmakers’ questions go through a “rigamarole.” However, he argued that when Republicans ask for information related to their investigations “there seems to be a little side road that gets built around the traffic jam and stuff just flies right through.”

“So, please don’t tell me about interagency process when I’ve been sitting in this committee watching FBI information get straight to this committee without interagency process.”

He asked, “What are we going to do about this? Is this a problem?”

Wray responded by explaining he had hired more staff and that he believed that had helped speed up the process for answer questions.

However, Whitehouse noted that there are questions from 2017 that have not been answered.

While Wray said he would commit to improving the process, Whitehouse vowed he ensure that the process is fixed.

“I will commit to you that I’m going to make sure that this gets done. And if it means stopping nominees, if it means doing whatever it takes to get through this problem, we’re going to get through this problem. Because it is just plain wrong for the executive branch of government in a separation of powers country to refuse to answer questions of the elected representatives of the legislative branch. It’s just wrong!”

Wray sought to defend his actions as he vowed his “responsiveness to this committee” is not based on partisan politics.

However, Whitehouse shot back, “Well you run an organization that seems to have operated under very different rules. And it was you running that organization, so let’s not make these distinctions right now.”