Congressional Hearing - 059 Chrg 117Hhrg48244
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Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a hearing before the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, One Hundred Seventeenth Congress, First Session, on Thursday, June 10, 2021, Serial No. 117–27, printed in 2022. The table of contents lists the Honorable Christopher A. Wray, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, as the witness, with oral and written testimony. Items submitted for the hearing include a video, a photograph of a document entitled "United States Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation Receipt for Property," April 28, 2020, and a report entitled "Foreign Threats to the 2020 US Federal Elections."
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“Congressional Hearing - 059 Chrg 117Hhrg48244.”
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OVERSIGHT OF THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF
INVESTIGATION
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 2021
Serial No. 117–27
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
(
Available via: http://judiciary.house.gov
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
48–244 WASHINGTON : 2022
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
JERROLD NADLER, New York, Chair
MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania, Vice-Chair
ZOE LOFGREN, California JIM JORDAN, Ohio, Ranking Member
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas
HENRY C. ‘‘HANK’’ JOHNSON, JR., Georgia DARRELL ISSA, California
THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida KEN BUCK, Colorado
KAREN BASS, California MATT GAETZ, Florida
HAKEEM S. JEFFRIES, New York MIKE JOHNSON, Louisiana
DAVID N. CICILLINE, Rhode Island ANDY BIGGS, Arizona
ERIC SWALWELL, California TOM MCCLINTOCK, California
TED LIEU, California W. GREG STEUBE, Florida
JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland TOM TIFFANY, Wisconsin
PRAMILA JAYAPAL, Washington THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky
VAL BUTLER DEMINGS, Florida CHIP ROY, Texas
J. LUIS CORREA, California DAN BISHOP, North Carolina
MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania MICHELLE FISCHBACH, Minnesota
SYLVIA R. GARCIA, Texas VICTORIA SPARTZ, Indiana
JOE NEGUSE, Colorado SCOTT FITZGERALD, Wisconsin
LUCY MCBATH, Georgia CLIFF BENTZ, Oregon
GREG STANTON, Arizona BURGESS OWENS, Utah
VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas
MONDAIRE JONES, New York
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina
CORI BUSH, Missouri
PERRY APELBAUM, Majority Staff Director and Chief of Staff
CHRISTOPHER HIXON, Minority Staff Director
----
(II)
C O N T E N T S
THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 2021
Page
OPENING STATEMENTS
The Honorable Jerrold Nadler, Chair of the Committee on the Judiciary
from the State of New York ................................................................................ 2
The Honorable Jim Jordan, Ranking Member of the Committee on the Judici-
ary from the State of Ohio .................................................................................. 4
WITNESS
The Honorable Christopher A. Wray, Director, Federal Bureau of Investiga-
tion
Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 7
Written Testimony ............................................................................................... 10
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
A video submitted by The Honorable Jerrold Nadler, Chair of the Committee
on the Judiciary from the State of New York .................................................... 2
A photograph of a document entitled, ‘‘United States Department of Justice
Federal Bureau of Investigation Receipt for Property,’’ April 28, 2020, sub-
mitted by the Honorable Matt Gaetz, a Member of the Committee on
the Judiciary from the State of Florida for the record ...................................... 42
A report entitled, ‘‘Foreign Threats to the 2020 US Federal Elections,’’ Na-
tional Intelligence Council, submitted by the Honorable Mary Gay Scanlon,
a Member of the Committee on the Judiciary from the State of Pennsyl-
vania for the record .............................................................................................. 84
Materials submitted by the Honorable Sylvia Garcia, a Member of the Com-
mittee on the Judiciary from the State of Texas for the record
An article entitled, ‘‘ ‘They threatened to hang him’: Carnival worker
charged with hate crime after punching, kicking man in parking lot
of Almeda Mall,’’ Click2Houston ..................................................................... 110
An article entitled, ‘‘METRO rider charged with hate crime enhancement
after allegedly attacking bus driver and 2 officers,’’ ABC 13 ....................... 112
A report entitled, ‘‘Annual Hate Crime Report,’’ Houston Police Depart-
ment ................................................................................................................... 115
An article entitled, ‘‘The FBI Used Its Most Advanced Spy Plane To Watch
Black Lives Matter Protests,’’ BuzzFeed News, submitted by the Honorable
Cori Bush, a Member of the Committee on the Judiciary from the State
of Missouri for the record .................................................................................... 130
QUESTIONS AND RESPONSES FOR THE RECORD
Questions from the Honorable Zoe Lofgren, a Member of the Committee
on the Judiciary from the State of California for the record ............................ 142
Questions from the Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee, a Member of the Com-
mittee on the Judiciary from the State of Texas for the record ....................... 144
Questions from the Honorable Tom McClintock, a Member of the Committee
on the Judiciary from the State of California for the record ............................ 146
Questions from the Honorable Scott Fitzgerald, a Member of the Committee
on the Judiciary from the State of Wisconsin for the record ............................ 147
Questions from the Honorable Cliff Bentz, a Member of the Committee on
the Judiciary from the State of Oregon for the record ...................................... 148
(III)
OVERSIGHT OF THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF
INVESTIGATION
Thursday, June 10, 2021
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
Washington, DC
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:09 a.m., in Room
CVC–200, Capitol Visitor Center, Hon. Jerrold Nadler [Chair of the
Committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Nadler, Lofgren, Jackson Lee, Cohen,
Johnson of Georgia, Deutch, Bass, Jeffries, Cicilline, Swalwell,
Lieu, Raskin, Jayapal, Demings, Correa, Scanlon, Garcia, Neguse,
McBath, Stanton, Dean, Escobar, Jones, Ross, Bush, Jordan,
Chabot, Gohmert, Issa, Buck, Gaetz, Johnson of Louisiana, Biggs,
McClintock, Steube, Tiffany, Massie, Roy, Bishop, Fischbach,
Spartz, Fitzgerald, Bentz, and Owens.
Staff Present: Aaron Hiller, Deputy Chief Counsel; Arya
Hariharan, Chief Oversight Counsel; David Greengrass, Senior
Counsel; Moh Sharma, Director of Member Services and Outreach
& Policy Advisor; Priyanka Mara, Professional Staff Member/Legis-
lative Aide; Jordan Dashow, Professional Staff Member; Cierra
Fontenot, Chief Clerk; John Williams, Parliamentarian; Ben Her-
nandez-Stern, Counsel, Crime Subcommittee; Anthony Valdez, Pro-
fessional Staff Member/Legislative Aide, Immigration Sub-
committee; Chris Hixon, Minority Staff Director; Tyler Grimm, Mi-
nority Chief Counsel for Policy and Strategy; Stephen Castor, Mi-
nority General Counsel; Ella Yates, Minority Member Services Di-
rector; Betsy Ferguson, Minority Senior Counsel; Ken David, Mi-
nority Counsel; Caroline Nabity, Minority Counsel; James Lesinski,
Minority Counsel; Michael Koren, Minority Senior Professional
Staff Member; Andrea Woodard, Minority Professional Staff Mem-
ber; and Kiley Bidelman, Minority Clerk.
Chair NADLER. The House Committee on the Judiciary will come
to order.
Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare recesses of
the Committee at any time.
We welcome everyone to this morning’s hearing on Oversight of
the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Before we begin, I would like to remind Members that we have
established an email address and distribution list dedicated to cir-
culating exhibits, motions, or other written materials that Mem-
(1)
2
bers might want to offer as part of our hearing today. If you would
like to submit materials, please send them to the email address
that has been previously distributed to your offices, and we will cir-
culate the materials to Members and staff as quickly as we can.
Finally, I ask all Members, both those in person and those ap-
pearing remotely, to mute your microphones when you are not
speaking. This will help prevent feedback and other technical
issues. You may unmute yourself anytime you seek recognition.
I will now recognize myself for an opening statement.
First, thank you for being here today, Director Wray.
The world has certainly changed since your last visit to the Com-
mittee. When you were last here, the COVID–19 pandemic had not
yet swept the globe, George Floyd was still alive, and we had not
yet witnessed a terrorist attack on the United States Capitol.
Given the important work of the FBI in bringing the perpetrators
of that terrorist attack to justice, we have little choice in this hear-
ing but to confront the reality of January 6 head-on. The reality is
that, unlike past intelligence failures, where analysts might have
failed to connect isolated pieces of classified information, we all saw
this one coming. The attack on the United States Capitol was
planned in public view.
The events unfolded on cable news for all to see. President
Trump used the full media reach of the White House to convince
his supporters that the election had been stolen, told them to gath-
er in Washington on January 6, then stood on a public stage and
directed them to march to the Capitol.
Now, some of my Republican colleagues insist that we should
just push this unpleasant incident aside. They would rebrand these
traitors as mere tourists. They would rather we forget or move on
or look the other way.
How exactly our walls were breached that day may never be fully
known, because those same Republicans continue to block the pas-
sage of a bipartisan bill to establish a bipartisan commission to in-
vestigate the events of January 6.
The criminals who breached the Capitol, who attacked the police,
and who sought to capture and murder our leadership did so with
the express purpose of disrupting our democracy. These were no
tourists; they were insurrectionists. I, for one, will not simply look
away.
I would now direct your attention to the screen for a brief video.
[Video available at https://www.dropbox.com/s/hmml7mk0f1sfw0r/2021-06-10%20
Oversight%20of%20the%20FBI%20Nadler%20Video.mp4?dl=0]
Chair NADLER. Tourists, indeed.
That attack is very much still with us, Director Wray. The threat
is ongoing, and we need your help to do the work of reckoning with
it.
For a start, we need to understand what the Bureau knew in the
run-up to the attack, when it knew it, and what prevented it from
disrupting the work of the terrorists who planned it.
Because we know the attack was not a spontaneous event. The
events of January 6 where largely choreographed in advance. The
attack was planned in the open on popular social media platforms.
Right-wing militia groups trained for it. Maps of the Capitol
3
Grounds circulated online long before the crowds arrived in Wash-
ington.
Of course, President Trump and his allies had been whipping his
supporters into a frenzy for weeks. He urged them to march to the
Capitol to, quote, ‘‘stop the steal.’’ He told them their country
would not survive the day unless they were willing to fight. He
promised them it would be wild.
According to the bipartisan Senate report released earlier this
week, quote, ‘‘The FBI issued 15 intelligence products in 2020 re-
lated to domestic violence extremism, the last of which was issued
on December 30 without any mention of the joint session of Con-
gress or the Capitol,’’ unquote.
We need an explanation for that silence, Director Wray, because
in the lead-up to the attack, in report after report, your field agents
tried to sound the alarm.
To be clear, Director Wray, I know that you take the attack on
the Capitol as seriously as anybody and that under your direction
the FBI is engaged in a massive undertaking to bring the perpetra-
tors of the attack to justice.
The FBI’s inaction in the weeks leading up to January 6 is sim-
ply baffling. It is hard to tell whether FBI headquarters merely
missed the evidence which had been flagged by your field offices
and was available online for all the world to see or whether the Bu-
reau saw the intelligence, underestimated the threat, and simply
failed to act. Neither is acceptable. We need your help to get to the
bottom of it.
We also need your help to get at the root causes of the attack,
the extremism and racism that, to be sure, has been with the Na-
tion since before its founding but that former President Trump and
others have encouraged and would exploit for political gain.
This is not a rhetorical problem. The threat of White nationalism
and far-right extremism is very real. Studies show a surge of hate
crimes plagues our country right now. I know you to be a man of
good conscience and that you condemn these acts of hatred in the
strongest possible terms, but the time has come to put the re-
sources of the Bureau where they belong.
A recent study found that, quote, ‘‘White supremacists and other
like-minded extremists conducted two-thirds of the terrorist plots
and attacks in the United States in 2020,’’ unquote, and the time
has come for the FBI to confront this threat directly.
For too long, the FBI has downplayed the threat of White nation-
alism, focusing instead on far more distant threats and occasionally
on imaginary threats like Black identity extremism. Although the
FBI no longer uses that particular term, I am just as disturbed by
the Bureau’s current practice of lumping together a wide range of
activities under the term ‘‘racially motivated violent extremism’’ as
if there were any equivalence whatsoever between Black and
Brown activists marching for justice and the right-wing extremists
who attacked the Capitol Police and tried to hang Mike Pence.
The FBI must prioritize this threat. The Bureau cannot be afraid
to call these groups by their names. The Oath Keepers, the Proud
Boys, neo-Nazis, and other similar organizations pose an imme-
diate threat to my colleagues, my constituents, and my family.
4
The FBI must also do the hard work of keeping itself honest.
Ample evidence shows that the crowd that stormed the Capitol was
full of off-duty police and military personnel. Accordingly, it is past
time for the FBI to begin what the Department of Homeland Secu-
rity and the Pentagon have already begun, a full internal review
of White supremacist membership within the Bureau.
I do not mean to downplay your service to the country during the
chaotic last few years. These have been trying times, and I can
only imagine what it must be like to do your job in the shadow of
a President who reportedly threatened to fire you for your refusing
to launch baseless investigations of his political opponents.
In particular, I want to commend the Bureau for its work on the
security of our election systems. The FBI is charged with pre-
venting both mechanical meddling and disinformation campaigns.
Your work to secure the 2020 election led to one of the most secure
elections in our lifetime, and we owe you a debt of gratitude for
that.
I look forward to hearing more from you on how the Bureau will
continue to secure voting systems and to safeguard the right to
vote next November.
That work is critical, because, at base, trust in our democracy is
what keeps our country vibrant and strong. Faith in our democratic
institutions binds diverse people with different values and different
backgrounds together in common cause. In the wake of the insur-
rection, nothing could be more important in your work or mine
than rebuilding that trust.
Thank you again for being here today. I look forward to your tes-
timony.
I now recognize the Ranking Member of the Judiciary Com-
mittee, the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Jordan, for his opening state-
ment.
Mr. JORDAN. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Director Wray, thank you for being here.
Over the past several years, Americans have seen their liberties
attacked. Every right— we enjoy under the First Amendment has
been assaulted, every single one—your right to worship, your right
to assemble, your right to petition, freedom of the press, freedom
of speech—every single one.
There are places today where a full congregation can still not
meet on a Sunday morning. Your right to assemble? Four weeks
ago, I spoke to the New Mexico Republican Party in Amarillo,
Texas. They had to go to Texas for freedom, because they weren’t
allowed to assemble in their own State.
Your right to petition your government? We sit here today on
Capitol Hill having an important hearing with the Director of the
FBI, but our constituents can’t come to their Capitol, lobby their
Member of Congress to redress their grievances, because the
Speaker of the House won’t let them in.
Freedom of the press? Maybe the best example is, the President
won’t go to the border, the Vice President won’t go to the border.
When Secretary Mayorkas went to the border, he wouldn’t let the
press in the very facilities he was touring.
Of course, freedom of speech, we all know what has happened to
that. Big Tech censoring conservatives, the cancel-culture mob at-
5
tacking anyone who disagrees with them, deplatforming the sitting
President of the United States, Democrats writing letters to the
network carriers telling them to take certain news organizations off
their platform.
Freedom is under attack, and, Director, a lot of Americans think
you are part of the problem.
Before you got there, the Comey FBI spied on the Trump cam-
paign. Over the last three years, the FBI labeled the baseball field
shooting where our friend and colleague Steve Scalise was shot, la-
beled that ‘‘suicide by cop,’’ for three years. We know the guy set
out to go after Republicans. He had a piece of paper in his pocket
with six Republican names on it. Somehow, the FBI thought it was
suicide by cop. Thank goodness you have changed that.
More recently, the FBI raided the New York apartment of Mayor
Giuliani, the President’s personal lawyer, former U.S. attorney, ran
the Southern District of New York office. According to press ac-
counts, he said he was willing to give whatever information you all
wanted, whatever the Justice Department wanted. No, you kicked
in his door instead.
How about the couple in Alaska? Paul and Marilyn Hueper. They
sure witnessed an attack on their liberty in an up close and per-
sonal way. The FBI kicked in their door, handcuffed them, held
them at gunpoint, interrogated them for four hours in their own
home. There was just one problem: They had the wrong people.
Had the wrong people. Took their phones, took their laptop, took
a pocket-size copy of the Constitution. There has to be some irony
in that.
Then there is FISA. In 2018, FISA Court Judge Boasberg said
there were major privacy violations by the FBI. In 2019, Inspector
General Horowitz did two investigations. The first one was on the
Carter Page FISA application. He found 17 errors in that one, 51
wrong or unsupported statements in that FISA application—17 er-
rors, 51 wrong statements. That is a nice way of saying ‘‘68 lies’’
that were taken to the FISA court. Mr. Horowitz then looked at 25
randomly sampled FISA applications, specifically the Woods file,
the underlying documents that support what is taken to the court.
In every single one, he said there was a problem, all 25. In four
of them, he couldn’t even find the Woods file.
The last time the Director was in front of us, February of last
year, you told us everything was fine. You said this: Quote, ‘‘Ameri-
cans should not lose sleep over the FISA application process.’’
Just two months ago, Judge Boasberg was back with another re-
port, and he said there are, quote, ‘‘apparent widespread violations’’
by the FBI of the standards they have in place to deal with section
702 of FISA.
Which raises a sort of fundamental question: Why are you using
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to spy on Americans, Di-
rector?
I appreciate the tough job you have and the good work, the good
work, that the vast majority of your agents I think do. Freedom-
loving Americans have concerns about their liberty, but they also
have concerns about the opportunity cost.
When you are kicking in the door of the President’s lawyer, when
you are interrogating an innocent couple for four hours, when you
6
are spying on Americans, then, by definition, that means there are
fewer resources going to stop terrorists at our southern border,
stopping cyber-attacks, prosecuting Antifa, terrorists, and other ri-
oters who attacked law enforcement, small businesses, the Capitol,
and did over a billion dollars of damage over the last year. Frankly,
that also means there are fewer resources to figure out where this
virus started.
So, we are going to have some tough questions for you, Director.
We appreciate you being here, and we trust that you are going to
answer our questions, are going to answer them directly. Because,
again, when you think about what Americans have had to live
through, the rights that they have that have been infringed as citi-
zens of this great country, it is a serious time. So, we hope you will
answer the tough questions that will come from the Republican
side.
With that, Mr. Chair, I yield back.
Chair NADLER. Thank you, Mr. Jordan.
Without objection, all other opening statements will be included
in the record.
Chair NADLER. We will now introduce today’s Witness.
Christopher Wray became the eighth Director of the FBI on Au-
gust 2, 2017.
Director Wray began his law enforcement career in 1997, serving
the Department of Justice as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the
Northern District of Georgia. In 2001, he was named Associate
Deputy Attorney General and then Principal Associate Deputy At-
torney General in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General in
Washington, DC.
Mr. Wray was nominated by President George Bush in 2003 to
be the Assistant Attorney General for DOJ’s Criminal Division,
which included the Counterterrorism section and the Counterintel-
ligence and Export Control section at the time.
In addition to his extensive time in public service, Mr. Wray has
spent a total of almost 17 years practicing law in the international
law firm of King & Spalding, LLP, working in the area of govern-
ment investigations and white-collar crime. At the time of his nom-
ination to be FBI Director, Mr. Wray was chair of the firm’s Special
Matters and Government Investigations Practice Group.
He graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Yale University in
1989 and earned his law degree from Yale Law School in 1992. He
also clerked for Judge J. Michael Luttig of the U.S. Court of Ap-
peals for the Fourth Circuit.
We welcome Director Wray, and we thank him for participating
today.
Now, if you would please rise, I will begin by swearing you in.
Do you swear or affirm, under penalty of perjury, that the testi-
mony you are about to give is true and correct, to the best of your
knowledge, information, and belief, so help you God?
Let the record show that the Witness has answered in the affirm-
ative.
Thank you, and please be seated.
Please note that your written statement will be entered into the
record in its entirety. Accordingly, I ask that you summarize your
testimony in five minutes.
7
To help you stay within that time, there is a timing light on your
table. When the light switches from green to yellow, you have one
minute to conclude your testimony. When the light turns red, it
signals your five minutes have expired.
Director Wray, you may begin.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE CHRISTOPHER WRAY
Mr. WRAY. Good morning, Chair Nadler, Ranking Member Jor-
dan, and the Members of the Committee. Thank you for this oppor-
tunity to talk about the FBI’s enduring efforts to keep the Amer-
ican people safe.
As you know, over our almost-113-year history, the FBI has
worked tirelessly alongside our trusted partners to confront a host
of threats facing our country, from the persistent threat posed by
terrorists both foreign and domestic, to the counterintelligence
threat posed by the governments of aggressive adversaries like
China and Russia, to the scourge of violence threatening our neigh-
borhoods, to the rising and evolving threat posed by cyber crimi-
nals who seek to hold hostage our companies and our critical infra-
structure.
I suspect we’ll be covering these and other topics today, but I’d
like to start by discussing an issue that is of utmost concern to me,
to you, and to all Americans, which is the prevalence of violence
in our country.
Over the last few years, we’ve witnessed the troubling phe-
nomenon of people resorting to violence and destruction of property
to further their ideological, political, or social goals. Far too often,
we are seeing individuals inspired by one or more extremist
ideologies to commit criminal acts against their fellow Americans.
Now, the FBI does not and should not police ideology, and we do
not investigate groups or individuals based on the exercise of First
Amendment-protected activity alone. When we encounter violence
and threats to public safety, the FBI will not hesitate to take ap-
propriate action.
That is not a controversial issue that should force anyone to take
sides. We can all agree that violence in any form, in support of any
set of beliefs, cannot and will not be tolerated, because violence un-
dermines one of the most basic freedoms of all Americans, the right
to feel safe and secure in our own homes and communities.
We saw this kind of extremist violence on January 6 when an
angry mob used violence and the destruction of property to break
into the U.S. Capitol in a failed attempt to undermine our institu-
tions of government and our democratic process, an assault where
you, the Members of Congress, were victims, where all Americans
were victimized and more than 100 law enforcement officers were
injured in just a few hours.
Through the dogged work of FBI agents, analysts, and profes-
sionals, working alongside Federal, State, and local partners, we’ve
been able to make close to 500 arrests so far, with more to come.
We also saw extremist violence during last summer’s civil unrest.
Although most citizens made their voices heard through peaceful,
lawful protests, others, far too many, persistently exploited those
protests to pursue violent extremist agendas. In Portland alone,
8
hundreds of law enforcement officers sustained injuries and dam-
age to Federal buildings was estimated in the millions of dollars.
Across the country, Federal, State, and local authorities arrested
thousands of individuals who committed criminal acts surrounding
those protests. Nearly every one of the FBI’s 56 field offices opened
investigations, amounting to hundreds of investigations, involving
violent and destructive conduct.
More recently, we’ve seen an alarming increase in hate crimes
across the country, many targeting Members of the Asian-Amer-
ican/Pacific Islander and Jewish communities. In some cases, these
crimes are carried out by individuals we characterize as racially
and ethnically motivated violent extremists.
To confront this threat, we’ve taken a multipronged approach, fo-
cusing on our traditional investigative efforts through our civil
rights program and our Domestic Terrorism-Hate Crimes Fusion
Cell that we created about a year and a half ago, but also enhanc-
ing our law enforcement training, public outreach, and support to
our State and local partners.
Our efforts to stem extremist violence are on top of our continued
and extensive work to disrupt violent gangs, drug organizations,
and human traffickers whose criminal acts devastate families and
communities.
For many of you, violent crime remains the most significant and
most pernicious threat you face in your own district. In difficult
times like these, we must never forget the extraordinary bravery
of our Federal, State, local, and Tribal law enforcement Members,
who risk life and safety every single day to protect the public and
keep the peace.
I say that because, over the past year, we’ve seen a troubling up-
tick in violence against Members of the law enforcement commu-
nity. In just the first five months of 2021, 36 officers have been fe-
loniously killed on the job. That’s far surpassing the number by
this time last year. To put that in perspective, that’s almost two
law enforcement officers shot and killed every week.
That’s not counting all those officers who’ve died in the line of
duty facing the countless other inherent dangers of the job, like
racing in pursuit of a suspect and dying in a car accident or drown-
ing in an attempted rescue, or even the scores of officers who’ve
died from COVID–19, because law enforcement, of course, kept
coming to work every day, right through the teeth of the pandemic.
Nor is it counting all those officers who’ve been badly injured but
thankfully survived but whose lives and whose families’ lives have
been forever changed.
Now, the loss of any agent or officer is heartbreaking for their
families, for their departments, for their communities that they
serve. We in the FBI know that all too well, with the terrible, ter-
rible loss of Special Agents Laura Schwartzenberger and Dan Alfin
this past February, shot and killed down near Miami.
Each one of the officers and the agents we’ve lost this year were
people who got up one morning, picked up their badge, not knowing
whether they’d make it home that night. They did their jobs de-
spite all the hardships they’ve faced in this almost epically difficult
year, because they were devoted to protecting their fellow Ameri-
cans, both friends and strangers alike. We owe these dedicated
9
public servants a debt of gratitude. More than that, we owe them
our best efforts to help stem the tide of violence.
All of us here today have a shared responsibility to take a stand,
to protect our communities, to support those who serve in law en-
forcement, and to condemn violence regardless of its motivation.
We in the FBI are ready to do that exactly, to use all the tools at
our disposal to uphold the rule of law and to fulfill our mission to
protect every American. Because there is simply no place in this
country for hatred, intolerance, or violence regardless of its motiva-
tion, ideology, or otherwise.
So, thank you for taking the time to hear from me today. I look
forward to answering your questions.
[The statement of Mr. Wray follows:]
10
ileparlment nf Juntice
STATEMENT OF
CHRISTOPHER A.WRAY
DIRECTOR
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
AT A HEARING ENTITLED
"OVERSIGHT OF THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION"
PRESENTED
JUNE 10, 2021
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STATEMENT OF
CHRISTOPHER A. WRAY
DIRECTOR
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
AT A HEARING ENTITLED
"FBI OVERSIGHT"
PRESENTED
JUNE 10, 2021
Good morning, Chairman Nadler, Ranking Member Jordan, and Members of the
Committee. I am honored to be here, representing the men and women of the FBI. Our people
nearly 37,000 of them are the heart of the Bureau. I am proud of their service and their
commitment to our mission. Every day, they tackle their jobs with perseverance,
professionalism, and integrity sometimes at the greatest of costs.
Earlier this year, two of our agents made the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty.
Special Agents Dan Alfin and Laura Schwartzenberger left home to carry out the mission they
signed up for - to keep the American people safe. They were executing a federal court-ordered
search warrant in a violent crimes against children investigation in Sunrise, Florida, when they
were shot and killed. Three other agents were also wounded that day. We'll be forever grateful
for their commitment and their dedication - for their last full measure of devotion to the people
they served and defended. We will always honor their sacrifice.
Despite the many challenges our FBI workforce has faced, I am immensely proud of
their dedication to protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution. Our country
has faced unimaginable challenges this past year. Yet, through it all, whether it was coming to
the aid of our partners during the Capitol siege and committing all of our resources to ensuring
that those involved in that brutal assault on our Democracy are brought to justice, the
proliferation of terrorist violence moving at the speed of social media, abhorrent hate crimes,
COVID-19 related fraud and misinformation, the increasing threat of cyber intrusions and state-
sponsored economic espionage, malign foreign influence and interference, the scourge of opioid
trafficking and abuse, or human trafficking and crimes against children, the women and men of
the FBI have unwaveringly stood at the ready and taken it upon themselves to tackle any and all
challenges thrown their way.
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The list of diverse threats we face underscores the complexity and breadth of the FBl's
mission: to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States. I am
pleased to have received your invitation to appear today and am looking forward to engaging in
a thorough, robust, and frank discussion regarding some of the most critical matters facing our
organization and the Nation as a whole.
Capitol Violence
First and foremost, I want to assure you, your staff, and the American people that the
FBI has deployed our full investigative resources and is working closely with our federal, State,
local, Tribal, and territorial partners to aggressively pursue those involved in criminal activity
during the events of January 6, 2021. We are working closely with our federal, state, and local
law enforcement partners, as well as private sector partners, to identify those responsible for the
violence and destruction of property at the U.S. Capitol building who showed blatant and
appalling disregard for our institutions of government and the orderly administration of the
democratic process.
FBI Special Agents, Intelligence Analysts, and professional staff have been hard at work
gathering evidence, sharing intelligence, and working with federal prosecutors to bring charges
against the individuals involved. As we have said consistently, we do not and will not tolerate
violent extremists who use the guise of First Amendment-protected activity to engage in violent
criminal activity. Thus far, the FBI has arrested hundreds of individuals with regards to rioting,
assault on a federal officer, property crimes violations, and conspiracy charges, and the work
continues.
Overall, the FBI assesses that the January 6th siege of the Capitol Complex
demonstrates a willingness by some to use violence against the government in furtherance of
their political and social goals. This ideologically motivated violence underscores the symbolic
nature of the National Capital Region and the willingness of some Domestic Violent Extremists
to travel to events in this area and violently engage law enforcement and their perceived
adversaries. The American people should rest assured that we will continue to work to hold
accountable those individuals who participated in the violent breach of the Capitol on January
6th , and any others who attempt to use violence to intimidate, coerce, or influence the American
people or affect the conduct of our government.
Top Terrorism Threats
As has been stated multiple times in the past, preventing terrorist attacks, from any
place, by any actor, remains the FBJ's top priority. The nature of the threat posed by terrorism
- both international terrorism ("IT") and domestic terrorism ("DT") - continues to evolve.
The greatest terrorism threat to our Homeland is posed by lone actors or small cells who
typically radicalize online and look to attack soft targets with easily accessible weapons. We
see these threats manifested within both Domestic Violent Extremists ("DVEs") and
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Homegrown Violent Extremists ("HVEs"), two distinct threats, both of which are located
primarily in the United States and typically radicalize and mobilize to violence on their own.
Individuals who commit violent criminal acts in furtherance of social or political goals
stemming from domestic influences - some of which include racial or ethnic bias, or anti-
government or anti-authority sentiments are described as DVEs, whereas HVEs are
individuals who are inspired primarily by global jihad but are not receiving individualized
direction from Foreign Terrorist Organizations ("FTOs").
Domestic and Homegrown Violent Extremists are often motivated and inspired by a mix
of socio-political, ideological, and personal grievances against their targets, and more recently
have focused on accessible targets to include civilians, law enforcement and the military,
symbols or members of the U.S. Government, houses of worship, retail locations, and mass
public gatherings. Selecting these types of soft targets, in addition to the insular nature of their
radicalization and mobilization to violence and limited discussions with others regarding their
plans, increases the challenge faced by law enforcement to detect and disrupt the activities of
lone actors before they occur.
The top threat we face from DVEs continues to be from those we categorize as Racially
or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists ("RMVEs"), largely those who advocate for the
superiority of the white race, who were the primary source oflethal attacks perpetrated by
DVEs in 2018 and 2019. It is important to note that we have also recently seen an increase in
fatal DYE attacks perpetrated by Anti-Government or Anti-Authority Violent Extremists,
specifically Militia Violent Extremists and Anarchist Violent Extremists. Anti-Government or
Anti-Authority Violent Extremists were responsible for three of the four lethal DYE attacks in
2020. Also, in 2020, we saw the first lethal attack committed by an Anarchist Violent Extremist
in over 20 years.
Consistent with our mission, the FBI does not investigate First Amendment-protected
speech or association, peaceful protests, or political activity. The FBI holds sacred the rights of
individuals to peacefully exercise their First Amendment freedoms. Non-violent protests are
signs of a healthy democracy, not an ailing one. Regardless of their specific ideology, the FBI
will aggressively pursue those who seek to hijack legitimate First Amendment-protected
activity by engaging in violent criminal activity such as the destruction of property and violent
assaults on law enforcement officers that we witnessed on January 6 th and during protests
throughout the U.S. during the summer of2020 and beyond. In other words, we will actively
pursue the opening of FBI investigations when an individual uses - or threatens the use of -
force, violence, or coercion, in violation of federal law and in the furtherance of social or
political goals.
The FBI assesses HVEs are the greatest, most immediate IT threat to the Homeland. As
I have described, HVEs are located in and radicalized primarily in the United States, who are
not receiving individualized direction from global jihad-inspired FTOs but are inspired largely
by the Islamic State oflraq and ash-Sham ("ISIS") and al-Qa'ida to commit violence. An
HVE's lack of a direct connection with an FTO, ability to rapidly mobilize without detection,
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and use of encrypted communications pose significant challenges to our ability to proactively
identify and disrupt them.
The FBI remains concerned that FTOs, such as ISIS and al-Qa'ida, intend to carry out or
inspire large-scale attacks in the United States. Despite its loss of physical territory in Iraq and
Syria, ISIS remains relentless in its campaign of violence against the United States and our
partners - both here at home and overseas. To this day, ISIS continues to aggressively promote
its hate-fueled rhetoric and attract like-minded violent extremists with a willingness to conduct
attacks against the United States and our interests abroad. ISIS' successful use of social media
and messaging applications to attract individuals seeking a sense of belonging is of continued
concern to us. Like other foreign terrorist groups, ISIS advocates for lone offender attacks in
the United States and Western countries via videos and other English language propaganda that
have at times specifically advocated for attacks against civilians, the military, law enforcement
and intelligence community personnel.
Al-Qa'ida maintains its desire to both conduct and inspire large-scale, spectacular
attacks. Because continued pressure has degraded some of the group's senior leadership, in the
near term, we assess al-Qa'ida is more likely to continue to focus on cultivating its international
affiliates and supporting small-scale, readily achievable attacks in regions such as East and
West Africa. Over the past year, propaganda from al-Qa'ida leaders continued to seek to inspire
individuals to conduct their own attacks in the United States and other Western nations.
Iran and its global proxies and partners, including Iraqi Shi a militant groups, continue to
attack and plot against the United States and our allies throughout the Middle East in response
to U.S. pressure. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force ("IRGC-QF")
continues to provide support to militant resistance groups and terrorist organizations. Iran also
continues to support Lebanese Hizballah and other terrorist groups. Lebanese Hizballah has
sent operatives to build terrorist infrastructures worldwide. The arrests of individuals in the
United States allegedly linked to Lebanese Hizballah's main overseas terrorist arm, and their
intelligence collection and procurement efforts, demonstrate Lebanese Hizballah's interest in
long-term contingency planning activities here in the Homeland. Lebanese Hizballah Secretary-
General Hasan Nasrallah also has threatened retaliation for the death of IRGC-QF Commander
Qassem Soleimani.
As an organization, we continually adapt and rely heavily on the strength of our federal,
state, local, Tribal, territorial, and international partnerships to combat all terrorist threats to the
United States and our interests. To that end, we use all available lawful investigative techniques
and methods to combat these threats while continuing to collect, analyze, and share intelligence
concerning the threat posed by violent extremists, in all their forms, who desire to harm
Americans and U.S. interests. We will continue to share information and encourage the sharing
of information among our numerous partners via our Joint Terrorism Task Forces across the
country, and our Legal Attache offices around the world.
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Lawful Access
The problems caused by law enforcement agencies' inability to access electronic
evidence continue to grow. Increasingly, commercial device manufacturers have employed
encryption in such a manner that only the device users can access the content of the devices.
This is commonly referred to as "user-only-access" device encryption. Similarly, more and
more communications service providers are designing their platfonns and apps such that only
the parties to the communication can access the content. This is generally known as "end-to-
end" encryption. The proliferation of end-to-end and user-only-access encryption is a serious
issue that increasingly limits law enforcement's ability, even after obtaining a lawful warrant or
court order, to access critical evidence and information needed to disrupt threats, protect the
public, and bring perpetrators to justice.
The FBI remains a strong advocate for the wide and consistent use of responsibly-
managed encryption - encryption that providers can decrypt and provide to law enforcement
when served with a legal order. Protecting data and privacy in a digitally connected world is a
top priority for the FBI and the U.S. government, and we believe that promoting encryption is a
vital part of that mission. But we have seen that the broad application of end-to-end and user-
only-access encryption adds negligible security advantages. It does have a negative effect on
law enforcement's ability to protect the public. What we mean when we talk about lawful
access is putting providers who manage encrypted data in a position to decrypt it and provide it
to us in response to legal process. We are not asking for, and do not want, any "backdoor," that
is, for encryption to be weakened or compromised so that it can be defeated from the outside by
law enforcement or anyone else. Unfortunately, too much of the debate over lawful access has
revolved around discussions of this "backdoor" straw man instead of what we really want and
need.
We are deeply concerned with the threat end-to-end and user-only-access encryption
pose to our ability to fulfill the FBl's duty of protecting the American people from every
manner of federal crime, from cyber-attacks and violence against children to drug trafficking
and organized crime. We believe Americans deserve security in every walk oflife- in their
data, their streets, their businesses, and their communities.
End-to-end and user-only-access encryption erode that security against every danger the
FBI combats. For example, even with our substantial resources, accessing the content of known
or suspected terrorists' data pursuant to court-authorized legal process is increasingly difficult.
The often-online nature of the terrorist radicalization process, along with the insular nature of
most of today's attack plotters, leaves fewer dots for investigators to connect in time to stop an
attack - and end-to-end and user-only-access encryption increasingly hide even those often
precious few and fleeting dots.
In one instance, while planning and right up until the eve of the December 6, 2019,
shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola that killed three U.S. sailors and severely wounded
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eight other Americans, deceased terrorist Mohammed Saeed Al-Shamrani communicated
undetected with overseas al-Qa'ida terrorists using an end-to-end encrypted app. Then, after the
attack, user-only-access encryption prevented the FBI from accessing information contained in
his phones for several months. As a result, during the critical time period immediately
following the shooting and despite obtaining search warrants for the deceased killer's devices,
the FBI could not access the information on those phones to identify co-conspirators or
determine whether they may have been plotting additional attacks.
This problem spans international and domestic terrorism threats. Like Al-Shamrani, the
plotters who sought to kidnap the Governor of Michigan late last year used end-to-end
encrypted apps to hide their communications from law enforcement. Their plot was only
disrupted by well-timed human source reporting and the resulting undercover operation.
Subjects of our investigation into the January 6 Capitol siege used end-to-end encrypted
communications as well.
We face the same problem in protecting children against violent sexual exploitation.
End-to-end and user-only-access encryption frequently prevent us from discovering and
searching for victims, since the vital tips we receive from providers only arrive when those
providers themselves are able to detect and report child exploitation being facilitated on their
platforms and services. They cannot do that when their platforms are end-to-end encrypted.
For example, while Facebook Messenger and Apple iMessage each boasts over one billion
users, in 2020, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children ("NCMEC") received
over 20 million tips from Facebook 1, compared to 265 tips from Apple, according to NCMEC
data and publicly available information. Apple's use of end-to-end encryption, which blinds it
to child sexual abuse material being transmitted through its services, likely plays a role in the
disparities in reporting between the two companies. We do not know how many children are
being harmed across the country as a result of this under-reporting by Apple and other end-to-
end providers.
When we are able to open investigations, end-to-end and user-only-access encryption
makes it much more difficult to bring perpetrators to justice. Much evidence of crimes against
children, just like many other kinds of crime today, exists primarily in electronic form. Ifwe
cannot obtain that critical electronic evidence, our efforts are frequently hamstrung.
This problem is not just limited to federal investigations. Our State and local law
enforcement partners have been consistently advising the FBI that they, too, are experiencing
similar end-to-end and user-only-access encryption challenges, which are now being felt across
the full range of State and local criminal law enforcement. Many report that even relatively
unsophisticated criminal groups, like street gangs, are frequently using user-only-access
encrypted smartphones and end-to-end encrypted communications apps to shield their activities
from detection or disruption. As this problem becomes more and more acute for State and local
law enforcement, the advanced technical resources needed to address even a single investigation
1
Facebook is planning to move its Facebook Messenger platform to end-to-end
encryption as a default in the near future. This will result in the loss of even these tips.
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involving end-to-end and user-only-access encryption will continue to diminish and ultimately
overwhelm State and local capacity to investigate even common crimes.
In 2020, nation-state and criminal cyber actors took advantage of people and networks
made more vulnerable by the sudden shift of our personal and professional lives online due to
the COVID-19 pandemic, targeting those searching for personal protective equipment, worried
about stimulus checks, and conducting vaccine research.
Throughout the last year, the FBI has seen a wider-than-ever range of cyber actors
threaten Americans' safety, security, and confidence in our digitally connected world. But these
threats will not disappear when the pandemic ends. Cyber-criminal syndicates and nation-states
keep innovating ways to compromise our networks and maximize the reach and impact of their
operations, such as by selling malware as a service or by targeting vendors as a way to access
scores of victims by hacking just one provider.
These criminals and nation-states believe that they can compromise our networks, steal
our property, and hold our critical infrastructure at risk without incurring any risk themselves.
In the last year alone, we have seen - and have publicly called out - China, North Korea, and
Russia for using cyber operations to target U.S. COVID-19 vaccines and research. We have
seen the far-reaching disruptive impact a serious supply-chain compromise can have through the
SolarWinds intrusions, conducted by the Russian SVR. We have seen China working to obtain
controlled defense technology and developing the ability to use cyber means to complement any
future real-world conflict. We have seen Iran use cyber means to try to sow divisions and
undermine our elections, targeting voters before the November election and threatening election
officials after.
As dangerous as nation-states are, we do not have the luxury of focusing on them alone.
In the past year, we also have seen cyber criminals target hospitals, medical centers, and
educational institutions for theft or ransomware. Such incidents affecting medical centers have
led to the interruption of computer networks and systems that put patients' lives at an increased
risk at a time when America faces its most dire public health crisis in generations. And we have
seen criminal groups targeting critical infrastructure for ransom, causing massive disruption to
our daily Jives.
We are also seeing dark web vendors who sell capabilities in exchange for
cryptocurrency increase the difficulty of stopping what would once have been less dangerous
offenders. What was once a ring of unsophisticated criminals now has the tools to paralyze
entire hospitals, police departments, and businesses with ransomware. It is not that individual
hackers alone have necessarily become much more sophisticated, but unlike previously
they are able to rent sophisticated capabilities.
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We have to make it harder and more painful for hackers and criminals to do what they
are doing. That is why I announced a new FBI cyber strategy last year, using the FBI's role as
the lead federal agency with law enforcement and intelligence responsibilities to not only
pursue our own actions, but to work seamlessly with our domestic and international partners to
defend their networks, attribute malicious activity, sanction bad behavior, and take the fight to
our adversaries overseas. We must impose consequences on cyber adversaries and use our
collective law enforcement and intelligence capabilities to do so through joint and enabled
operations sequenced for maximum impact. And we must continue to work with the
Department of State and other key agencies to ensure that our foreign partners are able and
willing to cooperate in our efforts to bring the perpetrators of cybercrime to justice.
An example of this approach is the international takedown in January 2021 of the
Emotet botnet, which enabled a network of cyber criminals to cause hundreds of millions of
dollars in damages to government, educational, and corporate networks. The FBI used
sophisticated techniques, our unique legal authorities, and, most importantly, our worldwide
partnerships to significantly disrupt the malware.
A few months ago, cybersecurity companies including Microsoft disclosed that hackers
were using previously unknown vulnerabilities related to Microsoft Exchange software to
access email servers that companies physically keep on their premises rather than in the cloud.
These "zero day" vulnerabilities allowed the actors to potentially exploit victim networks,
engaging in activities such as grabbing login credentials, installing malicious programs to send
commands to the victim network, and stealing emails in bulk. The FBI first put out a joint
advisory in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security Agency (''CISA") to give network defenders the technical information
they needed to mitigate the vulnerability. However, while many infected system owners
successfully removed the web shells others were not able to do so. That left many systems
vulnerable to adversaries who could continue to steal information, encrypt data for ransom, or
potentially even execute a destructive attack. In response, through a court-authorized operation
in partnership with the private sector, we were able to copy and remove malicious web shells
from hundreds of vulnerable computers in the U.S. running Microsoft Exchange Server
software. This is another example of how the FBI used its unique authorities, in this case, court-
issued legal process, and its partnerships with the private sector to have tangible, real-world
impact on the problem.
We took upwards of 1, J 00 actions against cyber adversaries last year, including arrests,
criminal charges, convictions, dismantlements, and disruptions, and enabled many more actions
through our dedicated partnerships with the private sector, foreign partners, and at the federal,
State, and local entities.
We have been putting a lot of energy and resources into all of those partnerships,
especially with the private sector. We are working hard to push important threat information to
network defenders, but we have also been making it as easy as possible for the private sector to
share important information with us. For example, we are emphasizing to the private sector
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how we keep our presence unobtrusive in the wake of a breach; how we protect information that
companies, and universities share with us, and commit to providing useful feedback; and how
we coordinate with our government partners so that we are speaking with one voice. But we
need the private sector to do its part, too. We need the private sector to come forward to warn
us and warn us quickly when they see malicious cyber activity. We also need the private
sector to work with us when we warn them that they are being targeted. The recent examples of
significant cyber incident - SolarWinds, HAFNIUM, the pipeline incident - only emphasize
what I have been saying for a long time: The government cannot protect against cyber threats
on its own. We need a whole-of-society approach that matches the scope of the danger. There
is really no other option for defending a country where nearly all of our critical infrastructure,
personal data, intellectual property, and network infrastructure sits in private hands.
Foreign Influence
Our nation is confronting multifaceted foreign threats seeking to both influence our
national policies and public opinion, and cause harm to our national dialogue. The FBI and our
interagency partners remain concerned about, and focused on, the covert and overt influence
measures used by certain adversaries in their attempts to sway U.S. voters' preferences and
perspectives, shift U.S. policies, increase discord in the United States, and undermine the
American people's confidence in our democratic processes.
Foreign influence operations -which include subversive, undeclared, coercive, and
criminal actions by foreign governments to influence U.S. political sentiment or public
discourse or interfere in our processes themselves - are not a new problem. But the
interconnectedness of the modem world, combined with the anonymity of the Internet, have
changed the nature of the threat and how the FBI and its partners must address it. Foreign
influence operations have taken many forms and used many tactics over the years. Most widely
reported these days are attempts by adversaries - hoping to reach a wide swath of Americans
covertly from outside the United States - to use false personas and fabricated stories on social
media platforms to discredit U.S. individuals and institutions.
The FBI is the lead federal agency responsible for investigating foreign influence
operations. In the fall of2017, we established the Foreign Influence Task Force ("FITF") to
identify and counteract malign foreign influence operations targeting the United States. The
FITF is led by the Counterintelligence Division and is comprised of agents, analysts, and
professional staff from the Counterintelligence, Cyber, Counterterrorism, and Criminal
Investigative Divisions. It is specifically charged with identifying and combating foreign
influence operations targeting democratic institutions and values inside the United States. In all
instances, the FITF strives to protect democratic institutions; develop a common operating
picture; raise adversaries' costs; and reduce their overall asymmetric advantage.
The FITF brings the FBI' s national security and traditional criminal investigative
expertise under one umbrella to prevent foreign influence in our elections. This better enables
us to frame the threat, to identify connections across programs, to aggressively investigate as
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appropriate, and- importantly -to be more agile. Coordinating closely with our partners and
leveraging relationships we have developed in the technology sector, we had several instances
where we were able to quickly relay threat indicators that those companies used to take swift
action, blocking budding abuse of their platforms.
Following the 2018 midterm elections, we reviewed the threat and the effectiveness of
our coordination and outreach. As a result of this review, we further expanded the scope of the
FITF. Previously, our efforts to combat malign foreign influence focused solely on the threat
posed by Russia. Utilizing lessons learned since 2018, the FITF widened its aperture to
confront malign foreign operations of China, Iran, and other global adversaries. To address this
expanding focus and wider set of adversaries and influence efforts, we have also added
resources to maintain permanent "surge" capability on election and foreign influence threats.
These additional resources were also devoted to working with U.S. Government partners
on two documents regarding the U.S. Government's analysis of foreign efforts to influence or
interfere with the 2020 Election. The reports are separate but complementary. The first report
- referred to as the 1a report and authored by the Office of the Director of National
lntelligence - outlines the intentions of foreign adversaries with regard to influencing and
interfering in the election but does not evaluate impact. The second report - referred to as the
lb report and authored by the Department of Justice, including the FBl, and Department of
Homeland Security, including the CISA evaluates the impact of foreign government activity
on the security or integrity of election infrastructure or infrastructure pertaining to political
organizations, candidates, or campaigns. 2
The main takeaway from both reports is there is no evidence - not through intelligence
collection on the foreign actors themselves, not through physical security and cybersecurity
monitoring of voting systems across the country, not through post-election audits, and not
through any other means - that a foreign government or other actors compromised election
infrastructure to manipulate election results.
While the 2020 election is over, the FBI will not stop working with our partners to
impose costs on adversaries who have or are seeking to influence or interfere in our elections.
Conclusion
Finally, the strength of any organization is its people. The threats we face as a nation
have never been greater or more diverse and the expectations placed on the FBI have never been
higher. Our fellow citizens look to the FBJ to protect the United States from all of those threats,
and the men and women of the FBI continue to meet and exceed those expectations, every day.
I want to thank them for their dedicated service.
Chairman Nadler, Ranking Member Jordan, and Members of the Committee, thank you
for the opportunity to testify today. I am happy to answer any questions you might have.
2
These reports are required by sections l(a) and l(b) of Executive Order 13,848.
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Chair NADLER. Thank you for your testimony.
We’ll now proceed under the five-minute rule with questions, and
I will recognize myself for five minutes.
According to documents we’ve received from the Bureau, the FBI
was aware that several violent extremists already under investiga-
tion were preparing to travel to Washington in January. In Decem-
ber, FBI Atlanta issued an alert that certain militia groups were
preparing for a significant event in January, perhaps on Inaugura-
tion Day.
On January 5th, a report from FBI Norfolk warned about specific
calls for violence at the Capitol the next day, some of them graphic.
‘‘Congress needs to hear with glass breaking, doors being kicked in,
and blood being spilled.’’ The report also noted that individuals
were sharing maps of the tunnels underneath the Capitol complex
and listed rally points where the attackers would gather before ad-
vancing on the building.
We know that the Norfolk report made it to the FBI’s Wash-
ington Field Office in advance of the attack. Yet, for days after the
attack, the head of that field office insisted that it had received no
intelligence suggesting anything other than First Amendment ac-
tivity.
Director Wray, the warnings coming in from around the country
were clear. Here in Washington, did the FBI simply miss the evi-
dence, or did it see the evidence and fail to piece it together?
Mr. WRAY. Well, Mr. Chair, as you could imagine, we are just as
outraged by what happened on January 6th and just as determined
to do our part to make sure that never happens again.
Now, the Norfolk report that you referenced was a specific piece
of raw, unverified intelligence that emerged on January 5th, the
day before, from a source online, unvetted. Despite the raw nature
of it, it was quickly passed, not one, not two, but three different
ways to the Capitol Police:
(1) An email to their representatives on our Joint Terrorism
Task Force;
(2) in a verbal briefing in our command post that included Mem-
bers of the Capitol Police, MPD, et cetera; and,
(3) third, in our law enforcement portal, which all law enforce-
ment partners have access to.
So, we tried to make sure that we got that information to the right
people.
Obviously, anytime there is an attack, especially one as signifi-
cant as this one, you can be darn sure that we are going to be look-
ing hard at how we can do better, how we can do more, how we
can do things differently, in terms of collecting, analyzing, and dis-
seminating intelligence.
Now, you also mentioned individuals under investigation before
January 6. A couple things on that.
First, the FBI did disseminate I think about a dozen intelligence
products, including warning of domestic violent extremism related
to the election, some talking about it continuing past the election
all the way through inauguration, including reports, together with
DHS, put out in December, the month before.
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As far as individuals actually under investigation, now that we
are close to 500 arrests into the matter, you may be surprised to
learn that, in fact, almost none of the individuals charged and
found to be involved with the attack on the Capitol were, in fact,
individuals who were previously under investigation.
Chair NADLER. Okay.
At 12:53 p.m. on January 6th, rioters broke through the outer
barricade surrounding the lawn of the Capitol. Shortly after 1:45
p.m., the rioters surged past the Capitol Police protecting the Cap-
itol’s west steps. At 1:49 p.m., officers officially declared there was
a riot at the Capitol.
Acting Attorney General Rosen testified before the Oversight
Committee that he learned that the FBI and the ATF received a
request for assistance from the Capitol Police and were beginning
to respond.
When, specifically, in that timeline of events did Capitol Police
request assistance from the FBI? How quickly was that help de-
ployed?
Mr. WRAY. I don’t have the specific time for you, so I don’t want
to misspeak.
Chair NADLER. Okay.
The FBI’s Washington Field Office is one of the largest field of-
fices in the country. The field office was reportedly found by an in-
ternal review in 2019 to be both ineffective and inefficient. Specifi-
cally, the review criticized the field office’s mechanisms for col-
lecting and analyzing threat intelligence as well as its procedures
for sharing intelligence with other law enforcement agencies, in-
cluding the Capitol Police.
Did the Washington Field Office’s domestic terrorism short-
comings lead to a delayed response in the lead-up to and on Janu-
ary 6th?
Mr. WRAY. My recollection of that particular audit or inspection
is that it was a while back and that we had recently changed the
leadership of the Washington Field Office and made a number of
reforms. So, to my knowledge, at least, none of the issues that were
discussed in that earlier report contributed to the response on Jan-
uary 6th.
Chair NADLER. Thank you.
My time is short, but I want to get in one last question.
In February, the Secretary of Defense convened senior military
officials and civilian leadership of the Armed Forces to assess the
problem of extremist ideology in the military’s ranks.
In late April, the Department of Homeland Security announced
it was conducting an internal review to root out White supremacy
and other extremist ideology in its ranks.
There can be no question that law enforcement agencies across
the country face a similar challenge. Is the FBI conducting its own
internal inspection or review to root out White supremacy and
other extremist ideology? If not, will you commit to conducting such
a review?
Mr. WRAY. Well, Mr. Chair, obviously, we take the prospect of
what the intelligence community or law enforcement would refer to
as an ‘‘insider threat’’ very seriously. We have a whole slew of pro-
23
cedures and internal reviews that speak to that. I’d be happy to see
if we can provide you more information on that separately.
Chair NADLER. Thank you very much.
My time has expired. I now recognize the gentleman from Ohio,
Mr. Jordan.
Mr. JORDAN. Mr. Chair, Mr. McClintock will go first for our side.
Chair NADLER. Mr. McClintock?
Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Director Wray, last month, 180,000 foreign nationals illegally
crossed our border. That’s a 674-percent increase over last May.
Nearly a million so far this year.
The leaders of Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries all
say this is in direct response to the Biden open-border policies. I
don’t think any question that that’s the case. These policies have
produced the largest human-trafficking operation since the inter-
national slave trade.
Can you tell us how many persons on the terrorist watchlist have
been encountered this year crossing through our southern border?
Mr. WRAY. Congressman, I’m not sure that I have that number,
but it may be that we can provide the specifics separately.
I do know that our field offices down on the border work very
closely with CBP, especially focused on so-called ‘‘special interest
aliens’’ as well as potential—
Mr. MCCLINTOCK. I’ve watched—
Mr. WRAY. I just don’t have the numbers.
Mr. MCCLINTOCK. —family groups being flagged through straight
to transportation hubs.
How many persons with criminal records or criminal warrants
have been encountered this year crossing our southern border?
Mr. WRAY. I don’t have the specific figures. I know that our field
offices down there, all of which I’ve visited, work very closely with
CBP on this issue, and I agree with you that it’s a significant secu-
rity concern.
Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Well, would you think it’s a more dangerous
threat to our Nation’s security than, say, whether Rudy Giuliani
filed the right paperwork for his lobbying firm?
Mr. WRAY. I really can’t discuss any specific individual investiga-
tion.
Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Can you at least give us the FBI estimate of
how many terrorists, criminals, and gang Members are among the
hundreds of thousands of got-aways that the Border Patrol has
been unable to intercept?
Mr. WRAY. Again, I’d be happy to see if I can provide specific
numbers and information to be helpful to your request separately.
So, I’m happy to follow up with your staff on that.
Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Well, on that point, House Republican Leader
Kevin McCarthy sent you a letter in April requesting a briefing on
this subject. Will you commit to keeping Mr. McCarthy, in fact, all
Members of this Committee, fully informed of it?
Mr. WRAY. I believe we have may have already provided the
briefing that you are referring to for Leader McCarthy.
Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Will you provide that for all Members of this
Committee?
24
Mr. WRAY. Again, I’m happy to see what information we can pro-
vide to be helpful.
Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Well, I’d hope you could provide me all the in-
formation.
Mr. WRAY. Again, I have to see what information we can provide,
but yes.
Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Is it true that many of the foreign nationals
who are being trafficked across our border often arrive here deeply
indebted to the Mexican crime cartels?
Mr. WRAY. Certainly, we have seen quite a number of such in-
stances, absolutely.
Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Are those debts collected through indentured
servitude to the cartels?
Mr. WRAY. In some cases, definitely. We are pursuing—we have
a number of human-trafficking task forces, as well as working on
certain task forces with DHS, to try to address that issue.
There’s no question that the cartel activity on the other side of
the border is spilling over in all sorts of ways, and you just put
your finger directly on one that is extremely concerning to us all.
Mr. MCCLINTOCK. So, we basically, 170-plus years after the 13th
Amendment, have slavery burgeoning in this country as a result of
these policies.
Mr. WRAY. Well, certainly, I do consider human trafficking a
form of—and I don’t like the word, but a modern form of slavery.
Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Indentured servitude.
Mr. WRAY. I mean, it’s almost medieval.
Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Indentured servitude certainly is.
Mr. WRAY. Yeah.
Mr. MCCLINTOCK. How is that—you mentioned out of the coun-
try, but, in this country, how is that enforced? Do the cartels have
gang affiliates who extract these debts?
Mr. WRAY. Well, it varies from case to case. Certainly, the cartels
have—and different cartels have affiliations with different sorts of
gangs here in the United States. There’s not just human trafficking
from a labor perspective but also sex trafficking.
Mr. MCCLINTOCK. So, this is a massive-organized crime syndicate
burgeoning in this country because of these policies. What are you
doing about it?
Mr. WRAY. So, we are attacking—it’s a team effort, right? Obvi-
ously, DHS has the primary responsibility for the border itself, but
we have Safe Streets Task Forces that go after the gang activity.
We have OCDETF Strike Forces that go after the—
Mr. MCCLINTOCK. How many agents and how much money are
you directing at this threat?
Mr. WRAY. Again, I can see if I can give you specific numbers,
but I don’t have those off the top of my head.
I will tell you, which is sometimes surprising to people, that our
criminal programs, our traditional criminal programs, which in-
clude exactly the thing you are talking about, remain, even to this
day, with all the national security threats that get so much discus-
sion, remain our biggest number of agents, our biggest allocation
of resources. Violent crime, different sorts of violent crime, within
the criminal program is by far and away the biggest chunk.
Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Thank you.
25
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time has expired.
Ms. Lofgren?
Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to you, Director Wray, for your service to our country. I
want to thank especially the Bureau for the diligence with which
you have pursued those who attacked the Capitol and the Capitol
Police and essentially attacked our democratic system of govern-
ment on January 6th. We wish you well in those efforts.
I have a couple of questions about the rule of law. We all believe
in the rule of law, and we think that—and I know you do too—that
the rule of law applies to the government as well.
That leads me to a question about section 702 of the FISA law.
As you know, there has been a review by the court on the use of
FISA. As you I am sure know, in its latest review, the Foreign In-
telligence Surveillance Court found widespread violations of the
FBI’s internal rules and the law’s restrictions on how and when the
government may use the information it collects under section 702.
For example, the court found, and I quote, ‘‘compliance incidents’’
suggesting that, ‘‘the FBI failed to properly apply its querying
standard when searching 702—acquired information was more per-
vasive than previously believed.’’ In one case, FBI personnel
queried foreign intelligence databases for the names of over 100
business, religious, civic, and community leaders who’d applied to
the FBI Citizens Academy.
The court also found dozens of cases where agents had searched
warrantless foreign intelligence collections in the course of criminal
investigations. In summary, the court expressed concerns about,
quote, ‘‘widespread violation of safeguards on use of warrantless
collections.’’
In response to all these criticisms and concerns, the FBI, it
seems to me, basically said they had been working on changes but
that had been suspended because of the COVID pandemic proto-
cols.
Here’s my question, Director Wray. Section 702 was enacted in
2008. The FBI and other intelligence agencies have had more than
a decade to implement what the law requires. Yet, it’s 2021, and
the FISA court is still finding—this isn’t the first time—still find-
ing widespread violations and failures where the FBI uses basically
the hook of foreign surveillance but it’s using it to avoid its war-
rant requirements for domestic law enforcement. Why is this hap-
pening?
Mr. WRAY. Well, Congressman, I obviously want to make sure
and I’m fiercely committed to making sure that the FBI complies
with FISA in all respects.
The FISA court’s concerns are certainly concerns that I take es-
pecially seriously, as somebody who’s a former prosecutor, former
defense attorney, former Assistant Attorney General in charge of
the Criminal Division, and now FBI Director. Our relationship with
and our candor with and our transparency with and the confidence
that we earn with the court is of utmost importance to me.
Now, the opinion that you are referring to from the court does
approve our procedures, did not, in fact, find abuses or misconduct,
and has to deal specifically with the querying, the running of
searches, in our databases. So, we have taken—
26
Ms. LOFGREN. If I may—they also found that the FBI had used
data for internal domestic investigations. That’s a violation of the
purpose of 702.
Mr. WRAY. Again, I’m not going to speak to the specific instances
in the report, because I think that would take longer than we have
here, among other things. I would say that we’ve done a number
of things to try to address the issues identified by the court.
We have made significant changes to the documentation require-
ments to ensure accountability, oversight requirements, guidance
and training enhancements, systems modifications, which may not
sound glamorous, but is incredibly important because it helps pre-
vent noncompliance.
Then last but not least, something I particularly want to high-
light, I created a whole new department in the FBI, an office of in-
ternal auditing, headed by a senior partner from a top—a Big Four
accounting firm who also had, prior in his life, been an FBI agent
and is consulting with a premier, outside, world-class consulting
firm to stand up an office of internal audit specifically focused on
FISA to ensure that we have a world-class compliance program and
world-class internal auditing program to make sure that we don’t
have these—
Ms. LOFGREN. Director Wray.
Chair NADLER. The gentlelady’s time has expired.
Ms. LOFGREN. If I may, Mr. Chair, can we get the Director to
commit to have this individual brief with the Committee on those
procedures?
Mr. WRAY. I’d be happy to see if we can get the Committee a
briefing on what we’re doing in this space.
Chair NADLER. Thank you.
Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you.
I yield back.
Chair NADLER. The gentlelady leads back.
Mr. Issa?
Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I’m going to follow up on my colleague. Apparently, Californians
think alike today.
In the 20 years that I’ve sat on the dais and looked at report
after report of the FBI failure to comply with FISA and its long
history of spying on Americans using this legislation as a backdoor,
we’ve seen a pattern, which is we are promised there are going to
be changes, and those changes have not ever occurred.
As the gentlelady who just spoke, Ms. Lofgren, would tell you,
you’re coming up for reauthorization. If the reauthorization were
today, based on—and correct me if I’m wrong—the 2019 report by
the inspector general that found 17 significant errors or omissions
and 51 wrong or unsupported factual assertions in Carter Page’s
domestic spying, if you will, using the FISA statute alone. In addi-
tion, we have numerous people, including judges, who say if they’d
known the truth, rather than the false statements, they never
would’ve granted those warrants.
So, now, the question is: Should we—first, do you agree with
those findings, that at least some of those 68 errors or omissions
are accurate, including one of your own that was prosecuted for it?
27
Mr. WRAY. Well, Congressman, first, let me be clear just in case
there’s any confusion to anybody watching: Of course, all these ap-
plications were filed before I became FBI Director just to be clear.
Mr. ISSA. I know.
To be honest, Director, the reason we’re having this conversation,
Ms. Lofgren and I both, is that it’s your watch. Organizations, no
matter how great they are, are much like airplane pilots. They’re
not judged on their safe landings; they’re judged on their crashes.
This was clearly a crash, wouldn’t you say?
Mr. WRAY. Well, what I would say is that the inspector general’s
report describes conduct that I consider unacceptable, unrepre-
sentative of who the FBI is, and cannot happen again, which is
why I implemented over 40 corrective measures promptly after the
inspector general’s report came out—accepted every single finding
in the inspector general’s report, implemented every single rec-
ommendation in the inspector general’s report, went above and be-
yond, installed an entirely new leadership team at the FBI, created
this new office of internal auditing that I just mentioned to Con-
gresswoman Lofgren. I can go on and on and on.
Mr. ISSA. Let me not let you go on and on, just because of short
time, and ask you: What assurances can you give us today that a
current audit would not find current failures?
Mr. WRAY. Well, as somebody who’s worked deeply with auditing
firms for all sort of organizations, the point of an audit is to find
problems. So, I can’t sit here and tell you that no audit would find
a problem. That’s why we have an auditing process, is to find the
problems and fix them. That’s what we’re going to do.
Mr. ISSA. Okay.
Some time ago, under your predecessor, he came before this Con-
gress and defended a warrant, an unusual one, one that ordered
the company Apple to develop software to allow for a backdoor re-
portedly to be on one iPhone used in San Bernadino by a murderer
or a terrorist. In fact, they were asking for software that allowed
it to be external, and your predecessor claimed that you did not
have the technical capability to decipher it.
Shortly after that, a college professor showed that for about $300
you could have done it. Yet, you paid $1 million to an Israeli firm
who did it.
Today, can you assure us that you have the tools that you appar-
ently did not have? Or would we have to assume that you’d have
to ask a professor for a $300 solution or the Israelis for a million-
dollar solution?
Mr. WRAY. Well, as you could imagine, the technology continues
to improve, both for the bad guys and for the good guys. So, it’s
not a static situation. Even today—
Mr. ISSA. Well, knowing that there have been two recent failures
in cyber-attacks, what assurances can you give this Committee that
you have the resources and a plan to be on the leading edge of
cyber, rather than the trailing edge of cyber, which appears to be
where we are in a number of areas?
Mr. WRAY. We constantly need more resources to get further and
further ahead of the bad guys in this particular space.
The technology in terms of encryption, which is sort of the point
you’re getting at with the Apple example, has continued to advance
28
in a way that’s actually making it harder and harder for law en-
forcement, not just the FBI but all across this country, to get into
encrypted devices and certainly encrypted messaging platforms.
We saw that, for example, down in Congressman Gaetz’s district,
in Pensacola, with the Naval Air Station attack there. We tried to
get into Apple’s iPhone, the device that the terrorist there used—
and, by the way, he took the time in the middle of the attack to
shoot the phone—think about the presence of mind that he has to
have in the middle of that to try to prevent us from getting into
his phone. Our folks were able, in that instance, to reconstruct the
phone. Because of a fluke in that particular instance, we were able
to actually get into the device. It took months and months, hours
and hours, and lots and lots of taxpayer money to get there.
Only then, after not having gotten the cooperation that we really
could’ve used from Apple at the front end, we found out that par-
ticular terrorist had been in communication with al-Qaida in the
Arabian Peninsula right on up till the night before the attack, not
known at the time that the attack was disrupted.
So, it’s an illustration of what a challenge this is for law enforce-
ment. It affects terrorist investigations, it affects an issue that I
know is near and dear to every Member of this Committee, child
sexual exploitation investigations, and it’s something that I hear
about. I’ve have talked to law enforcement—
Mr. ISSA. Yeah.
Mr. WRAY. —in all 50 States, and I hear about it from chiefs and
sheriffs in every State about this issue.
So, it is top of mind. We are bringing technical tools, using the
money that Congress appropriates to us to deal with it.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman—
Mr. WRAY. We are moving in a direction where we are going
darker and darker. So, I appreciate very much your concern.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time is well-expired.
Ms. Jackson Lee?
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for your service, and the FBI agents across the Na-
tion.
Since 2019, the United States has experienced a steep rise in
hate crimes. African Americans have been targeted in 48.5 percent
of all hate crimes, while hate incidents targeting Latinx have risen
8.7 percent, anti-Semitic hate incidents have risen by 14 percent,
and anti-Asian hate incidents have risen by nearly 150 percent.
Director Wray, my time is short. These questions should give just
a brief response.
Is the Bureau prioritizing its investigations into violent hate
crimes?
Mr. WRAY. Yes, very much so. I could give you more information;
it just depends on how much you would like here.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. You’ll have an opportunity.
What percentage of domestic terrorism cases investigated by the
FBI would you now say are motivated by White-supremacist-type
ideology?
Mr. WRAY. Well, I’m not sure that I could give you a percentage.
Certainly, on the domestic terrorism side, we have elevated—I did
back in June, summer of 2019—racially motivated violent extre-
29
mism to our very top threat priority band, consistent with ISIS.
The biggest chunk of that, by far and away, the vast majority of
that is racially motivated violent extremists advocating for the su-
periority—
Ms. JACKSON LEE. You would say that still today?
Mr. WRAY. Yes.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you.
Now, let’s direct our attention to the beating of law enforcement
in Washington on January 6.
On January 6th, the domestic terrorists who beat law enforce-
ment officers and breached the citadel of democracy of the United
States wore insignias of White supremacist groups, waved Confed-
erate flags, hung a noose on the lawn, and they were shouting ra-
cial epithets.
As indicated, the NYPD sent a packet of raw intelligence con-
cerning potential violence. Why did the FBI not issue a formal
threat assessment, with all that information, including an assess-
ment at headquarters?
Mr. WRAY. Well, I don’t know about a formal threat assessment.
As I was mentioning in response to an earlier question, we did put
out quite a number, I think a dozen or so, intelligence products
specifically geared towards domestic violent extremism and elec-
tion-related domestic violent extremism—
Ms. JACKSON LEE. On that day? On January 6th?
Mr. WRAY. Over the course of ’20, leading up to and right on up
to and including December, the month—
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Can I get that in writing, as to the details of
how that progressed and whether there was a threat assessment
on that day? I need to move on, and I thank you very much.
You know that the Norfolk FBI office has indicated that an SIR
report, Situational Information Report—these are the words: ‘‘Be
ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being
kicked in, and blood from their BLM’’—Black Lives Matter—‘‘and
Antifa slave soldiers being spilled. Get violent. Stop calling this a
march or a rally or a protest. Get ready for war.’’
Would you agree that these words clearly could indicate racial
bias and an attempt to use race and racism as a potential motive
for violence?
Mr. WRAY. Well, I’m not sure I tracked all the words in the quote
that you read, but, certainly, the Norfolk Situational Information
Report, the information that was online was concerning enough
that it was provided, as I said, within—
Ms. JACKSON LEE. It had ‘‘Black Lives Matter,’’ ‘‘slave soldiers.’’
That has some racial overtones.
Mr. WRAY. Absolutely. Of course.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Let me—as you well know, you’ve just heard
me recount the Norfolk, the NYPD. Was the FBI aware of any on-
line threats to the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, and
specific Members of Congress connected with January 6?
Mr. WRAY. Well, I can’t think of any, sitting here right now. Cer-
tainly, we were aware of and discussed a lot of online chatter that
was out there—
Ms. JACKSON LEE. I’m going to move on. Thank you.
Mr. WRAY. —but I’m not aware of any—
30
Ms. JACKSON LEE. On the day of, did headquarters contact the
Vice President, did they contact the Speaker of the House, and did
they contact—FBI contact any Member of Congress on the day of
January 6?
Mr. WRAY. Did any member of the FBI have any contact with
any Member of the House?
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Yes. Headquarters I’m going to speak of, your
office.
Mr. Wray. Well, I know that there was interaction between—
Ms. JACKSON LEE. I’m going to ask for that in writing as well.
Mr. WRAY. Okay.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Yes. I thank you.
Let me go to the connection of race and the President of the
United States, former President.
On December 19th, the former President indicated, ‘‘Big protest
in DC on January 6. Be there. It will be wild.’’
At 12:15 p.m. on January 6, he said, ‘‘You’ll never take back our
country with weakness.’’
At 1:10 p.m., President Trump said, ‘‘We fight like hell, and if
you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any-
more.’’
At 2:11 p.m., rioters breached police lines on the west side of the
Capitol.
Director Wray, these words do indicate that the former Presi-
dent, Donald Trump, helped motivate the domestic terrorist attack
on January 6.
Have any of these words been reviewed to determine whether or
not President Trump—words and deeds—should be referred to the
Department of Justice as contributing to the violence of the insur-
rectionists on January 6?
Chair NADLER. The gentlelady’s time has expired. The Witness
may answer the question.
Mr. WRAY. I am not sure there’s a whole lot I can add on that
subject, but if there’s something I can provide in follow-up, I’m
happy to—
Ms. JACKSON LEE. I asked if you referred these actions or deeds
of the President—you’re the investigatory agency—to the Depart-
ment of Justice. Donald Trump’s actions, words, deeds on that day.
Mr. WRAY. I’m not aware of any investigation that specifically
goes to that, but we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
investigations related to January 6 involving lots and lots of dif-
ferent pieces of it, and I want to be careful not to speak with abso-
lutes about a massive investigation.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Well, maybe I can get that back in writing.
I thank you.
Mr. Chair, if I might just put on the record for a letter back,
there are only 4.7 percent African Americans in the FBI. Much has
come to my attention of the lack of promotion, opportunities for
leadership in the FBI. The diversity office that you now have does
not report directly to the FBI Director.
Would you please provide me in writing where we are with diver-
sity in the FBI as it relates to minorities and specifically African
Americans?
Chair NADLER. The gentlelady’s—
31
Ms. JACKSON LEE. I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Chair NADLER. The gentlelady yields back.
Mr. Gohmert?
Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you.
Director Wray, we know from the Arizona case the Supreme
Court said that State and local law enforcement were not to enforce
immigration laws. Isn’t it true that local and State law enforce-
ment officers can enforce State and local law even if the defendant
is in the country illegally?
Mr. WRAY. Well, I want to be a little bit careful since the last
time I looked at that issue was back in the 2001–2003 range when
I was a lawyer at the Justice Department. My recollection is very
similar—
Mr. GOHMERT. Look, my time is very short.
Mr. WRAY. —my recollection is similar to yours.
Mr. GOHMERT. It’s an easy question.
Mr. WRAY. My recollection is similar to yours, but I’m not—
Mr. GOHMERT. Yes.
Mr. WRAY. —speaking as a lawyer right now.
Mr. GOHMERT. Okay. It is the case. I hope you’ll refresh your
recollection and your legal training.
So, it seems that, since the Federal government is welcoming, ba-
sically, by its tactics, by its handling of the massive surge across
our border in such a way to continue to encourage it, that there
is massive destruction to landowners’ property. It sounds like, un-
derstanding the criminal trespass laws of Texas, that perhaps land-
owners on the border ought to have ‘‘no trespassing’’ signs, includ-
ing in Spanish, so that local law enforcement can protect the coun-
try while they’re protecting the local property owners.
There was a question about, also, the FISA court. I’m still, as a
former judge, particularly disturbed that no FISA judge felt strong-
ly enough about people not lying in applications for warrants that
they took action for contempt of court.
Should DOJ officials that sign applications for warrants before
the FISA court actually read them before they certify that they’re
true, and correct?
Mr. WRAY. Certainly, it’s my practice when, as FBI Director, I’m
signing applications to—
Mr. GOHMERT. You do read them?
Mr. WRAY. I do review them, yes, absolutely.
Mr. GOHMERT. I would commend you for that. I would ask you
to look into—
Mr. WRAY. They’re not short, by the way.
Mr. GOHMERT. Yeah. They’re usually lengthy.
Mr. WRAY. Yeah.
Mr. GOHMERT. Would I commend your looking into Mr. Rosen-
stein’s inability to testify that he actually read those, regarding the
Trump campaign, before he signed them.
The night before January 6, January 5th, that evening I was
talking to Capitol Police officers, and I said, let’s face it, most of
the conservatives that come, they don’t have any intention of being
violent. They said, well, we’ve been briefed today that there’s a
good bit of, it’s understood, online activity, that there are people
that are going to be coming and hate Trump but they’re going to
32
dress up in red/MAGA/Trump paraphernalia to try to blend in and
create trouble.
We had Capitol Police Chief Sund testify that they got no infor-
mation from U.S. intel or from the DOJ, FBI, of any threat of the
nature that came about.
Did the FBI have information about the violent threat that oc-
curred on January 6 on January 5th?
Mr. WRAY. Well, the answer to that is complicated, unfortu-
nately. So, we have already talked about a little bit here this morn-
ing—
Mr. GOHMERT. It shouldn’t be complicated. You either had infor-
mation or you didn’t. That was my question.
Mr. WRAY. So, there’s different kinds of information. We had the
online chatter that we just talked about, and the Norfolk—so-called
Norfolk SIR, situational information report, has that. What we did
not have, to my knowledge—
Mr. GOHMERT. Did you pass any of that information on to Chief
Sund?
Mr. WRAY. We passed the Norfolk information on to the Capitol
Police in three different ways, as well as to—
Mr. GOHMERT. Okay. Well, you were careful to note that most of
the protesters who were left this last summer were basically peace-
ful, but you haven’t said that about the 100,000–200,000 people
that showed up on January 6th. Do you know how many people ac-
tually came into the Capitol on January 6th that were unauthor-
ized?
Mr. WRAY. I don’t have an exact number. I do know that we’ve—
now are approaching around 500 arrests. To be clear, to your point
about peaceful, the way, I think, is a fair description of January
6th is there’s sort of three groups of people, almost like an inverse
pyramid.
First group, biggest number of people who showed up outside,
maybe not on the Capitol grounds, were peaceful, maybe rowdy,
but peaceful protesters. Then there’s a second group that were peo-
ple who, for whatever reason, engaged in, let’s say, the next level
of criminal conduct, trespass, et cetera, and that is criminal, that
is a violation, and it needs—those laws need to be enforced.
Then there’s the third group, which is where you are seeing a lot
of the arrests, and a lot of them were significant charges that are
coming out of our work right now, which are the people who
brought all sorts of weapons, Kevlar tactical vests, bear spray,
et cetera.
Mr. GOHMERT. Firearms?
Mr. WRAY. What’s that?
Mr. GOHMERT. Anybody bring firearms?
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s—
Mr. WRAY. We have—I can think of at least one instance where
there was an individual with a gun inside the Capitol, but for the
most part, the weapons were weapons other than firearms.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman—
Mr. WRAY. There’s three groups, and it’s hard to paint with one
broad brush every single individual.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time is expired. Mr. Cohen.
Mr. CICILLINE. Mr. Cohen is on mute.
33
Chair NADLER. Mr. Cohen?
Mr. COHEN. I am unmuted now.
Chair NADLER. Okay.
Mr. COHEN. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Director Wray. You’ve done an admirable job so far
to put soldiers in the January 6th insurrection, kind of like going
after Al Capone and getting all the lottery sales tickets, the people
that do the bootlegging in the street.
You, to the best of my knowledge, haven’t done anything to go
after the people who incited the riot, the big boss, which was Don-
ald Trump. Do you have any investigation, or have you done any-
thing to look into Trump’s activity on the day of insurrection, sub-
poena records of the White House phone calls in and out, and of
meetings that he and Roger Stone and others may have had with
leaders of these groups?
Mr. WRAY. Well, again, Congressman, somewhat along the lines
of something I said earlier, because we have not one but now close
to 500 pending criminal cases, all of which are in the hands of
judges who feel very strongly about how much I discuss pending
cases, I want to be careful about that. We have brought, in addition
to what you are describing as kind of the lower-level type offenses,
we have now started to bring a number of conspiracy charges of
various individuals.
Mr. COHEN. Yes, you are right.
Mr. WRAY. Yes, I think there’s about 30-plus individuals who
have been charged with conspiracy.
Mr. COHEN. Director Wray.
Mr. WRAY. Yes, sir.
Mr. COHEN. I appreciate that and understand that, but I am
talking about Mr. Big, number one. Have you gone after the people
who incited the riot?
Mr. WRAY. Well, I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to
be discussing whether or not we are or aren’t investigating specific
individuals. I just don’t think that’s appropriate.
Mr. COHEN. Okay. I’ll accept that and understand that, but I
would urge you to do it. He said, come to Washington on the day
of the electoral college, a month earlier, no other day, and he said
it will be big and it will be wild. I read that as violence to occur.
I was with a Capitol policeman on Sunday who said, yes, they had
information who said it was going to be violent. You and the FBI
did not make the case. You should have warned, and you had a
duty to do that.
Let me ask you this: Have you seen Mr. McGahn’s testimony yet?
Mr. WRAY. No, sir.
Mr. COHEN. I urge you to look—I don’t know if you can do any-
thing without the direction of the Attorney General, but it appears
Mr. McGahn was told to lie by the President about trying—wanting
to fire officials. That would have resulted in obstruction of justice.
I urge you to look at it. Can you Act on that testimony independent
of the Attorney General?
Mr. WRAY. Well, I think we have very specific rules about predi-
cation and approval on certain investigations, so I’d have to look
at whatever information you wanted to send our way, and we can
34
take a look at the information and evaluate whether or not there’s
action we could take.
Mr. COHEN. It’s in the deposition, and it’s clear that McGahn
said that the President told him to lie, and the President also lied.
I would urge you to look at that and talk to Director Garland—At-
torney General Garland about that.
Did you infiltrate the crowds of the BLM, Black Lives Matter,
protest in Washington, when they were in Washington?
Mr. WRAY. Congressman, we don’t infiltrate protests as a general
rule, certainly. When it comes to criminal activity, we have specific
rules covered by the Attorney General guidelines and the so-called
DIOG, which is our implementation of the Attorney General guide-
lines that cover what we can and cannot do, and we would have
followed those scrupulously, not just in general, but in the specific
period that you are talking about. We don’t investigate First
Amendment activity. We investigate threats of criminal activity.
Mr. COHEN. Thank you, Director Wray. I know First Amendment
activity is protected, but was your activities on January 6th dif-
ferent from what it was with Black Lives Matter? Did you observe?
Did you try to get more knowledge about what was going on after
you had the Norfolk information about the January 6th insurrec-
tion?
Mr. WRAY. Well, the Norfolk information that we’ve talked about
here arrived essentially the night before, or the afternoon before
January 6th and was promptly passed on. At that point it was raw,
unverified information that we hadn’t yet had a chance to vet. Of
course, we decided that even though it was raw and unverified, we
needed to pass it onto all our partners, both in the command post
and throughout the Joint Terrorism Task Force, to make sure they
had it.
Mr. COHEN. Director Wray, thank you. I only have a few seconds
left. You have compared ransomware to 9/11. Ransomware is awful
and it’s a problem. 9/11 was awful. The insurrection on our Capitol,
unlike anything known since the Civil War, is also awful. Where
would you compare the insurrection, and would you admit that it
was an insurrection on our Capitol with the assault on our country
on January 6th?
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time is expired. The Witness
may answer the question.
Mr. WRAY. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, let me just say that I
don’t think any attack, ransomware, or January 6th, can fairly be
compared to the horror of September 11th, and the 3,000 or so indi-
viduals who lost their lives that day. That attack and my engage-
ment with the victims in my last time in government was a big
part of why I came back into this role in the first place. My ref-
erence to September 11th and ransomware was not about the at-
tack, but about how the country came together in response.
Now, certainly, when it comes to January 6th, it’s a unique type
of attack, not just in terms of the number of individuals, but in
terms of the effort to disrupt a key part of our constitutional sys-
tem, and the peaceful transition of government, which is such a
hallmark of our country.
So, it’s a very significant attack in and of its own right, and cer-
tainly we have, as we’ve already talked about, close to 500 arrests.
35
We have all of our field offices fully engaged, and the amount of
manpower devoted to it is extremely significant for one attack, ab-
solutely.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman—
Mr. COHEN. Thank you, sir.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman yields back. Mr. Chabot.
Mr. CHABOT. Thank you.
Director Wray, since you last testified before this Committee our
country has faced increased threats, be it malware and
ransomware to our computer networks; gang Members crossing our
southern border and committing horrific crimes here within the
United States; groups like antifa attempting to burn down Federal
courthouses; the January 6th attack, as we mentioned, on the Cap-
itol; and the surge of illicit drugs killing so many Americans. We
are facing multiple national security threats, all of which need the
full attention of agencies like the one that you oversee, the FBI.
I’ll first ask you about cyber-attacks. Ransomware terrorists have
brazenly disrupted the operations of countless hospitals, schools,
city governments, emergency services, even our congressional of-
fices, and an untold number of businesses because they typically
pay the ransom quietly.
Last fall, cyber criminals were able to compromise patient
records and personal information from a hospital in a senior living
community in my district. More recently, high-profile ransomware
attacks on Colonial Pipeline and JBS meat processing company
caused major disruptions to our oil and food supplies.
I’ve seen it estimated that there is a victim of a ransomware at-
tack every 11 seconds, that they’re already costing us $20 billion
a year, and that you’ve compared the challenge, as Mr. Cohen men-
tioned, to the September 11th, 2001 attack on our Nation.
Mr. Director, the Biden Administration basically—I mentioned
the attack on the Colonial Pipeline—basically gave a wink and a
nod to paying off the thugs. I know some of that money was gotten
back, but don’t we need to clarify the policy relative to paying off
criminals? Aren’t we just inviting more attacks when you pay off
these thugs?
Mr. WRAY. Well, Congressman, I appreciate the question, and I
share your concern about—and that’s partly why I’ve made some
of the comments that I’ve made publicly—about the effect of
ransomware and the threat that it poses and the challenge and
what it requires from all of us to deal with it.
It is our policy, it is our guidance from the FBI that companies
should not pay the ransom for a number of reasons: First, the one
that you mentioned, which is that it encourages more of this kind
of activity; but then there’s, second, some more practical issues,
which sometimes the encryption or the locking up of the system
that the actors engage in may not be undone. You could pay the
ransom and not get your system back, and that’s not unknown to
happen. Third, and the most important thing is, whether the com-
pany pays or not, what we really need is to make sure that the
companies or other organizations who are victimized reach out and
coordinate with the FBI and with our partners as quickly and
promptly as possible.
36
It’s when they do that, it enables us to take all sorts of creative
action that we can’t always do, but that certain cases we can, and
speed matters, which is why, for example, in the Colonial instance
we were able to essentially seize and confiscate the clear majority
of the ransom that was extracted.
In other cases, again, not common but it does happen, we are
able to actually get the encryption keys and unlock the system,
even without the company paying the ransom. So, there are a
whole bunch of things that we can do to prevent this activity from
occurring if, whether they pay the ransom or not, they commu-
nicate and coordinate and work closely with law enforcement right
out of the gate. That is the most important part.
Mr. CHABOT. Thank you, Mr. Director. I’ve got two more ques-
tions, and I only have time for one. The Centers for Disease Con-
trol announced that there’s been an increase in overdose deaths.
The prevalence of fentanyl is the main thing. It comes from China.
It comes across our southern border. Myself, I and Bob Latta, I
have introduced legislation relative to fentanyl analogs, which are
very similar. It can be changed. They get around the law with that.
My question to you is relative to the fentanyl and the analogs as
well. The chaos at our southern border, doesn’t this play right into
the drug cartels or the current policies down there on the southern
border? Isn’t it more of that drug coming in and killing far too
many Americans? Don’t we really need to control that southern
border?
Mr. WRAY. Well, I absolutely agree that the security situation at
the southwest border is a great concern, both from a perspective of
drug trafficking, human trafficking, violence on both sides of the
border, corruption, et cetera. Certainly, we are trying to do our part
to contribute to that, because, as you mentioned, the scourge of
opioids, opioid abuse, fentanyl, in particular, is something that is
sweeping the country. I know that in your home State that’s a par-
ticularly significant concern.
We, from our end, are trying to attack the problem through a va-
riety of means. We are going after not just the professionals, the
prescribers from that end of it; we are going after the dark web
where it’s trafficked there. We are going after the gangs that dis-
tribute it here locally. We are going after the source through our
transnational organized crime efforts.
So, there’s a whole bunch of things that we are doing with our
partners. Make no mistake, this goes way beyond law enforcement
into other agencies, and frankly, the community as well.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time is expired.
Mr. CHABOT. Thank you. My time is expired.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman yields back.
Mr. Johnson.
Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Director Wray, I want to thank you for appearing before us today
and also for your service to the Nation. As I was preparing for this
hearing, I researched hate crimes data for my State of Georgia, and
I was troubled by the data that I found or, more precisely, what
I didn’t find.
We clearly have a deeply flawed system for collecting hate crimes
data, which has left us with unreliable and incomplete counts. The
37
hesitation to report, investigate, and designate incidents as hate
crimes demonstrates a deep-rooted failure of our justice system.
One thing is clear, since the start of the pandemic, we’ve seen
a significant rise in anti-Asian and anti-Chinese rhetoric. In March
of this year, eight people were tragically murdered in a mass shoot-
ing in Atlanta, and six of those individuals murdered were women
of Asian descent. At a press conference the next day, a police offi-
cial famously told those assembled that the shooter had, quote,
‘‘had a bad day,’’ end quote.
Director Wray, 2 days after the murders, you said in an inter-
view with NPR, quote, ‘‘While the motive remains still under inves-
tigation at the moment. It does not appear that the motive was ra-
cially motivated,’’ end quote. Many people believe, Director Wray,
that law enforcement reluctance to designate a homicide as a hate
crime does a disservice to the victims and fails to prevent similar
future crimes.
Certainly, comments such as yours during an ongoing investiga-
tion do not help the cause. Wasn’t it inappropriate for you, sir, to
infer to the press that you didn’t believe that the murders of the
six Asian women was a hate crime when, as you said, the motive
was still under investigation?
Mr. WRAY. Well, certainly, as you know, Congressman, because
that’s my home city as well, my heart aches for the victims of that
attack, and I grieve with their families. In the instance in question,
I think the comment I made was consistent with the information
we had at the time, but I regret if anyone’s reaction to that was
otherwise.
Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Well, I submit to you, sir, that such
comments by the Director of the FBI were not only harmful to the
ongoing investigation, but also diminished the already waning com-
munity confidence in law enforcement.
I want to shift now to another issue. Under current law, only
those convicted of domestic terrorism-related felonies, or hate
crimes, are prohibited from possessing firearms, but those con-
victed of misdemeanors that have a nexus to domestic terrorism or
misdemeanor hate crimes may possess firearms without restriction.
Would you agree that Congress should consider expanding the
prohibition on the possession of firearms to those convicted of vio-
lent misdemeanors that are related to domestic terrorism and are
violent hate crimes?
Mr. WRAY. Well, I don’t think it’s—I am in a position, as FBI Di-
rector, to comment on specific legislative proposals, but I am happy
to provide operational input to you, or have the FBI do so with
your staff. Certainly, I share the goal of making sure that those
who are prohibited by law from possessing firearms don’t get their
hands on the firearms.
Certainly, to the extent that there are things that can be done
to protect the public, we want to do that. That’s why our NICS sec-
tion up in West Virginia processed—and last year processed, a
record, almost 40 million background checks of firearms right
through the middle of the pandemic.
So, we are trying to do our part to make sure that the laws on
the books related to firearms are enforced and that those who are
38
not supposed to have firearms don’t get them. Individual States
have individual laws—
Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Okay. Let me stop you there. I’ve got
one more issue I want to talk about. When you were here last year,
you mentioned the creation of the domestic terrorism hate crimes
fusion cell. Can you provide us with some insight into how the fu-
sion cell operates, and to be clear, is it just one cell or are there
multiple cells?
Mr. WRAY. I appreciate the question very much. So, this is some-
thing that I stood up about a 11⁄2 years or so ago, bringing together
the domestic terrorism expertise that we have together with the
hate crimes expertise which we have, which is more in the civil
rights program. Together, the goal was to try to be more proactive
and to try to do a better job of anticipating and preventing hate
crimes.
So, for example, we are very proud of the success that that cell
helped create in Colorado, where we were able to prevent an at-
tack, a hate crime against a synagogue—I’ve forgotten the city in
Colorado, but that was a big part of what came out of that fusion
cell. The fusion cell is one cell in headquarters, but it works with
all out of our field offices and helps coordinate that effort. Again,
the whole goal is to try to be ahead of the threat. That’s the point
of it.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time is expired.
Mr. Gaetz.
Mr. GAETZ. Thank you, Mr. Chair. There has been a coverup re-
garding the origins of coronavirus. We see it in the Fauci emails.
We see it in the G7’s call today to renew an inquiry into those ori-
gins. We see it in the Biden Administration’s efforts to squelch in-
vestigation into the origins of the coronavirus. I want to figure out
what side the FBI is on.
On April 28th, Dr. Li-Meng Yan landed at LAX. One of your
agents interviewed her at that time. She then traveled to New
York. Your agent from Los Angeles followed her to New York and
sought an interview on both the 1st of May and the 2nd of May
in 2020.
The FBI took Dr. Li-Meng Yan’s phone, on which the doctor
showed evidence of WeChat communications between herself and
the director of the CDC in Beijing all the way dating back to De-
cember of 2019 regarding the Chinese military’s involvement in the
development of the virus and specific links to the Wuhan Institute
of Virology.
Director Wray, when did you become aware of your agency’s
interface with Dr. Yan? When did you review those WeChat mes-
sages?
Mr. WRAY. I am not sure that there’s much I can say about any
specific investigation. I will say that—a couple things. One, as I
think you know and the Committee knows, I have been very vocal
and I intend to continue to be very vocal about the counterintel-
ligence threat, which takes a wide variety of forms, from the Peo-
ple’s Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party. I think
it’s one of the most significant threats facing this country—
Mr. GAETZ. Is Dr. Yan part of that threat?
39
Mr. WRAY. Well, again, I don’t want to speak specifically about
any particular investigation. The second thing I would mention is
that—
Mr. GAETZ. Well, here’s why that’s important on the first thing,
Director Wray.
Mr. WRAY. Yeah.
Mr. GAETZ. Back in October, or April and May of 2020, we didn’t
have nearly 600,000 people dead as a result of the coronavirus. On
October 14th, 2020, FBI agent Andrew Zinman brought a scientist
who was working with the FBI to meet with Dr. Yan in New York
on October 14th. They met for nearly six hours.
Can you tell us anything about that meeting and what it tells us
about the origins of this virus? It is simply unacceptable to sit here
a year later and say you are not going to tell us whether or not
there was information about the origins of the virus when it is so
central to the safety and health of our fellow Americans.
Mr. WRAY. I certainly understand the point of the question.
Again, I have to be careful not to discuss specific investigations. I
will say that, in addition to our investigative work, as I think has
been recently publicly stated by the DNI, and even the President
himself, the intelligence community has been looking at this issue.
There are differences of view within the intelligence community
about the origins of the coronavirus and so forth—
Mr. GAETZ. I totally understand all that. I am trying to resolve
those differences—
Mr. WRAY. —and we are taking a deeper dive on that subject.
Mr. GAETZ. Director Wray, we are unable to hold the Chinese
Communist Party accountable if we throw our hands in the air and
say, Well, there’s differences of opinion. We have to assess whether
those differences are similarly rooted in fact. That’s why I need the
facts from you.
Will you provide to this Committee any scientific analysis that
the FBI has done regarding Dr. Yan’s claims, regarding the mes-
sages she provided to you regarding Beijing’s knowledge of the ori-
gins of this virus, their military’s involvement, and even efforts to
try to present to the world a fake genome sequence at the begin-
ning of these developments?
Mr. WRAY. I am happy to see what information we can provide.
I will have my staff follow up with yours and see what information
we can share on the subject.
Mr. GAETZ. You get that if we don’t look at that rooted informa-
tion, we are unable to ascertain what differences of opinion are cor-
rect and incorrect. It’s hard to believe that the FBI didn’t believe
Dr. Yan was credible or significant, because she lands on April
28th. Your agent, Dana Murphy, takes her phone that day. I am
holding the receipt from where you got the phone that had the
WeChat messages that had very important information regarding
Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party.
It’s not every day that an FBI agent flies from Los Angeles to
New York to follow a Chinese doctor who is a whistleblower and
a fact witness. Even if Dr. Yan’s technical analysis of the virus is
incorrect, the fact that she showed up saying that she wanted to
provide information and tell the truth seems significant today.
40
Now, back when Dr. Yan made these pronouncements regarding
the Chinese Communist Party, their military involvement, the leak
of this virus from the lab, we had a number of people trying to dis-
credit her. Are you able to ascertain whether or not that effort to
discredit Dr. Yan is part of the counterintelligence efforts by the
Chinese Communist Party?
Mr. WRAY. Again, I want to be careful both about what informa-
tion we can provide, in general, about any kind of ongoing inves-
tigation, but, about what form that information would take, be-
cause in some cases, you may be touching on things that would be
classified and that might require a different format.
So, I certainly understand why you are asking the questions. Let
me commit to you that I will go back with my folks and see what
information can be provided and what form it would have to take
if we can provide any.
Mr. GAETZ. That would be very helpful.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time is expired. Mr. Deutch.
Mr. GAETZ. Mr. Chair, may I be recognized? Wait, hold on, Mr.
Chair. You let everybody else go over. I am asking to be recognized
just for a unanimous consent request.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time is expired.
Mr. Deutch.
Mr. GAETZ. You are not treating everyone equally, Mr. Chair.
You went over by more than—
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time is expired.
Mr. GAETZ. Mr. Johnson went over by 45 seconds. I just want a
unanimous consent request.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time is expired. Mr. Deutch.
What?
Mr. GAETZ. I just want a unanimous consent request.
Chair NADLER. You want a unanimous consent for what? Oh, oh,
oh, okay. I am sorry.
Mr. GAETZ. Just a UC is all.
Chair NADLER. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.
Mr. GAETZ. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I seek unanimous consent to
enter into the record the receipt from the United States Depart-
ment of Justice wherein Dr. Yan’s phone was taken by FBI Agent
Dana Murphy.
Chair NADLER. Without objection. Without objection.
[The information follows:]
MR. GAETZ FOR THE RECORD
42
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43
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time is expired. Mr. Deutch.
Mr. DEUTCH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Director Wray, first, I want to thank you and all the men and
women of the FBI for what you do every day to keep us safe. I also
want to extend my condolences, my sympathy to the families of
Special Agent Alfin and Special Agent Schwartzenberger who were
shot and killed while serving a warrant in Sunrise, Florida, just
south of my district.
I also, Director Wray, would like to just follow up on some of the
things that you’ve touched on today. First, you said just a little
while ago that 9/11 was why you returned to public service, and I
just wanted just to follow up on that.
The 9/11 community, as you know, Director Wray, has asked the
FBI to conduct a full and complete declassification review of all
documents related to the September 11th attacks. It has been near-
ly 20 years since that horrific day, and these families, the Amer-
ican people deserve this. So, I would just ask whether you will com-
mit to conducting a full and complete declassification review?
Mr. WRAY. We are working very hard on trying to declassify as
much information as we can, and to share as much information as
we can. I understand why this is frustrating to any number of fam-
ilies, and we will commit to continuing to try to provide as much
information as we responsibly can.
Mr. DEUTCH. I would urge you to pursue the full declassification
review.
I want to just follow up on your responses, both to Chair Nadler
and to Mr. Cohen about the Norfolk memo. You said that, ‘‘we tried
to make sure the information got to the right people.’’ You said you
tried three ways. You emailed it to Capitol Police. You did a verbal
briefing in command post, including Capitol Police, and that you
used the law enforcement portal that all law enforcement partners
have access to.
You then went on to tell Mr. Cohen that the information that ar-
rived essentially, I think you said, the night or afternoon before
January 6th, that it was properly passed on, but it was raw,
unverified. We decided that even though it was raw and unverified,
we needed to pass it on to all of our partners, which you did.
You didn’t explain—and I would ask you to explain—what hap-
pened next. You passed it on, and what did you do to follow up
with this really important information about what may take place
the next day in the United States Capitol?
Mr. WRAY. Well, I am not sure that there’s specific investigative
activity that I could discuss. I think the point in passing this infor-
mation on, we didn’t know what to make of it, and that’s why I em-
phasized that it was raw, unverified information without a specific
identity attached to it.
The judgment was made, which is not the way we prefer to have
to do things, but given the framing of the information, we decided,
out of an abundance of caution, to pass it onto—and sometimes
when there’s a reference to the email, it’s important to understand
we are talking about their chosen representatives on the Joint Ter-
rorism Task Force—the whole purpose of which is to keep people
in the loop.
Mr. DEUTCH. Right.
44
Director Wray.
Mr. WRAY. Yes.
Mr. DEUTCH. No, I understand, and I understand that’s their
purpose. You had a memo that said the report that detailed online
posts said that individuals in Washington were ready for war at
the Capitol, called for potential—it talked about potential for vio-
lence in Washington, DC, in connection with plans to stop the
scaled protest on January 6th. That’s what was in the memo.
I know you passed it on. What did you do once you passed it on?
I am asking the question because we don’t know what the answer
is. We know that this was out there. We don’t know whether you
did anything other than pass it on through these channels, and it
was damning enough information, certainly it seems in retrospect,
that though law, you would have been followed up to make sure
that every step was followed once you passed on the information.
So, what happened after you passed it on?
Mr. WRAY. Well, I guess, the way we look at it is we passed it
on not one, not two, but three different ways in order to make sure
that it got through to the people who needed to have that informa-
tion to exercise their responsibilities to engage in the physical secu-
rity, which is not what we do.
Mr. DEUTCH. Well, I—
Mr. WRAY. I may be missing the point of your question.
Mr. DEUTCH. I think so. Director Wray, respectfully, I think you
are. When you say it’s not your responsibility to ensure physical se-
curity, you had this memo that foretold, or at least suggested what
might happen.
I am going to finish with this, Director Wray: The reason this is
so upsetting to me, in particular, is because it just reminds me too
much of the two tips that the FBI got before the mass shooting at
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, one, to someone in Mis-
sissippi who saw a troubling YouTube comment, the other after re-
ceiving a 13-minute long voicemail with troubling details about this
shooter. That was closed as having said there’s no lead value.
I understand you thought that there were—this was worth pass-
ing on, but it seems like there should have been more than simply
saying it was the night before, it came in late, we just passed it
on through our channels. That’s all we really have the responsi-
bility to do.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman—
Mr. DEUTCH. I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman yields back.
Mr. Johnson.
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Director Wray, you articulated in your opening statement that
perhaps the top concern in our country right now is the prevalence
of violence and violent crime in our communities, and I think we
all agree with that.
One of the other serious concerns we have is the decreasing
amount of faith that many Americans have in our institutions, and
among the most important of our institutions in America, of course,
is our system of justice. Over the past few years, millions of Ameri-
cans have begun to question whether we can still rely upon the
45
maxim of equal justice under law and whether justice is blind and
all the rest.
One of the reasons for this is the very real perception that some
individuals within the DOJ and FBI have abused their authority
and engaged in selective enforcement of certain statutes. One ex-
ample that comes to mind is the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
So, I wanted to ask you if you are aware that during Special
Counsel Mueller’s probe, there were at least five indictments of
conservatives under FARA, and if you know how that compares to
the prevalence of previous FARA prosecutions since the enactment
of that statute more than 80 years ago?
Mr. WRAY. I am probably not the right person to provide a whole
lot of information about Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation. I’d
rather—that’s probably better referred to what’s left of that office,
I suppose.
Certainly, FARA that you are referring to, is an extremely impor-
tant tool that we in the FBI have been pushing for a while to be
using more aggressively, in particular against the Chinese threat,
because so much of it is reflected through people engaged in activ-
ity that we think could appropriately be pursued under FARA. So,
exactly how it compares, I am not sure I have that information.
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Well, here’s the point. We agree with
that, and I think we need to be aggressive against the CCP for
sure. We are all on the same page there. According to reports,
there were as many FARA prosecutions during the previous 40
years as there were during the 18 months of the Mueller probe.
George Papadopoulos, for example, stated that he was given the
choice to either, quote, ‘‘accept the charge that I lied or face FARA
charges. That while FARA has been widely ignored for years, the
Special Counsel’s Office has dusted the statute off as a prime weap-
on to get Members of the Trump circle to talk, right,’’ unquote.
The FBI and the Justice Department used FARA throughout
their investigation into Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, but
nothing ever came from those charges. The Justice Department
stated in its motion to dismiss the case that the FBI’s closing com-
munication, quote, ‘‘made clear that the FBI had found no basis to
predicate further investigative efforts into whether Mr. Flynn was
being directed and controlled by a foreign power’’—Russia, in that
case—‘‘in a manner that threatened U.S. national security or vio-
lated FARA or its related statutes,’’ unquote.
So, the question is, it seems to a lot of Americans that alleged
FARA violations were used as either a pretext to investigate those
with ties to President Trump or that FARA charges were used to
pressure those conservatives in a bid to find a connection between
the Trump campaign and Russia. So, regardless of the details of
the Mueller probe, I get that you are not the expert on that. The
question is, how could anyone see this otherwise? Doesn’t it look
like that was selective enforcement?
Mr. WRAY. I certainly understand the purpose of the question,
the point of the question. I am not sure that I can really speak to
what people would perceive. What I can say is that, again, separate
from the special counsel’s investigation, which is really, respect-
fully, probably not my place to comment on, I do think that more
aggressive use of the Foreign Agents Registration Act is something
46
that former Attorney General Barr and I, for example, discussed
quite a bit in trying to use it more aggressively than it had been
used in the past, partly for the reason we’ve already talked about.
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. On June 3rd of this year, Politico re-
ported that the Justice Department is now investigating a Demo-
crat lobbying firm for failing to comply with FARA in its represen-
tation of Burisma Holdings while Hunter Biden served on its
board. Up until about a week ago, when this news was first re-
ported, there was a very real perception that enhanced enforcement
is being used only against Republicans and conservatives.
So, the question is, can you confirm the FBI’s commitment to fer-
vently pursue these violations, as you said, more aggressively, but
to do it regardless of the political party affiliations of the subject
of the investigation?
Mr. WRAY. I think political party affiliations should have zero
place in our decision to enforce the Foreign Agents Registration Act
or any other statute. You can be sure that as long as I have any-
thing to say about it, we are going to enforce it in an even-handed
way without respect to anybody’s political affiliation.
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. I’ve got 19 seconds left. I’ll just say,
that even-hand and this perception that we are talking about is in-
creasingly important in our republic, because if they don’t have
faith in the system of justice, if they think that Lady Justice is a
symbol—has the blindfold up and she’s peering beneath it, then we
lose an important element that holds the republic together.
I am out of time. I yield back. Thanks for your time.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman yields back.
Ms. Bass.
Ms. BASS. First, thank you very much for your service, Director
Wray. I also want to thank you for finally abandoning the category
of Black identity extremist likely motivated to target law enforce-
ment. My understanding now is that there is a new category, ra-
cially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, and I am actually
concerned about this as well.
I am concerned about it because of the FBI’s long history of col-
lapsing Black activism in the fight for civil rights and especially
against police abuse with terrorism. So, even in this document, sev-
eral Black individuals and one organization is included along with
well-known White supremacist domestic organizations—domestic
terrorist organizations.
The FBI says, from 2015–2019, approximately 846 individuals
were arrested for domestic terrorism, and I wanted to know, how
many of these were African American?
Mr. WRAY. Congresswoman, I appreciate your comments about
the changes we made in response to some of the conversations we’d
had early in my tenure on the so-called BIE issue. The particular
document you are reading from, I am not sure, sitting here right
now, that I am certain which document you are referring to, so
maybe the best thing to do there would be for us to have my staff
follow up with yours—
Ms. BASS. No problem.
Mr. WRAY. —to be sure and be sure that I am answering—yeah.
Ms. BASS. I’m going to ask you several other questions. Do you
know of any Black domestic terrorist organization? Could you tell
47
me their names and what attacks that they have landed? I wanted
to know if you’ve considered, or if the movement for Black Lives
or Black Lives Matter is considered a racially motivated violent ex-
tremist organization?
Mr. WRAY. So, I appreciate the question, because this is some-
thing that I think is important for me to be able to clarify, really,
across the spectrum. So, the first point that’s really important here
is that we don’t designate domestic terrorist organizations, period.
Unlike on the foreign terrorist enforcement side where there’s a
specific statutory scheme for designating terrorist organizations,
there is no such scheme for domestic terrorism. Whether it’s on
the—in the end that you are talking about, or any other end. Hav-
ing said this—
Ms. BASS. You don’t consider any organizations as domestic ter-
rorist?
Mr. WRAY. But, could I—sorry.
I couldn’t hear. You flickered out there.
Ms. BASS. You just said you don’t consider—you don’t designate
organizations as domestic terrorist organizations?
Mr. WRAY. That’s correct. What we do is investigate individuals
with proper predication. In some instances, those individuals will
conspire or engage in criminal conduct with each other, and in
some cases, we will open a conspiracy investigation, or a so-called
enterprise investigation.
Ms. BASS. Do you have indications of Black individuals are activ-
ists that are involved in the movement around police abuse and
civil rights in those categories? The reason why I am asking that
is because there’s a number of Black Lives Matter individuals,
leaders who have been visited by the FBI in their homes who have
been asked about the plans for various protests, et cetera.
Some of those individuals might not be aware that if they mis-
represent certain facts to the FBI that they could, in fact, be com-
mitting a crime. So, I wanted to ask you specifically about your
surveillance of these organizations, and it’s my understanding that
there were a couple of protests where the FBI did use surveillance
and used surveillance aircraft, actually, with organizations that
were protesting in Washington, DC, and Baltimore.
Mr. WRAY. So, we are talking about a few different things here.
So, the first thing is, we do investigate individuals for criminal ac-
tivity and violence that occurs in the middle of protests, regardless
of what the basis of their protest is. I really can’t speak to specific
cases because I would need to know the facts, and I would also
need to make sure that I wasn’t talking about an ongoing inves-
tigation.
We do not investigate First Amendment groups. We don’t inves-
tigate people for speech, for association, for assembly, for member-
ship in domestic First Amendment groups. We have had a few
cases that I can think of off the top of my head in the last two
years, involving individuals who committed domestic—what we
would consider domestic terror attacks, justifying their attacks—le-
thal attacks, I should add, justifying their attacks based on their
interpretation of the so-called Black Hebrew Israelite faith. So, that
is probably the best example that I could give you, but that’s about
48
the only thing that comes to mind as we are sitting here talking
right now.
Chair NADLER. The gentlelady’s time is expired.
Mr. Buck.
Mr. BUCK. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Director Wray, for your service to our country. I want
to personally thank you for the great work of the FBI in the case
that you mentioned earlier, the synagogue in Colorado.
Director Wray, I think it’s important that the world knows that
the people on this Committee, certainly, I condemn White nation-
alism, White supremacy, Nazis, and I don’t think anybody accepts
the fact. Many of our relatives, my father fought in World War II
to rid this planet from the scourge of Nazi Germany, and Nazis
generally, and it’s upsetting to see any form of Nazi philosophy
come back in this country or anywhere else.
There is—in the Chair’s opening statement and in some other
comments, there seems to be this link between White nationalists,
White supremacists, Nazis, and hate crimes, as if only White su-
premacists commit hate crimes. I have seen a number of videos on-
line recently, and it appears to me that hate crimes are much
broader than that. I want to get into some other questions, but if
you could just let me know, is it true that the only hate crimes
committed in this country are committed by White nationalists?
Mr. WRAY. No, certainly, we’ve seen hate crimes committed by a
variety of individuals.
Mr. BUCK. Okay. One of the concerns I have, and I agree with
my friend, Mr. Johnson from Louisiana’s comments about the per-
ception among—in the public about the evenhandedness of law en-
forcement. I was in law enforcement for 25 years. I feel very
strongly about the public perception of law enforcement.
I think that one of the challenges that we face, we have two very
high-profile:
(1) A one-day riot, and
(2) a series of riots last summer.
It appears to the public that those activities have been treated
differently by the FBI and by law enforcement. Oftentimes, I think
the riots involving antifa and other groups over the summer, in
Portland and cities across the United States, were handled by local
law enforcement, and not necessarily by the FBI.
Because there appears to be a concerted and coordinated effort,
it seems to me that the FBI would have a role in investigating
those activities. I just want to give you the opportunity to talk
about the fact that you have 500—as you mentioned today—pros-
ecutions of the January 6th events at the United States Capitol,
and, yet, we don’t see the leadership of antifa or the money be-
hind—there were news reports, for example, that the day after Ke-
nosha, there were rioters there from Portland, from other cities
that converged at that location.
It appears that those are coordinated efforts, and it involves, I
don’t know how you’d put it any other way, but organized crime.
Could you please comment and tell the American people how seri-
ous the FBI takes those types of domestic terror activities and the
49
fact that there really is no distinction, or there is a distinction be-
tween the FBI’s efforts in one area and the other?
Mr. WRAY. So, first, to be clear, the FBI has one standard for
both, which is based on the law, based on the evidence available,
based on our effort to protect the American people and uphold the
Constitution.
I can certainly understand though—I can certainly understand
why people might formulate an impression, and part of that has to
do with the fact that in a lot of the hundreds—hundreds of inves-
tigations we’ve been conducting related to activity over the course
of the summer, in some cases, the most readily provable offense is
a State or local charge rather than the availability of a ready-made
Federal charge.
To some extent, what you are seeing related to January 6th is
that because a lot of the activity was engaged in fairly
straightforwardly implicates Federal crimes, namely breaching
Federal property, going inside the Capitol, interfering with Con-
gress, et cetera. It’s easier to bring Federal charges in that attack
than it was over the summer.
So, a lot of those State and local prosecutions that you are refer-
ring to from over the summer have had our joint terrorism task
forces—
Mr. BUCK. I don’t mean to interrupt you, Mr. Wray—
Mr. WRAY. —working closely with our State and local partners—
Mr. BUCK. —but I just want to mention, there were attacks on
Federal facilities and cities across the United States.
Mr. WRAY. Yes. So, that’s the other piece of it, right. We have
lots of investigations, lots of Federal investigations. Like I men-
tioned I think in my opening remarks, essentially, all our 56 field
offices have been investigating activity there, and we are looking
for things that are, of course, harder to drill into, but we are look-
ing for things like funding, like logistics, like coordination.
So, a lot of this gets down to the questions of how readily avail-
able is the evidence? How clear is the Federal jurisdiction? When
we have charges that we can bring Federally, we are all in. We are
all in. Some of these are offenses over the summer where people
have brought—thrown Molotov cocktails. In some cases, we were
able to bring Federal charges related to that.
In some cases, there’s an assault on a Federal law officer, and
we are able to bring assault on Federal officer charges. So, we are
looking for those types of offenses, but we are also looking at the
more systematic type of issue, again, funding, logistics, coordina-
tion, all that stuff.
A lot of this boils down to the less glamorous spadework that you
would recognize from the investigative activities. Sometimes the
evidence is readily available; sometimes it’s harder to get at. We
are absolutely—we have one standard. I don’t care whether you are
upset at our criminal justice system, or upset at our election sys-
tem, violence, assault on Federal law enforcement, obstruction of
property is not the way to do it. That’s our position. One standard.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time is expired. Mr. Jeffries.
Mr. JEFFRIES. I thank you, Chair Nadler.
Thank you, Director Wray, for your presence and your service to
this country. The dramatic rise in anti-Semitic and anti-Asian vio-
50
lence throughout this country is unacceptable, unconscionable, and
un-American. So, let me begin, Director Wray, by just urging you
and the FBI to dedicate all necessary resources to deal with and
address this scourge.
Director Wray, violent White supremacy is the most persistent
and lethal threat to the American homeland, correct?
Mr. WRAY. Well, the way we look at it, we’ve categorized it—I
think we are saying the same thing, but just to be clear, we have
elevated racially motivated violent extremism, the vast majority
which is motivated by advocacy on behalf of White superiority, at
our highest threat priority level. That’s commensurate with ISIS.
It is certainly true that over the last few years, the most lethal
attacks here in the homeland have been by individuals of that ra-
cially motivated violent extremist category, specifically those advo-
cating for the superiority of the White race.
Mr. JEFFRIES. Right, otherwise known as White supremacists.
So, the largest group, just to clarify, of racially motivated violent
extremists are White supremacist organizations. Is that right?
Mr. WRAY. Well, I wouldn’t say organizations, but individuals,
the largest portion of domestic terrorist investigations that we have
and arrests or investigations of the racially motivated
Mr. JEFFRIES. Yeah. Well, let me ask you about—oh, thank you.
Let me ask you about organizations. The Oath Keepers are a White
supremacist organization, true?
Mr. WRAY. I am not sure that I can characterize their ideology.
I would say that we have charged a number of individuals related
to specific terrorist activity, or violent activity, maybe is a better
way of putting it, who self-identify with the Oath Keepers. I think
some of those individuals are ones that we would put in this ra-
cially motivated violent extremist category.
We also have a number of such investigations of individuals who
self-identify with the Proud Boys in a similar vein. Again, in each
of those instances, we are not charging them for their membership
in Oath Keepers or Proud Boys.
Mr. JEFFRIES. Understood.
Mr. WRAY. We are charging them based on their violent criminal
activity.
Mr. JEFFRIES. Understood. The FBI respects the First Amend-
ment; so, do we in Congress, and we can agree on that.
You anticipated my next question. The Oath Keepers clearly are
a White supremacist organization. That’s my observation, not
yours, but happy to have you join me in that characterization.
Would you say that the neo-Nazis are a White supremacist organi-
zation?
Mr. WRAY. Well, I certainly—when I use the term ‘‘neo-Nazis,’’
I think of them as people who are advocating for White supremacy.
That’s at least the way I think of that term.
Mr. JEFFRIES. Okay. I am wondering, why is the FBI generally
reluctant to use the term ‘‘violent White supremacy’’?
Mr. WRAY. I think we use the term ‘‘racially motivated violent
extremism’’ partly because we are trying to make clear to our peo-
ple and everyone who’s involved that our focus—that doesn’t mean
everybody else’s focus, but our focus is on the violence.
51
So, part of the reason we changed some of our nomenclature was
to make especially sure that what’s important to us—it gets back
to this idea that we have one standard. It doesn’t matter what your
motivation is or how abhorrent or despicable your motivation is;
what we have to be focused on is the violence.
Mr. JEFFRIES. I understand that. The violence is largely being
driven by White supremacy as an ideology. If you don’t name the
problem and claim the problem, it seems to me that it’s hard to
tame the problem. That’s why I am raising this particular issue.
In terms of domestic terrorism, I think you’ve testified in the
past that this is a growing problem that we’ve experienced in
America, correct?
Mr. WRAY. Domestic terrorism? Absolutely.
Mr. JEFFRIES. That’s correct.
Mr. WRAY. Yes.
Mr. JEFFRIES. I would argue that it’s actually a problem that has
been with us for centuries. We know that the KKK was founded
in 1865. That’s a terrorist organization. We know that the
lynchings that took place in the 1800s and the 1900s were acts of
domestic terror. The murder, the brutal killing of Emmett Till in
1955, that was an Act of domestic terror. The bombings of the 16th
Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which took place
in 1963, that was an Act of domestic terror killing four beautiful,
Black, little girls.
This most recent January 6th instance, the attack on the Capitol
that resulted in death and mayhem, was an Act of domestic terror.
The through line through all those instances is White supremacy.
I hope that the FBI will use all its resources to tackle this per-
sistent problem. I yield back.
Ms. SCANLON. [Presiding.] The Chair recognizes Ms. Spartz for
five minutes.
Ms. SPARTZ. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Director Wray. I just wanted to follow up on some
questions that my colleagues from California brought up related to
the FISC opinion, and the use of section 702. Interestingly, I also
had a letter with my colleague from Congressman Ted Lieu from
California, there is some common ground between California and
Indiana on some issues.
I appreciate that you assist in direct sending the response last
night and a few other letters. One thing that he didn’t respond,
and we also requested a briefing and I think my Congresswoman
from California did too, would we be able to get a briefing by the
end of this fiscal year?
Mr. WRAY. A briefing on what we are doing to respond to the
questions from the FISC opinion?
Ms. SPARTZ. Yes, that, and on your internal audit initiatives.
Mr. WRAY. Sure, we’d be happy to provide a briefing, but cer-
tainly before the end of—
Ms. SPARTZ. Great. Thank you so much. Because as you know,
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 was legislated by
Congress to really address unlawful Executive Branch surveillance
of U.S. citizens. A 2008 law created some loopholes which gave ex-
emptions for surveillance of non-U.S. citizens on foreign soil, and
as you know, it’s been a decade. Application was very rough.
52
In 2018, when Congress renewed this legislation, they explicitly
required documented all of instances when it was violated. As you
know, the court also—the FISC also, a report in 2000 FISA court,
and the 2018 opinion found that the FBI procedure were in viola-
tion of the First Amendment, and due process, and you instill all
these new procedures and everything else.
In the 2020 report, pretty much the court had still significant
concerns with FBI’s limitations, violations were more pervasive
than previously believed, that FBI never applied to the FISC for
an order, lack of justification for bail (ph) queries is a particular
concern and technical violation on address for nearly a year.
The report shows that there are a lot of different concerns, but
in their opinion the court pretty much said there is—we are con-
cerned about the apparent widespread violation, but we don’t have
any evidence due to lack of—due to the pandemic, we couldn’t do
this really audit. So, due to the absence of evidence to the contrary,
the court is willing to certify this process.
Do you know I used to audit them. If PCOB would come to my
engagement and they say, Okay, you know what, you audited this
engagement. There is no evidence. Nothing is documented. Gen-
erally, since we didn’t find nothing was documented, no evidence
provided, it’s okay that you said that this audit statements is mate-
rial respect seems to be fair and not materially misstated.
I know that you mentioned that one of your internal audit part-
ners is big for auditor, and I am sure he would tell you, I would
be fired if PCOB would come to my audit and inspect my audit, be-
cause ultimately whatever not documented is not done.
So, do you believe that Federal agencies should be also held at
the same standard as we hold private entities? It’s not about the
law. Do you believe it should hold it to the same standard?
Mr. WRAY. Well, the whole—can you hear me? Sorry. The whole
question about how auditing should be done is, of course, as you
alluded to, a dense one. The internal auditor that we hired—
Ms. SPARTZ. I am talking like external, because it’s internal
audit. I have to disagree in your statement when you said to Con-
gressman Issa what is audit done for. Maybe your internal audits
are done to find errors. Your external certification done by FISA
court is actually to provide an opinion that in the material respects
you follow the law, not find an error. As an auditor, you don’t want
to find errors. That is not the goal of the auditor to find.
So, do you believe, for 2021, since it’s been already a decade, you
and your internal controls director, would be able to attest that you
have all this detective, preventative control, you’ve done all these
different things, and now this point you can actually say that you
attest and provide evidence that in material respect you follow the
law, and if you don’t follow what an error rate you accept and to
be able to say I violated First Amendment right for how many citi-
zens is acceptable to violate it? Would you be able to attest that
for your 2021 with all the new procedures and provide for FISA
court when they do new report this evidence?
Mr. WRAY. So, maybe it would be better for me to be able to ex-
plain a little bit more about our audit program, and it could be that
some of this could be better addressed through the briefing we are
talking about standing up for you.
53
To be clear, the individual we brought in is here to stand up an
Office of Internal Audit and to be able to do—
Ms. SPARTZ. As an executive in the office, you are responsible for
the office. As the CEO of the company, you are responsible for the
office. You are responsible to follow the law as it’s written.
So, would you be able to provide this time an evidence so we
don’t go another decade, because you have authorization in a few
years, provide this evidence and say, ‘‘Yes, we can provide evidence
we don’t violate the rights of U.S. citizens’’?
Ms. SCANLON. The gentlelady’s time has expired, but you can an-
swer the question.
Mr. WRAY. I think it would be best—this is a complicated topic.
There’s a lot that I have to say on it. It would be probably better
addressed in a briefing that—
Ms. SPARTZ. Okay. I’ll look forward to it. Thank you.
Yield back.
Ms. SCANLON. Thank you.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Rhode Island.
Mr. CICILLINE. Thank you, Director Wray, for your service to our
country. Thank you to the men and women of the FBI.
Gun violence is an epidemic in our country. In my home State
of Rhode Island last month, a 31-year-old man was shot at a park
while playing with his son, a teenage woman was killed while sit-
ting in a car, a 20-year-old man was shot to death outside his
home. The same thing is happening in cities all across America.
There’s no question that this problem has gotten worse during the
COVID–19 pandemic.
In 2020, Rhode Island saw a significant increase in gun sales,
and during that same time we saw an 87 percent increase in gun-
related deaths, and that trend has continued into 2021.
So, I hope that you can shed some light on what the FBI can do
and how Congress can support the agency to fight an epidemic that
will claim 40,000 American lives this year.
So, specifically, as I discussed, gun sales skyrocketed during the
COVID–19 pandemic. Nearly 23 million firearms were purchased
nationwide in 2020, a 64 percent increase. For each of these sales,
a background check is required, putting tremendous pressure on
our background check system. In fact, in March of last year, the
start of the pandemic, Federal background checks hit a one million
in a week mark.
So, what does that increase in gun sales mean for the back-
ground check system and for public safety, and particularly with
respect to your ability to complete a background check within three
days, as required by the statute?
Mr. WRAY. So, Congressman, I appreciate the question for a
number of reasons, not the least of which is our folks at NICS, the
background check systems, worked incredibly hard this past year,
in particular, right through the teeth of the pandemic, and had to
be very creative in terms of how we kept people socially distanced,
rotating shifts, et cetera.
We lived in fear that we would suddenly lose the ability to be
able to continue to process the checks because we could potentially
wipe out, in terms of having the quarantine, an entire roomful of
cubicles of people.
54
Mr. CICILLINE. Director, I guess my question—
Mr. WRAY. We processed last year 40—
Mr. CICILLINE. Yeah. My question, I guess, is would additional
resources be helpful to keep up with this pace so that we don’t
have the three-day period passing before the background check can
be completed?
Mr. WRAY. Absolutely. We have been having to do overtime.
We’ve been having to pull people from other key missions to staff
it. I am very proud of the fact that even though we did a record—
you used 23 million. My information is that we processed 40 mil-
lion firearms background checks last year, and then we were able
to complete about 96 percent of those within the three days, despite
that record—despite the pandemic.
Mr. CICILLINE. Thank you, Director.
So, in 2018, the Center for American Progress, and according to
FBI data as well, almost 4,000 prohibited purchasers were able to
get a gun because the background check for their sale was not com-
pleted within three days.
This is the loophole that allowed the Charleston shooter, who le-
gally should have never been allowed to purchase a firearm, to buy
a gun and use it to murder nine worshippers in a church.
So, my question is, how is the FBI supporting the ATF’s recovery
of firearms found to be transferred to a prohibited purchaser? Are
you giving specific instructions nationwide to ATF offices on how
to do this? Are those practices being formalized?
Because my experience is they’re supposed to be recovered by
AFT, but it doesn’t seem like that happens. This is individuals who
got a gun from a gun store who were legally prohibited from own-
ing it.
I’ve actually introduced a bill, the Unlawful Gun Buyer Alert,
that would require local law enforcement be notified if firearms are
delivered to a prohibited purchaser and wonder whether you think
that would also be helpful in making jurisdictions aware when
someone has illegally purchased a gun.
I am really interested to know what you are doing with your field
offices with ATF in this recovery and how we can at least take on
this issue of people getting guns from a gun store who don’t pass
the background check.
Mr. WRAY. I think it might be better for me to offer to have my
staff provide you more information about the details of how we
work with ATF. They have a very, very tough job, as you alluded
to, in recovering the guns that are sold to people who are prohib-
ited by law from having them.
Mr. CICILLINE. Will you commit to a briefing on that, Director,
because that would be very helpful?
Mr. WRAY. We’d be happy to set up a briefing on that subject.
Mr. CICILLINE. My last question, Director, is since September 11
the FBI has provided tens of millions of dollars of counterterrorism
training and resources to State and local law enforcement agencies.
How is the FBI reallocating this support to State and local part-
ners to address the rise of White supremacists and anti-govern-
ment groups? Is the Bureau also giving guidance to the Joint Ter-
rorism Task Force to address White supremacist extremism?
55
Mr. WRAY. So, a couple things there. One is we absolutely are
providing domestic terrorism training to State and local partners,
and we’ve actually recently been providing some of our more ad-
vanced training to the State and local officers, of whom there are
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds who are task force officers
on our Joint Terrorism Task Forces.
As to the prioritization of the Joint Terrorism Task Forces on do-
mestic terrorism, and specifically racially motivated violent extre-
mism, when I elevated that to our highest priority level back in
summer of 2019, the effect of that was to make sure that not only
all 56 field offices are collecting intelligence and disseminating it
on that subject, but also to make sure that all 200-plus Joint Ter-
rorism Task Forces and the 4,500 or 5,000 or whatever it is inves-
tigators that are on them have domestic terrorism—and specifically
that part of domestic terrorism—squarely within their sights.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time has expired.
Mr. Jordan.
Mr. JORDAN. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Director, why did you take their copy of the Constitution?
Mr. WRAY. I am sorry. Take a copy of whose Constitution?
Mr. JORDAN. The couple in Alaska that turned out to be the
wrong couple. You kicked in their door, you held them at gunpoint,
handcuffed them, interrogated them for four hours, took their
phones, took their laptop, and you took a copy of their pocket-sized
Constitution. Why did you take the Constitution?
Mr. WRAY. Well, Congressman, as you know, I can’t discuss a
specific investigation. I am not sure whether your characterization
is accurate or not, but I can’t provide any information about a
pending investigation.
Mr. JORDAN. Then why did you report—it was reported in the
press. Our staff has actually talked to these individuals. That’s
what they told us exactly what happened. I am just curious. I see
why you had the wrong couple, but if you take their phone and
laptop, I am just curious, why did you take their Constitution?
Mr. WRAY. Again, I can’t comment on a specific investigation and
what the contents was.
Mr. JORDAN. Did you personally talk to the Huepers?
Mr. WRAY. Have I talked to who?
Mr. JORDAN. Have you talked to this couple in Alaska? Again,
the couple who had their door kicked in, damage to their door. The
FBI has now repaired their door. Held at gunpoint, handcuffed,
and interrogated for four hours. Have your talked to them person-
ally?
Mr. WRAY. No, I have not.
Mr. JORDAN. If you find out it’s really—I think it’s obvious that,
based on what we’ve discovered, that this was the wrong couple.
These weren’t people who did anything wrong. If you find out they
are, will you call?
Mr. WRAY. I’d have to look at the circumstances of what hap-
pened. It’s an ongoing investigation. That’s all I can really say on
it at this time.
Mr. JORDAN. If it turns out—you sent their phone back to them,
their laptop back to them. If it turns out that they are the wrong
56
couple, as, again, as I think is obvious, what happens to the data
on the phone that you have?
Mr. WRAY. Can you—I am sorry. Can you explain a little bit
more what you are asking?
Mr. JORDAN. Did you keep a record—you returned the phone to
them, but the data on the phone, do you have, like, copies of their
text messages, emails, anything on their phone? Did you keep all
that?
Mr. WRAY. Well, when we return people’s information, my im-
pression is that we don’t keep that information, but it depends on
the circumstances of the investigation.
Mr. JORDAN. It’s an innocent couple. Your impression is you are
not going to keep information?
Mr. WRAY. Well, again, I can’t discuss a specific investigation. If
you would like to get more information about how it works when
we return, more generally, our policies and practices when we re-
turn information, I’d be happy to see if we can provide that infor-
mation to you separately.
Mr. JORDAN. You would think if they’re innocent, they’re not
guilty, and you got information on them, you would get rid of that
information. You wouldn’t—the FBI wouldn’t keep it, right?
Mr. WRAY. I am not trying to—
Mr. JORDAN. Again, in light of what we’ve found out about FISA,
maybe not.
Mr. WRAY. I am not—honestly, I am really not trying to quibble
with you here. The only reason I am providing what sounds like
a confusing answer is because each case is different. It depends on
the circumstances as to how you got the information, what the cir-
cumstances were.
We certainly have instances where we purge information that we
have. I know that happens. We have other instances where we may
be investigating something, and the information is kept.
Again, it depends on the circumstances. There’s a whole net-
work—
Mr. JORDAN. Do you know how this couple was identified? I
mean, you look on your Twitter site, the posted tweet is a
crowdsourcing, ‘‘Can you help us find these individuals?’’ You’ve got
pictures of the individuals. This is relative to January 6.
Was this couple in Alaska found through the crowdsourcing, that
technique?
Mr. WRAY. I don’t know the answer to that sitting here right
now, and, again, I want to be careful not to discuss a specific inves-
tigation. I will say that more generally related to January 6, part
of the purpose of putting out information for the public is for the
public to identify people.
Mr. JORDAN. Right.
Mr. WRAY. If you know people, to identify them.
Mr. JORDAN. Are you doing that as well for the rioters, the peo-
ple, Antifa in Portland? You are doing that as well for them?
Mr. WRAY. Yes. Absolutely.
Mr. JORDAN. Is it a habit of the FBI to take Constitutions from
people that you are interrogating?
Mr. WRAY. I don’t know if it’s a habit to pursue any particular
documents.
57
Mr. JORDAN. I just found that—
Mr. WRAY. We just seized the evidence that’s relevant to what’s
in the affidavit that we—the search warrant affidavit that we pre-
sented to the judge who signed off on it.
Mr. JORDAN. Did you sign off on the raid on Mayor Giuliani’s
apartment?
Mr. WRAY. Again, I am not going to discuss any specific inves-
tigation. I don’t normally sign off on specific operational activity as
FBI Director.
Mr. JORDAN. That’s not what I asked. I asked, did you sign off
on this specific FBI activity where the President’s personal lawyer’s
apartment in Manhattan was raided?
Mr. WRAY. Again, I am not going to discuss any specific inves-
tigation.
Mr. JORDAN. Are you aware of any leaks by the FBI or the De-
partment of Justice about an investigation of Postmaster General
DeJoy?
Mr. WRAY. I am aware of news coverage about an investigation
related to that individual, but I am not aware of leaks from people
inside the FBI.
Mr. JORDAN. You haven’t been briefed on anything?
You haven’t been briefed on anything relative to the FBI or the
Justice Department relating to that leak of an investigation of the
Postmaster?
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time has expired. The Witness
may answer the question.
Mr. WRAY. I can’t discuss a specific investigation. I am aware of
the news coverage about the investigation you are referring to. I
am just going to have to leave it at that here.
Mr. JORDAN. Thank you, Director.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman yields back.
Mr. Swalwell.
Mr. SWALWELL. Director, the plain definition of an insurrection
is a violent uprising against government.
On January 6, an officer died. A couple days later, two died.
Death by suicide. Hundreds were injured that day. An eye was lost.
Fingers were lost. An officer suffered a heart attack. The counting
of the electoral college was suspended for approximately six hours.
Members of Congress retreated to a secure location.
Was January 6 an insurrection?
Mr. WRAY. Well, Congressman, I certainly understand why you
would describe it that way. In my role as FBI Director, because
that’s a term that has legal meaning, I really have to be careful
about using words like that and not getting ahead of both prosecu-
tors and judges who have very strong opinions on what kind of
public commentary, as you may remember from your past life, I
can engage in.
So, I certainly understand why you are asking the question,
given the circumstances both you described and a lot of the other
details surrounding the attack.
We are treating it as an Act of domestic terrorism and inves-
tigating it through our Joint Terrorism Task Force. We are, as you
know, now in the midst of bringing any number of conspiracy
charges, which are particularly serious.
58
This is a very ongoing investigation, and there’s a lot more to
come, and I would expect to see more charges, and some of them
may be more serious charges.
Mr. SWALWELL. Director, we are all grateful when we saw the
FBI SWAT team and its forensics team on the floor after the at-
tack. Before the attack, you told the Intel Committee that you were
looking for and through social media as a key part of investigations
and that you would get tips from social media companies.
Prior to January 6, did the FBI receive any tips from social
media companies about threats to the Capitol?
Mr. WRAY. Well, we’ve had so much information now, I am reluc-
tant to sort of answer any question about the word ‘‘any,’’ espe-
cially because we are now 500 arrests into an investigation and
after the fact.
Certainly, we were aware of online chatter about the potential
for violence, but I am not aware that we had any intelligence indi-
cating that hundreds of individuals were going to storm the Capitol
itself, to my knowledge.
Mr. SWALWELL. Do you believe the Bureau has the ability to
monitor publicly available social media or open-source intelligence
collection?
Mr. WRAY. Could you just repeat the question? I want to be sure
I answer it.
Mr. SWALWELL. Yeah. Do you have the authority and ability to
monitor open-source intelligence collection? So, for example, any
website, chat room where you know consistently groups there are
posting about threats, whether it’s to the Capitol, whether it’s to
law enforcement. Do you have the ability, and can you monitor
open source?
Mr. WRAY. So, the answer to that, unfortunately, like so many
things, is complicated. There are Attorney General guidelines as
implemented through the so-called DIOG that have been around
for many, many years now that govern what we can and cannot do
in this space, all which are geared towards protecting the First
Amendment.
With proper predication and an authorized purpose, there are a
lot of things we can do on social media. What we are not allowed
to do is just sit and monitor social media and look at one person’s
posts, just looking to see if maybe something would happen just in
case. That, we are not allowed to do.
Mr. SWALWELL. In the public realm, we are learning that this at-
tack on the Capitol is not a 500-year storm. In fact, as we speak
right now, there’s a count going on in Arizona related to the 2020
election where claims are being made that the outcome was fraudu-
lent. The former President is telling people that he plans to be re-
instated in August. So, you can see that when you have those
statements, that count, social media may be a place to look as far
as intentions to try and reinstate the President.
Knowing that a storm may be coming, Director, what can we do
to make sure that an attack like that does not happen again?
Mr. WRAY. So, what we can do, and we benefit very much from,
is getting tips and leads about things that are on social media
from—everything from social media companies themselves to Mem-
bers of the public.
59
You often hear the expression that DHS coined of, ‘‘If you see
something, say something’’? Most people imagine when they hear
that the unattended backpack in a Greyhound bus terminal or
something. Obviously, we want people to say something then, too.
What we are trying to communicate is, if you see something that
looks like criminal activity and threat of violence, say something,
including if you see something on social media, we need you to say
something.
That’s what our tip center is partly there for, but you can contact
law enforcement, State and local law enforcement.
Mr. SWALWELL. Has your judgment—
Chair NADLER. The Committee’s—the gentleman’s time—
Mr. SWALWELL. Mr. Director, has your judgment changed that
there was not widespread fraud in the 2020 election?
Mr. WRAY. As former Attorney General Barr and former Acting
Attorney General Rosen have both said, ‘‘we looked, but we didn’t
see evidence of fraud sufficient to change the outcome of the Presi-
dential election.’’
Mr. SWALWELL. Thank you, Director.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time has expired.
At this time, the Committee will stand in recess for about half
an hour. We will resume promptly at 1 p.m.
[Recess.]
Chair NADLER. The Committee will come back to order.
Mr. Lieu. Sorry.
Mr. BIGGS. Okay. Let’s try again.
Mr. ROY. I am here, Chair. Can you hear me?
Chair NADLER. Yes.
Mr. ROY. I appreciate that.
Director Wray, I appreciate your service, appreciate you being
here today.
Last month, I had a letter that my colleague Thomas Massie and
I sent to the Department of Justice requesting further information
on prosecutions of individuals who were present at the Capitol on
January 6.
Now, earlier you talked about there being over 500 investiga-
tions, arrests, or prosecutions that might be underway, and you
categorized them in three categories: Those who had peaceably as-
sembled, those who maybe crossed a line they shouldn’t have, and
then those who had engaged in violence, obviously, and damaging
property and harming police. Those are my words, but roughly
that.
My concern is making sure that those who were there exercising
their First Amendment rights were not being swept up into inves-
tigations or being wrongfully arrested. I have constituents who are
concerned.
Will you commit to join personally, along with people necessary
to bring in from the FBI, to have a briefing for all Members of Con-
gress, not just this Committee, on this question of the arrests, the
nature of the arrests, and how that investigation is going?
Mr. WRAY. Well, Congressman, I appreciate the question.
First, just I want to clarify one thing based on what you just
summarized. We are not conducting investigations—to my knowl-
edge certainly—of peaceful protesters and certainly not arresting
60
people for peaceful protests. So, when I gave those three groups, I
wasn’t referring to three types of investigations we have, but rath-
er of the three types of people who were present in the area.
Mr. ROY. I understand. I understand that clarification. I am a
former Federal prosecutor. I get it. Will you commit to briefing
along those lines?
Mr. WRAY. I am happy to see what kind of briefing we could pro-
vide to the Committee. Obviously, as I alluded in some of the re-
sponses to some of the earlier questions, because we have now
something like 500 cases pending in front of different, very par-
ticular Federal judges, I really have to be careful about what I can
commit to share.
Mr. ROY. I understand. I understand that. A briefing for Mem-
bers of Congress on what happened on January 6 so we can under-
stand the investigations of citizens, both for those of us who want
to ensure people have the law fully enforced who engaged in activi-
ties they shouldn’t have, as well as citizens who might be wrong-
fully targeted. I think we ought to have that briefing.
I want to turn my attention to the border.
Does the United States have operational control of our southern
border?
Mr. WRAY. I am not sure I am really the right person to address
that. I think that’s a better question for the Department of Home-
land Security.
Mr. ROY. As the Director of the FBI and someone keenly aware
of the illegal and dangerous activities going on with cartels along
our border, would you say that the United States has operational
control over our southern border?
Mr. WRAY. Well, I hesitate to use words like ‘‘operational con-
trol.’’ What I would say is that the border security issues are of
great concern, and they span everything from violent crime associ-
ated with the border, drug trafficking associated with the border,
human trafficking associated with the border, et cetera. Yeah.
Mr. ROY. Along those lines, Director—I am sorry, our time is lim-
ited, I hate interrupting—but are you aware that we’ve had over
700,000 apprehensions since January 1?
Mr. WRAY. I don’t have the exact number, but I know there are
quite a few, to put it mildly.
Mr. ROY. Does it sound right that maybe 300,000 got away and
releases have occurred, according to sources on the ground?
I am going to ask a series of questions. You can answer them en
masse.
Are you aware that, through May, the Fentanyl numbers for
2021 are 7,400 pounds intercepted at the border compared to 4,700
pounds for all 2020?
Do you agree that Fentanyl is one of the most dangerous drugs
in the world?
Do you agree that it is infiltrating our communities and our
schools, and that synthetic drugs, including Fentanyl, are by far
the fastest part of the opioid epidemic, and that there were unprec-
edented overdose deaths in the United States at 91,000, according
to the CDC, from October 2019–October 2020?
Does that all sound consistent with what you know about what’s
going on with our drug communities and our border situation?
61
Mr. WRAY. Well, given your past background, you will under-
stand when I refer to what you just asked as a compound question.
Suffice to say that I totally agree that the drug issues related to
the border are extremely significant, that Fentanyl—the problem
with Fentanyl, Fentanyl coming into this country from elsewhere,
including from the southwest border, is something that I think can
fairly be described as an epidemic.
Mr. ROY. Two last questions.
There are also significant problems with human trafficking, up-
wards of 300,000 people being trafficked in our country, 20,000
being brought into our country every year even when we don’t have
the massive numbers we have right now.
The cartel Jalisco New Generation, operating as Los Zetas, re-
cently have taken over control of Aguililla. They’re driving
Fentanyl. We now have had an 800 percent increase in Texas of
Fentanyl seizures. That is a massive number that’s coming into
Texas.
So, my question for you—and I’ll close because I don’t have
time—my question is, what is the FBI doing? Have they provided
assets directly to CBP to help work to stop the dangerous reach of
cartels’ Fentanyl and human trafficking into Texas and the rest of
our country?
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time has expired. The Witness
may answer the question.
Mr. WRAY. I’ll provide a brief answer, and then maybe we can
supply some more information after the fact.
So, certainly, we are very actively engaged with CBP across all
our border divisions, Texas all the way over to California, and we
are working it together with human trafficking task forces, safe
streets and gangs task forces, and OCDETF strike forces.
We even have tried to contribute on the other side of the border
down with our legat working closely on human trafficking and spe-
cial interest alien issues.
Of course, we also have something that a lot of people don’t real-
ize we do. We have so-called TAGS, or Transnational Anti-Gang
Task Forces, even all the way down in the Northern Triangle
where we are trying to work with vetted police officers from those
countries to try to prevent, at the source, some of the threat from
MS–13 and others going up to the United States.
So, happy to provide some more detailed information separately.
Mr. ROY. Thank you, Mr. Director.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman yields back.
Mr. Lieu.
Mr. LIEU. Thank you, Chair Nadler.
Thank you, Director Wray, for your lengthy public service and to
all the personnel at the FBI for keeping Americans safe.
Earlier at this hearing it was brought up that COVID–19 could
be a bioweapon. Before I ask you any questions, I just want to
make a public service announcement.
If you are watching this and you believe COVID–19 is a bio-
weapon, you can protect yourself: Go get vaccinated. If you are
fully vaccinated, then COVID–19 largely cannot harm you. Please
consult your doctor if you have any questions.
62
So, Director Wray, I’d like to follow up on the questions by Con-
gress Member Zoe Lofgren, Congress Member Issa, as well as Con-
gresswoman Spartz, on section 702 of FISA and the database.
As Congresswoman Spartz mentioned, we wrote a letter to you
about how the FBI got access to private information of Ameri-
cans—without a warrant—from this database. I appreciate your re-
sponse back where you implement a number of procedures to miti-
gate this from happening in the future.
What I’d like to know is, if in the future the FBI either acciden-
tally or intentionally gets this information from the foreign surveil-
lance database without a warrant, do you segment that information
so that if it’s ever used in a court of law the defendant can chal-
lenge it and challenge how it may have influenced your investiga-
tion?
Mr. WRAY. I think the answer is yes, but I would prefer to make
sure that I have people follow up with you to make sure that we
are giving you the technically precise answer to that question.
Mr. LIEU. I’d appreciate it if you could do that. Thank you.
My next question goes to the January 6 insurrection and what
it was based on. I appreciate that you earlier had stated that you
investigated alleged voter fraud and you could not find any fraud
sufficient to overturn the results of the election.
In these 500 or so arrests of the individuals that attacked our
Capitol, it’s true, isn’t it, that a number of them went to the Cap-
itol to stop the electoral college from being certified based on the
big lie that the election was stolen.
In other words, they were there not because they were upset
about corporate tax rates but because they believed the election
was stolen. Is that correct?
Mr. WRAY. Well, certainly some portion of the individuals that
we arrested, have arrested so far, were individuals whose intention
was to interfere with or obstruct the operation of Congress’ con-
stitutional responsibilities here.
Mr. LIEU. Our constitutional responsibility on that day, on Janu-
ary the 6th, was to certify the election results in the electoral col-
lege, correct?
Mr. WRAY. Yes.
[Audio malfunction.]
Mr. LIEU. It seems like in the 21st century that these cyber-
attacks are only going to increase.
Would you agree, Director Wray, that we are likely going to see
an increase in cyber-attacks against both the public and private
sector?
Mr. WRAY. Yes. We think the cyber threat is increasing almost
exponentially. Ransomware alone, the total volume of amounts
paid in ransomware I think has tripled over the last year. We are
investigating a hundred different ransomware variants, and each
one of those hundred has dozens, if not hundreds, of victims.
That’s just ransomware. That’s just ransomware. We obviously
are investigating scores and scores and scores of nation-state intru-
sions and other kinds of cybercriminal attacks.
So, the scale of this is something that I don’t think this country
has ever really ever seen anything quite like it, and it’s going to
get much worse.
63
Mr. LIEU. [Audio malfunction] private sector. That’s why I have
introduced legislation to provide incentives for people to go into the
cyber-security field. We are simply going to need more of these
cyber workers to protect Americans in the future.
Now, some of these hacker groups appear to either be in Russia
or operate with either the complicity of Russia or directly at the be-
hest of Russia.
Would you agree that there is some State action involvement in
some of these hacker groups?
Mr. WRAY. Well, of course, it varies from intrusion to intrusion.
We know the Russians have a very active, clearly state-sponsored
cyber campaign, including things like the SolarWinds intrusion,
which we have now publicly attributed to the SVR.
In the past, there have been other indictments where we’ve
brought against other Members of the Russian Intelligence Serv-
ices.
Separate from that there are, of course, cyber-criminal actors,
any number of whom operate—quite a number of whom operate on
Russian soil.
The degree of nexus between those cyber criminals and the Rus-
sian Government is not something I can discuss in an open hear-
ing.
I will say that the most recent actors, the so-called DarkSide ac-
tors involved in the Colonial Pipeline attack, are individuals who,
perhaps not coincidentally, specifically target English-speaking vic-
tims.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time has expired.
Mr. Bishop.
Mr. Biggs.
Mr. BIGGS. Thanks, Mr. Chair. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Director Wray, for being here.
I am going to read a quote from a recent commentator:
We can continue playing compliance whack-a-mole, but at this point it’s
reasonable to ask whether this sort of large-scale collection on a ‘‘general
warrant’’ model is inherently prone to these problems in a way that resists
robust and timely oversight.
We’ve seen this movie before. The court wags its finger at systemic non-
compliance but ultimately decides to give the FBI yet another chance.
Of course, this commentator is referring to the opinion from the
FISC court that came out in November, which was just recently re-
leased, on April 20th or 21st.
In that opinion the judge said, ‘‘While the court is concerned
about the apparent widespread violation, it lacks sufficient infor-
mation at this time’’ to assess the adequacy of the FBI system
changes and training.
So, Congressman, the Ranking Member, Jim Jordan, and myself
wrote to you on May 4, and we presented three questions to you.
(1) Please explain why, almost a year after the OIG’s report
about FISA abuses, the FISC found the FBI to still be abus-
ing its warrantless surveillance authority under section 702.
I think we brought that up because in the one example, you had
at least 40 individuals surveilled who had nothing to do with for-
eign intelligence whatsoever, and that was a finding.
64
(2) Please provide a detailed accounting of every instance since
December 2019 in which the FBI has queried, accessed, oth-
erwise used information obtained pursuant to section 702 for
purposes unrelated to national security.
(3) Please explain what actions you have taken in the wake of
the FISC November 2020 memorandum opinion and order to
prevent the FBI from using its section 702 authorities to sur-
veil, investigate, or otherwise examine U.S. citizens.
So, we sent that on May 4. Then, over a month after that, last
night we received the response. It wasn’t from you. It was from
your assistant director, excuse me.
That letter was primarily focused on question (3), which I get,
and you’ve mentioned that several times today. I appreciate the ef-
forts that you are trying to make to clean this up or at least pro-
vide some kind of effort to prevent this, the kind of systemic abuses
that we’ve seen in the past.
Director Wray, I think it’s imperative that we understand the an-
swers to questions (1) and (2), which I reiterated to you. You don’t
have time to answer them all here. It would be better if we could
have a dialogue, for sure.
What I want to know is, can you provide us a detailed accounting
of every instance since December 2019 in which the FBI has
queried, accessed, or otherwise used information obtained by 702
for purposes unrelated to national security?
Mr. WRAY. I can look and see if there’s more information we can
provide you, perhaps in a classified setting.
I will say that the summary that you just gave, it’s important,
for people not to confuse two different issues. The Inspector Gen-
eral’s 2019 report has to do with surveillance, and we’ve talked
about that at great length, including in a prior hearing in front of
this Committee.
The 702, the FISC opinion, has to do with querying, which is
running searches in a database. There’s nothing having to do with
surveillance. All that is lawfully collected information. So, it had
nothing to do with surveillance or anything like that.
That does not mean that we don’t consider the findings in the
FISC opinion incredibly important, which is why I am putting in
place all these measures.
Mr. BIGGS. The judge found them so troubling that he required
now—and I was going to ask you about this—he requires you to
provide a report every quarter about minimization, querying, your
efforts there.
Have you provided the first quarter’s report to the FISC?
Mr. WRAY. I’d have to check. I know that we deal with the FISC
fairly regularly and provide all sorts of reports to them.
It’s important to note that the court approved our procedures,
our minimization procedures, our collection procedures, our
querying procedures, did not find misconduct.
Mr. BIGGS. Didn’t find misconduct.
Mr. WRAY. Right.
Mr. BIGGS. It was still—it found widespread—I am going to use
the word ‘‘improprieties.’’ He was very concerned about widespread
improprieties, and that’s why he wants the report, wanted it going
65
forward, is to find out what you guys are doing. So, I want to know
if Congress is going to get a copy of that report.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time has expired. The Witness
may answer the question.
Mr. WRAY. I am happy to see what information we can provide
you. The court, though, does not speak in terms of improprieties,
and I think the court knows how to use that term when that’s what
it thinks it’s found.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman yields back.
Mr. Raskin.
Mr. RASKIN. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, Director Wray. Thank you for your service. Thanks
also for reminding us that if we see something, we should say
something. I see Donald Trump telling his followers that he is
about to be reinstated as President of the United States in August.
So, I wanted to make sure I said something so the FBI can be on
top of that situation given that he’s incited violence against the
government before.
I wonder if you can help us understand what the FBI did on
June 1, 2020, versus what it did on January 6, 2021.
On June 1, 2020, we saw a full-blown government assault on
hundreds of Americans who had peacefully assembled in Lafayette
Square in the Nation’s Capital to speak and petition government
for redress of grievances relating to the murder of George Floyd.
Then America watched as Federal law enforcement in riot gear
and on horseback cleared peaceful protesters and reporters, firing
pepper balls and flash grenades into the crowd.
It’s been reported that around 2 p.m. on that day top law en-
forcement and military officials assembled at the FBI command
center, at your command center, for a planning meeting in advance
of this assault on the civil rights protesters.
So, I want to ask you, who was the senior-most FBI official
present handling the Bureau’s actions on that day? Was that you?
If not you, who was it? What was the FBI’s general role and func-
tion in the events of June 1?
Mr. WRAY. Well, there were a lot of people going in and out of
the command post over the course of that day, so I am not sure
I can speak exactly to who was doing what at 2:00 p.m. that after-
noon about a year ago, but—
Mr. RASKIN. Well, who was the highest-ranking person involved?
Mr. WRAY. Well, but it’s important to be clear about what we are
talking about here.
You asked about the FBI’s role. So, the FBI does not, did not on
June 1 of 2020 or on January 6, we don’t have the skills, the job
responsibility, the training, the equipment, or the responsibility to
engage in crowd control, riot control, and things of that sort. So,
we were not engaged in that kind of activity on June 1 or on Janu-
ary 6.
We do have a command post at the Washington Field Office, and
at some point, on the day that you are referring to, at different
points of the day, especially in the evening and at nighttime, I was
over there.
I was not in Lafayette Square. I was in the Washington Field Of-
fice command post for a good part of that night. At different parts
66
of the day, other senior executives at the FBI were coming and
going.
The activity that you are describing is not the FBI’s—you asked
about the FBI’s role. That was not the FBI’s role.
Mr. RASKIN. Well, what was the FBI’s role?
Mr. WRAY. So, we had a few different things. First, I think our
folks do a very good job of running command posts that bring dif-
ferent agencies together so that they can all sit shoulder to shoul-
der and exchange information, let each other know what they’re
doing, et cetera. So, that’s one thing we did.
Second, we are an intelligence agency. So, to the extent that we
have intelligence to collect, to analyze, and to disseminate, we do
that.
Third, we have tactical response. So, if there is an incident that
occurs where there’s a crime being committed, we in certain in-
stances have the ability to send a SWAT team to respond, and we
sometimes do that.
Then, last but not least, we investigate criminal activity. We are,
after all, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, not the Federal Bu-
reau of Security, not the Federal police, the Federal Bureau of In-
vestigation. So, we do that.
So, our folks would have been in a variety of ways providing sup-
port to our partners using the skill sets that we have, which are
extensive but not the same as a lot of our Federal partners.
Mr. RASKIN. Okay. So, I wonder if you would just translate those
four functions that you played on June 1, 2020, to January 6.
Did you activate the command post on January 6? Were you op-
erating an intelligence agency? Was there tactical response? Were
you doing investigation on that day?
Mr. WRAY. So, as a general matter, all four of those same things
applied on January 6 as well. We had the command post—just like
we did back in June, we had the command post stood up at the
Washington Field Office.
We also had, just like we did back in June, a national command
post stood up at our SIOC at headquarters. We were collecting,
analyzing, and sharing intelligence when we had it. We had SWAT
teams at the ready to deploy.
As we all know now, at the appropriate time, or at some point
in time over the course of the afternoon, we were asked to send our
SWAT team, and we did investigative activity.
Mr. RASKIN. Were you present yourself on January 6?
Mr. WRAY. I was present in one of the command posts, in the na-
tional command post at headquarters. I was in one of the command
posts, yes.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time has expired.
Mr. Bishop.
Mr. BISHOP. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Director Wray, on June 8, ProPublica published an article stating
that it, quote, ‘‘has obtained a vast trove of IRS data on the tax
returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering
more than 15 years,’’ close quote.
The article went on to disclose detailed return information span-
ning five years of several ultra-wealthy Democrats who seem to
67
have much more—much less enthusiasm for taxes in private than
they advocate for publicly.
Title 26, section 7213 makes it a Federal felony punishable by a
fine and up to five years in prison willfully to disclose return infor-
mation.
That statement and the balance of the article reflect the commis-
sion of tens of thousands of counts of crimes, probably by some IRS
employee or some other authorized disclose of the data or some
hacker.
ProPublica reporters and editors also apparently have committed
criminal violations under section 7213(a)(3) by publishing this data.
They write that they intended to commit more of that. In fact, they
wrote that they thought about the privacy implications and con-
cluded that they’re effectively above the law.
Has the FBI made any arrests in connection with that matter?
Mr. WRAY. I can’t comment on any specific—the existence or con-
duct of any specific investigation. To the extent that I can speak
in this kind of setting, I am not aware of any arrests specifically
related to the news coverage that you just described.
Mr. BISHOP. Has the FBI executed any search warrants or raided
any offices or given any tips to CNN about such a thing in connec-
tion with this matter?
Mr. WRAY. I can’t—there’s no such activity that I can describe at
this time.
Mr. BISHOP. The FBI has arrested hundreds of people, as you’ve
described in your testimony, for trespassing, some of them within
days of their offense, put them in solitary confinement, in some
cases for 90 days detention without bail.
Why is this particular brazen massive crime deprioritized?
Mr. WRAY. You are talking about specifically the leak of taxpayer
information?
Mr. BISHOP. Tens of thousands of taxpayers.
Mr. WRAY. Well, I don’t think we—I am not suggesting any lack
of prioritization. There is responsibility for activity of IRS employ-
ees that also involves the IRS Inspector General.
So, there may be a difference in the areas of responsibility as
compared to if you are comparing it to January 6, where, when it
comes to acts of domestic terrorism, that’s squarely something that
we are expected to prioritize. I think as the Committee would want;
counterterrorism is the FBI’s number one priority.
Mr. BISHOP. Director Wray, have there been any arrests in con-
nection with the New York Times publication last September of the
details of Donald Trump’s tax information?
Mr. WRAY. I am not aware of any.
Mr. BISHOP. Did any criminal charges ever get brought against
Lois Lerner?
Mr. WRAY. I don’t know the answer to that sitting here right
now.
Mr. BISHOP. Shifting topics a little, Director Wray, but maybe
thematically connected and touched on by Mr. Buck.
The FBI has frequently dismissed charges against violent rioters
over past months in Portland. You made reference to that matter
some. Reportedly, over half of the charges brought have been dis-
68
missed. I think the number is about 87, and about half of those are
gone.
On May 28 the journalist Andy Ngo released a statement and
evidence that he was assaulted and beaten while covering the lat-
est violent riot by Antifa at that time. He wrote about being pur-
sued as he fled through the city streets and having to beg refuge
in a hotel and fleeing into the upper floors to evade being captured
and killed by rioters calling for his death. Mr. Ngo has been repeat-
edly targeted and physically attacked because of his reporting on
Antifa violence in Portland and Seattle.
You mentioned earlier Asian Americans being specifically tar-
geted. That includes Mr. Ngo. Members of this Committee have
written you specifically, before I joined this Committee this session,
about prior assaults on Mr. Ngo. We did it again early this week.
There’s been no response.
In 1961, the Attorney General sent 600 U.S. marshals to Ala-
bama to protect Freedom Riders from mobs of violent people who
were attacking them.
Why is the FBI not living up to its traditions in the enforcement
of civil rights and protection of journalists like Mr. Ngo?
Mr. WRAY. So, the first thing I would say is, when you are de-
scribing the prosecutions in Portland, to be clear, the FBI is not
dismissing any cases. We don’t—the decisions to prosecute or dis-
miss prosecutions are made by the prosecutors, not by the FBI. So,
any frustration you might have in that regard shouldn’t be directed
our way.
Second, we have prioritized investigations of what I would call
anarchist violent extremism, which includes any number of individ-
uals who self-identify, say, with Antifa.
In fact, we’ve had a significant number, a significant increase in
our number of anarchist violent extremist investigations during my
tenure. In fact, we had more anarchist violent extremist arrests
last year, in 2020, than the prior three years combined.
So, we are actively pursuing those investigations where we can.
It’s a threat that we take very seriously.
We saw, for example, the first, in recent memory, the first lethal
anarchist violent extremist attack last year. It was directed by an
Antifa identifier who attacked a supporter of the other side. He ul-
timately—that defendant ultimately died in a shootout with the
marshals, as you may know. So, it’s something we take very seri-
ously.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time is expired.
Mr. BISHOP. Mr. Chair, could I make a unanimous consent re-
quest?
Chair NADLER. For technical reasons, the Committee will stand
in recess for 10 minutes.
[Recess.]
Chair NADLER. The Committee will come to order. Ms. Jayapal.
Ms. JAYAPAL. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Director Wray, thank you for being with us. In April 2020, White
supremacists stormed the Michigan State Capitol carrying guns,
swastikas, confederate flags, and a doll representing Governor
Whitmer with a noose around its neck. Many of us saw those
events as a dress rehearsal for the events of January 6th. Did the
69
FBI consider these events in its preparation and intelligence gath-
ering leading up to January 6th?
Mr. WRAY. Well, certainly, threats in Michigan were something
that were very much on our mind. Among other things, as you may
know, we investigated and took down a ring of domestic terrorists
who were attempting to kidnap Governor Whitmer, the so-called
Wolverines.
Ms. JAYAPAL. Did you consider the events as they relate to the
intelligence that you were seeing relative to January 6th?
Mr. WRAY. It’s hard for me to say specifically. Certainly, it was
something that was on our mind, and we baked in all the informa-
tion we had and the intelligence products that we were putting out
over the course of 2020 right on up until December warning about
the potential for domestic violent extremism as it relates to the
election, continuing past Election Day itself, continuing through
into inauguration.
Ms. JAYAPAL. Thank you, Director Wray. It isn’t just White su-
premacists as rioters or insurrectionists that we are concerned
about; we are also concerned about the infiltration of the ranks of
law enforcement, something that you earlier in this hearing called
the internal threat, I believe you said, and you said that you were
taking it very seriously. Is that correct?
Mr. WRAY. Yes. I think the phrase I used was the ‘‘insider
threat.’’
Ms. JAYAPAL. Insider threat. Thank you. This isn’t a new threat.
In fact, 15 years ago, in 2006, the FBI counterterrorism division re-
leased an intelligence assessment on White supremacist infiltration
of law enforcement. Then in 2015, the FBI counterterrorism divi-
sion’s policy directive and policy guide warned agents assigned to
domestic terrorism cases that the White supremacist groups that
they investigate often have, quote, ‘‘active links to law enforcement
officials.’’
In February of 2020, a confidential intelligence assessment con-
cluded that White supremacists were very likely to seek affiliation
with law enforcement to further their ideologies. The report stated
that extremists expressed a desire to join the military and law en-
forcement primarily to obtain tradecraft to prepare for and initiate
a collapse of society. Director Wray, are you familiar with these
three reports?
Mr. WRAY. I am not sure if I am familiar with those specific re-
ports, but I am familiar with, in general, with the theme that they
represent, at least as you’ve described them.
Ms. JAYAPAL. In September of 2020, you testified before the
House Homeland Security Committee that, quote, ‘‘racially moti-
vated violent extremists over recent years have been responsible
for the most lethal activity in the United States.’’
Now, the 2020 intelligence assessment specifically highlighted
the risk of White supremacists joining law enforcement as a way
to engage in violence against the U.S. Government and certain ra-
cial and ethnic groups, which sounds eerily familiar to what we
saw on January 6th.
To your knowledge, Director Wray, were there law enforcement
officers participating in the January 6th attack on the Capitol?
70
Mr. WRAY. Well, there were a whole variety of types of individ-
uals involved in the January 6th breach of the Capitol—
Ms. JAYAPAL. Were there law enforcement officers?
Mr. WRAY. I was about to finish my answer. There were—among
the many that we have investigated and arrested, there have been
current, and especially former members of military and law en-
forcement. Among the things, which I think is where you are going
with your question, that we are doing, and have been doing for a
while now, is working through our joint terrorism task forces,
which often have representatives of both the military and various
police departments, law enforcement departments.
So, we work closely with them because we are obviously particu-
larly concerned about anybody engaged in domestic terrorism, but
especially somebody who might be in a position of trust and respon-
sibility, like a member of law enforcement or military. We have all
kinds of engagement with DOD, for example, to try to help screen
out—
Ms. JAYAPAL. Let me keep going because I want to get to a cou-
ple of specific questions.
Mr. WRAY. Yes. Yeah.
Ms. JAYAPAL. An independent journalist actually documented at
least 45 law enforcement officials in attendance on January 6th
that have been publicly reported. Since 2000, law enforcement offi-
cials with alleged connections to White supremacist groups, or far-
right militant activities, were exposed in 14 States, and hundreds
of Federal, State, and local law enforcement officials were exposed
participating in racist, nativist, and sexist social media activity.
Has the FBI, under your leadership, and maybe you were getting
to some of these specific points, distributed guidance to State and
local law enforcement to assist them in weeding out White su-
premacist officers?
Mr. WRAY. We have engaged with our partners about better iden-
tifying domestic violent extremism, including, in particular, giving
them information about things like symbology, tattoos, that kind of
thing, things to be sort of on the lookout for that may be indicators
of individuals who have mobilized to violent extremism. That is
something that we have tried to put out intelligence products and,
as you mentioned, but then others as well, and we’ve done a lot of
training and engagement with our partners on some of these topics.
Ms. JAYAPAL. My time is expired—
Chair NADLER. The gentlelady’s time is expired.
Ms. JAYAPAL. —but I was hoping that you could provide us with
specific steps that you’ve taken to ensure that we are weeding out
these White supremacists within local law enforcement, so perhaps
we can get a briefing on some of those specific things you are
doing, and including collecting statistics on White supremacist af-
filiation with local law enforcement.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Chair NADLER. The gentlelady yields back.
Mr. Tiffany.
Mr. TIFFANY. Director Wray, let me start by highlighting na-
tional security concerns. Border Patrol recently arrested two Yem-
eni men at our border who were on the FBI terror watch list and
71
no-fly list. It’s my understanding one of your field offices inter-
viewed them. What was gleaned from that interview or interviews?
Mr. WRAY. I can’t discuss the specific ongoing investigations.
Certainly, we are concerned about—and our joint terrorism task
forces, which I think is what you are driving at, have been latched
up with both CBP at the border and to some extent working across
the border with our Legat Office in Mexico City, with a specific
focus on special interest aliens. We are looking at Yemenis, for ex-
ample, who may have tried to come in. I am not sure that’s any-
thing I can share about specific interviews in this kind of setting.
Mr. TIFFANY. People from countries of particular concern for ter-
rorist activity, you mentioned a few of them, Yemen, Pakistan, So-
malia, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Iran have been coming. I wit-
nessed it recently during my trip to the Darien Gap in Panama,
and I would just say, when you talked about—your quote was the
source of the problem, which you cite in the Northern Triangle. I
would go a little further south than that, because when I went
down to Panama, I saw it down there.
The invasion coming into the United States has exploded as a di-
rect result of President Biden’s promise to all comers that he will
grant them unobstructed catch-and-release into the United States.
Should Americans have national security concerns with the expo-
nential increase in the worldwide migration occurring, as we speak,
across our southern border?
Mr. WRAY. Well, certainly, we represent—we consider security
threats at the border to be an opportunity for potential terrorist ac-
tivity. I would not want to leave you with the impression, though,
that as we are sitting here, that we are tracking any specific cred-
ible terrorist threats coming from recent individuals crossing the
border.
Mr. TIFFANY. That doesn’t give me a lot of assurance when you
have tens of thousands of people basically invading our country.
The numbers are staggering. They’re coming out every single day.
That would not be reassuring to me if I heard that answer as an
American.
I want to go on to a second issue I’d like to cover, our two-tiered
justice system. This is something I hear regularly back home. Time
and again, Americans have witnessed justice being carried out in
unequal ways. I’ll give you a couple of examples: Secretary Hillary
Clinton destroying evidence, no consequences; Hunter Biden alleg-
edly lying on his firearms background investigation, no con-
sequences; FBI attorney, former FBI attorney, you probably know
him, Kevin Clinesmith, getting probation for lying to secure re-
newal applications to the FISA.
On top of that, we have the amorous couple, Page and Strzok,
who, I am sure you know, that were actively trying to put their fin-
gers on the scales in an election in 2016. None of these citizens had
their homes raided. They all have one thing in common: They are
Democrats.
Conversely, your agents have approached conservatives very dif-
ferently. They’ve executed dramatic raids on the homes of Roger
Stone, Paul Manafort, Rudy Giuliani, and were negligent in the in-
vestigation of General Flynn. These citizens all had one thing in
common: They were Republicans.
72
I am leading to a question that happened here in Wisconsin. A
man named Bernell Trammell was murdered in broad daylight in
Milwaukee last year. His sin was he was a Trump supporter. Now,
earlier when you heard some people listing examples of minorities
who have been killed here in the United States, which is a terrible
thing, they never mentioned Bernell Trammell. African-American
man from Milwaukee, well-known for going around his neighbor-
hood, wearing a Trump shirt, showing a Trump sign, no one ever
mentions him.
It’s my understanding his murderer is still at large, and the local
government has remained quiet on this matter, despite actively en-
couraging anti-Trump rhetoric and protests all last year. A request
was made to launch a Federal probe into Mr. Trammell’s murder
as it seems to have been politically motivated. Director Wray, have
you answered that request and investigated that politically moti-
vated hate crime of Bernell Trammell?
Mr. WRAY. I am not sure that I can address that in this setting.
Certainly, I am happy to follow up with our Milwaukee office to see
what the status of that particular issue is. I don’t know the cir-
cumstances well enough to be able to speak to it. I can assure you
that we have one standard, and I’ve been crystal clear with our
folks about that, and that’s the way it’s going to be as long as I
am FBI Director.
Mr. TIFFANY. I hope you do that.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time is expired.
Mr. TIFFANY. Thank you. I yield back.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman yields back. Ms. Demings.
Ms. DEMINGS. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
Director Wray, it’s good to see you again. I also want to thank
you for protecting the American people and upholding the Constitu-
tion. As you well know, what happened on January 6th was shame-
ful, it was disgraceful. I do believe that as a nation, we failed law
enforcement, we failed the American people, we failed the Members
of Congress, even those who scrambled on that day for their lives
to exit the House floor, but now talk as if it wasn’t that big of a
deal. I also believe we failed the Vice President and his staff, and
we failed congressional staff.
Director Wray, you said you were just as outraged about what
happened, but you said the report from the Norfolk FBI office was
online chatter, that it was raw, unverified information, but you
passed it on—and you made that quite clear several times today—
to the Capitol Police.
Director Wray, as you know, and I certainly do too, the FBI is
viewed as a premier—the premier law enforcement agency, and
other Federal, State, and local agencies look to you, and I think
rightly so. It appears to me the FBI dismissed the information. It
did not seem there was a sense of urgency. You simply passed it
on, and if you did more than that, then I want to hear you talk
about that.
Let’s talk about that information and what resulted. Officer
Fanone was dragged and severely beaten. Officers sustained con-
cussions. One officer lost the tip of his finger. Officers were beaten
with baseball bats, poles, and ice, and two officers committed sui-
73
cide. I guess that online chatter and unverified raw information
was credible after all.
Director Wray, there was a failure on that day, and I would like
to hear from you what role the FBI played in that failure?
Mr. WRAY. Well, Congresswoman, happy to take the question. So,
I can think the most important thing I would say is that we did
not dismiss the information in the Norfolk SIR, the Norfolk situa-
tional information report, in fact, quite the contrary. Often, when
we get online chatter, or raw information, we take time, which
would be our preference, to run it to ground and figure out whether
it’s real or not, because, as you can imagine, there’s all kinds of
chatter out there and some of it—
Ms. DEMINGS. Director Wray—
Mr. WRAY. Let me just—
Ms. DEMINGS. —this one was real. It was real.
Mr. WRAY. Yes, in this instance, rather than dismiss it, we dis-
tributed it to the Capitol Police, to the MPD, to the other partners
on the Washington field office, Joint Terrorism Task Force. We did
it in writing, through an email; and as if that wasn’t enough, we
then made a point of briefing it at the command post briefing that
evening.
As if that weren’t enough, we put it in the portal so we could
make sure that everybody got it, all which were actions that we
wouldn’t normally take, frankly, with raw, unverified information,
but we thought the information was sufficiently concerning, that
we erred on the side of caution and tried to pass it to the relevant
people, not once, not twice, but three different ways, all in the span
of about 24 hours.
So, from our perspective, we did try to pass that information.
Now, having said all of that, I don’t want to leave you or any other
Member of this Committee with the impression that we think that
what happened on January 6th is okay. I am not the kind of guy,
and I think you and I know each other well enough that I know
that I am not. I don’t use words like ‘‘outrage’’ lightly.
Ms. DEMINGS. Do you feel like the FBI did everything within
your power to properly notify—because you didn’t dismiss it, so you
passed it on. There had to be some concern. Do you feel that you
did everything within your power to adequately and properly notify
law enforcement so that they would be adequately and properly
prepared to deal with all hell breaking loose at the U.S. Capitol?
Mr. WRAY. So, anytime there is a successful attack, much less an
attack of the kind of scale and significance that occurred on Janu-
ary 6th, you can be absolutely sure that we are asking what else
we can do, what we can do better, what we can do more of, what
we can do differently in terms of collecting information, analyzing
it, and disseminating.
I am not aware of information that we didn’t share that we
should have. I am concerned that we need to get better and better
at developing human sources to be able to anticipate acts like this
in the future. So, that’s one of the things that we are looking at.
We are going to be looking at a whole slew of things, because our
goal is to bat 1,000, and we do not consider what happened to be—
what happened on January 6th to be remotely acceptable, and we
74
are determined to do our part with all our partners to make sure
it never happens again.
Chair NADLER. The gentlelady’s time is expired.
Ms. DEMINGS. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield back.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman yields back.
Mr. Massie.
Mr. MASSIE. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Director Wray, as you know, the world’s largest social media
companies took the unprecedented step of canceling, blocking, or
otherwise banning the President’s social media accounts after Jan-
uary 6th. To the best of your knowledge, did anybody at the FBI
or anybody representing the FBI, or any other branch of the U.S.
Government consult with these social media companies before they
took these actions?
Mr. WRAY. I am not aware of any such consultations, no.
Mr. MASSIE. To the best of your knowledge, did the FBI or rep-
resentatives of the FBI, or any other branch of the government,
consult with the social media companies before they took the ac-
tions of canceling tens of thousands of accounts in that following
week?
Mr. WRAY. Well, again, I am not aware of any conversations the
way you just described them. Certainly, we do engage with social
media companies where we pass them information just like they
pass us information, and sometimes information that we pass to so-
cial media companies prompts them to then, under their terms of
service, take certain action. Whether that happened in this par-
ticular instance, I can’t say because I don’t know.
Mr. MASSIE. So, you are not aware of any—
Mr. WRAY. I am not aware of any action of the sort you’ve de-
scribed.
Mr. MASSIE. From at least 2007–2016, the FBI conducted an in-
vestigation into evidence that the Saudi Government agents pro-
vided essential assistance to the first arriving 9/11 hijackers, and
the FBI and DOJ have publicly acknowledged that three Saudi
Government agents are primary subjects of that investigation,
which is named Operation Encore.
We passed a law in Congress, JASTA, to ensure that the 9/11’s
family’s case against Saudi Arabia could proceed. The 9/11 families
issued a subpoena in 2018 for records from the FBI’s 9/11 inves-
tigative files that are critical to that lawsuit.
According to lawyers for those families of the victims, the FBI
has refused to search its complete files for responsive documents,
claiming it would be too burdensome to do so, and the FBI has
withheld certain key documents and significantly redacted others,
despite the fact that the records concern events that occurred 20
years ago.
Will you commit today that the FBI will conduct a review of all
its relevant 9/11 files on an expedited basis to identify documents
relevant to the families’ lawsuit and to produce them to the fullest
extent possible without sacrificing justice for the victims in the
name of diplomacy?
Mr. WRAY. Well, I will make sure that our folks are doing every-
thing they possibly can be consistent with our responsibilities. Ob-
viously, there are matters that involve classified information. There
75
are matters that involve grand jury information. I do know that the
Justice Department has asserted the State’s secrets privilege, and
that I understand that that’s been upheld by both the magistrate
judge and the district judge about some information.
I also know, though, and I think this is important for me to add,
that we have produced and worked diligently to produce thousands
of documents including ones that have rarely been released. I
would not want to leave this exchange without telling you how
much I care about this issue. The families of the 9/11 victims mat-
ter deeply to me, and I know they’re frustrated.
Mr. MASSIE. Thank you.
Let me ask you then, would you commit to formally request that
the DNI review documents that the FBI has withheld from the
families to determine if they can be released in the public interest
as she is authorized to do pursuant to Executive Order 13256?
Mr. WRAY. I am happy to take a look with the DNI and others
to see if there’s more information that can be declassified.
Mr. MASSIE. Okay. Real quickly, the NICS background check,
which the FBI runs, according to the GAO, in 2017 there were
112,000 denials, and only twelve U.S. attorney offices’ prosecutions.
Now, I don’t want you to impugn the DOJ, or the ATF are only
prosecuting twelve out of 112,000 of these denials. What’s obvious
here is that there are some false denials; in fact, probably a large
majority of these denials are false denials.
According to John Lott who worked at the DOJ, because of simi-
larities in surnames, and first names among racial and ethnic
groups, Black Americans are three times more likely to get a false
denial and Hispanics are two times more likely to get a false denial
than Caucasians. Are you aware of this?
Mr. WRAY. I am not aware of Mr. Lott’s findings.
Mr. MASSIE. Would it concern you if there was racial disparity
and that law-abiding Black Americans and Hispanic Americans
were being deprived of their right to self-defense?
Mr. WRAY. Well, I would be concerned about false denials, and
certainly, I would be concerned about racial disparity. You men-
tioned the—
Mr. MASSIE. Will you commit to investigating whether there is
racial disparity in the NICS background check results?
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time is expired. The Witness
may answer the question.
Mr. WRAY. I am happy to look further into the issue. I might
have my staff follow up with yours to see—make sure that we have
the same information that you are referring to. Certainly, you’ve
raised issues that I’d want to look into further.
Mr. MASSIE. Thank you, Director Wray. I yield back.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman yields back.
Mr. Correa.
Mr. CORREA. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Director Wray, I also want to thank you and your colleagues for
your work in protecting Americans on a daily basis. I sit on Home-
land Security, and I have a special appreciation for your work.
If I can then turn our attention a little bit to cybersecurity. You
mentioned that part of your job was to protect us from foreign na-
tions like China and Russia, a very difficult job, an important job,
76
and a job that our national security depends on you doing it right
the first time around.
Mr. Wray, if I can talk a little bit about the SolarWinds attack,
that attack began as early as March 2020 and allowed Russian in-
telligence to access critical data and the breach went on for a num-
ber of months. This, Mr. Wray, was a major breach. It accessed
many Federal agencies as well as the private sector, and it went
undetected for a number of months. Mr. Wray, why did it take so
long for our Federal investigators to detect this breach?
Mr. WRAY. Well, the SolarWinds breach, or intrusion, that you
are referring to, I think it’s fair to say, is one of the most sophisti-
cated cyber campaigns ever, and it is a sobering reminder of the
lengths our adversaries are willing to go to. I say that because the
SVR, and we’ve now publicly attributed it to the Russian SVR, was
basically clandestinely inserting a few lines of malicious code in
widely used software, a widely used software update that with
tens—that has tens of thousands of lines of legitimate code all to—
even though ultimately only targeted about 100 or so for future ex-
ploitation.
I think that SolarWinds intrusion highlights the importance of
the private sector engagement piece. The FBI, on our end, can pur-
sue appropriate investigations, but what we can’t do is just sit on
networks and wait and look just in case. So, we are aggressively
investigating. Yeah.
Mr. CORREA. Sir, if I can ask you a follow-up question. I refuse
to accept the fact that the Russians are better than us at cyber.
So, my question is, have you seen any evidence, of internal obstruc-
tion, or any internal assistance that would help to hide or impede
the investigation into this cyber breach?
Mr. WRAY. Any obstruction? I am sorry. I am not sure I am fol-
lowing the question. You mean by the company—
Mr. CORREA. Have you seen any evidence within the Federal gov-
ernment—
Mr. WRAY. Oh, I see.
Mr. CORREA. —of people assisting or obstructing, hiding this kind
of attack on our Nation?
Mr. WRAY. I am not aware that I’ve seen anybody hiding the at-
tack. Like I said, this was a very sophisticated attack, and I think
we’ve aggressively made progress on it and sanctions have been im-
posed now. I think something like 38 different countries have
joined us in different forms of messaging in support of our attribu-
tion of this to the Russian SVR.
Mr. CORREA. I would say, Director Wray, that we are in a very
tough situation, given that such a major breach occurred in our
Federal government. Recently, the Biden Administration signed an
Executive Order—President Biden signed an Executive Order to
improve the Nation’s cybersecurity and to increase Federal capa-
bilities to respond and get Federal agencies to better coordinate the
records in this area. Can you speak as to how the FBI is working
to implement this Executive Order?
Mr. WRAY. So, I think what the executive order really highlights
is the whole-of-government approach, and frankly, the whole-of-so-
ciety approach that we need to take to the cyber threat. The FBI,
I have heard some people refer to cybersecurity and the cyber
77
threat as the ultimate team sport, and in this case, the team in-
cludes not just the Federal government and various Federal agen-
cies each playing its own role, but very importantly, the private
sector, where something like 85–90 percent, as you may know from
your other Committee assignment, of our critical infrastructure is
in the hands of the private sector.
Then, when you add on top of that Americans’ personal identi-
fying information, PII, it’s probably even higher than that that’s in
the private sector. Certainly, our innovation, which is targeted by
adversaries like China, even higher than that. So, in our country,
configured the way we are, private sector engagement is the key.
Mr. CORREA. Sir, if I may very quickly say that you are right,
80–90 percent is private sector, but this breach was of the Federal
government, and I believe even your FBI files may have been com-
promised.
So, I am hoping in my last few seconds here to say that I look
forward to continuing to work with you, both in this Committee
and Homeland Security, to make sure that this does not occur
again. Again, I refuse to accept the fact that either Russia or China
has better cyber capabilities than the United States.
With that, Mr. Chair, I yield.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman yields back. Mr. Steube.
Mr. WRAY. Mr. Chair, may I very quickly respond to that last
part?
Chair NADLER. Yes, the gentleman may respond.
Mr. WRAY. First, I totally agree that the Russians and the Chi-
nese are not better than we are, and you and I are aligned on that;
second, FBI systems were not compromised in the way that some
of the other Federal agencies were; and third, when I refer to the
private sector in the context of SolarWinds, it’s important to know
that the software update that was the vehicle through which the
Federal government was compromised was a private sector organi-
zation, and that’s what I meant by referring to the private sector
in that context. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. CORREA. Thank you.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time is—the gentleman yields
back.
Mr. Steube.
Mr. STEUBE. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Director Wray, in your opening statement you described the Jan-
uary 6th protest as, quote, ‘‘an angry mob attempting to,’’ quote,
‘‘undermine our institutions of government.’’ You then went on to
paint BLM and antifa violence as, quote, ‘‘peaceful, lawful protests’’
that, quote, ‘‘others’’ quote, ‘‘exploited to pursue violence.’’ Why do
you feel that you need to qualify antifa and BLM violence as ex-
ploiting otherwise peaceful protest, but you didn’t do the same for
January 6th?
Mr. WRAY. Well, when I was referring to the civil unrest and the
violence that occurred among the civil unrest, I was speaking obvi-
ously of a period that covered an entire summer and protests
across multiple cities; whereas, of course, in the January 6th in-
stance, we are talking about a single event of massive significance,
however, in the course of one afternoon.
78
As I alluded to in response to earlier questions, there were—I
think I’ve already said a couple times this morning, that there
were, on January 6th, not people who were under investigation but
there were peaceful protesters who were rowdy, and then there
were the other two groups, and it’s the other two groups that we
are investigating and bringing criminal charges against.
Mr. STEUBE. In one of those on January 6th that was in the Cap-
itol, Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed protester, and Air Force veteran,
was shot and killed in the Capitol by a police officer. Director
Wray, yes or no, was the FBI involved in the investigation into
Ashli Babbitt’s killing?
Mr. WRAY. I am not sure I can answer that. I know that the deci-
sion to close the investigation was made by DOJ.
Mr. STEUBE. Well—
Mr. WRAY. The officer involved was not—
Mr. STEUBE. —and you were involved in it, then you can answer
whether the FBI was involved in it or not.
Mr. WRAY. I am not sure that we were involved in that one, but
I just sitting here right now, I can’t remember for sure, so I don’t
want to misspeak.
Mr. STEUBE. Okay. Well, on June 2, 2020, just days after the
George Floyd incidents—incident, you gave a press conference in
which you detailed the ways the FBI would assist with the Floyd
investigation. Subsequently, the DOJ brought civil rights charges
under 18 U.S.C. 242 against the officers involved.
May 7, 2021, press release DOJ publicly commended the FBI for
its investigative efforts on the Floyd case. Yet, in Ashli Babbitt’s
case, where civil rights charges under 18 U.S.C. 242 were also
being considered by DOJ, the FBI didn’t assist at all, and you are
not sure that you were even involved in this investigation. So, why
did the FBI assist with the investigation of George Floyd’s death,
but not into Ashli Babbitt’s death that occurred in the Capitol com-
plex?
Mr. WRAY. Well, our decision to assist in the George Floyd case
was based on obviously discussions with the civil rights division
under the prior Administration and the Justice Department there.
The Ashli Babbitt case, I am not trying to create more confusion
than is warranted. I am just—sitting here right now, I can’t tell
you for sure what role, if any, we played in that decision. That’s
all I can really say on that one.
Mr. STEUBE. Well, if you are not sure, then it obviously wasn’t
a very active role if you are not sure what involvement the FBI had
on that.
Mr. WRAY. I wouldn’t—I am not sure I would say that, sir. We
actually have 37,000 employees conducting thousands and thou-
sands of investigations, and though I do my best to try to stay on
top of as many of them as I can, sitting here right now, in the span
of everything we are talking about I can’t say for sure whether or
not we were involved.
Mr. STEUBE. January 6th and how you were in the command
center. So, you would probably know if the FBI was involved in an
investigation that occurred in an officer-involved shooting of an un-
armed person on the Capitol complex if you were involved.
Mr. WRAY. As I said, we’ve had hundreds of investigations—
79
Mr. STEUBE. On the FBI’s most wanted website, there’s an entire
section entitled ‘‘Capitol Violence’’ targeting individuals who came
to protest in DC on January 6th. Comparatively, little or no atten-
tion is paid to violent BLM and antifa extremism. BLM and antifa
attacked the White House with President Trump inside of it last
May, and laid siege to the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse in
Portland last summer, and the FBI doesn’t seem interested at all.
Can you explain what would appear to be a politically motivated
discrepancy on the FBI’s most wanted website?
Mr. WRAY. We used social media and putting out information
and videos to the public, much as we have with January 6th, in
connection with the violence among the civil unrest over the sum-
mer. We got thousands and thousands of tips from the public in re-
lation to the violence over the summer and followed up on them.
In both cases, we used almost all 56 field offices. In both instances,
we opened hundreds of investigations. In both instances, we con-
ducted hundreds of arrests. We consider them both extremely seri-
ous.
As I’ve said several times over the course of this hearing today,
we have one standard. I don’t care whether you are upset at our
criminal justice system or whether you are upset at our elections;
there’s a right way and a wrong way in this country to do it under
the First Amendment. Committing violence, assaulting Federal law
enforcement, and destroying property is not the way to do it, and
that’s my standard for the FBI.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time is expired.
Mr. STEUBE. This seems to be a very—
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time is expired.
Ms. Scanlon.
Ms. SCANLON. Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Director Wray, for being here today.
Chair NADLER. Your mike.
Ms. SCANLON. I want to focus my questions on foreign influence
in our elections over the last several cycles and how that’s contrib-
uted to the rise of extremist violence which you highlighted in your
opening remarks.
I am particularly interested in how Russia’s escalating disin-
formation campaigns attacking the integrity of our American elec-
tions and our government contributed to the January 6th attack on
this building, those who serve here, the brave officers who protect
it, and the very foundations of our government.
I am interested in the role that Russian disinformation and the
use of American proxies in spreading that disinformation is playing
in continuing efforts to contest Mr. Trump’s loss of the 2020 elec-
tion, and efforts by State legislators to enact laws inspired by con-
spiracy theories and lies about election fraud.
Now, Russian disinformation is a particular concern for the Com-
monwealth of Pennsylvania, which I represent, because our election
system, and even our electoral college votes have been attacked re-
peatedly by Russian agents and their domestic proxies, spreading
propaganda and outright lies. The fact and the extent of those at-
tacks has been detailed by multiple judicial, law enforcement, intel-
ligence, and bipartisan congressional investigations, including the
special counsel’s report in 2019, the bipartisan Senate intelligence
80
report last August, the indictment of more than a dozen Russian
Government agents, and the National Intelligence Council’s report
on foreign threats to the 2020 elections in March of this year.
Since this propaganda appears to have motivated people to par-
ticipate in the ‘‘Stop the Steal’’ rally and the attack on the Capitol,
and continues to motivate efforts in our State legislature to make
it harder to vote, I’d like to direct your testimony to the long-
standing and apparently continuing Russian efforts to undermine
American confidence in our elections.
To start, I would like to get one thing off the table, the difference
between election interference and election influence. As I under-
stand it, referring to your prior testimony and the National Intel-
ligence Council’s report, election interference is defined as efforts
to manipulate the mechanical aspects of voting, such as voter reg-
istration and election results. Is that right?
Mr. WRAY. That sounds right. I don’t have the report in front of
me, but I agree with you that it is important to make the distinc-
tion between interference and influence.
Ms. SCANLON. Thank you. Well, I can give you a copy of the re-
port if you’d like. I am not going to get that far into it. Specifically,
the March report said there was, quote, ‘‘no evidence,’’ end quote,
not through intelligence collection on the foreign actors themselves
nor through physical security and cybersecurity monitoring of vot-
ing systems across the country, not through post-election audits,
and not through any other means that a foreign government, or
other actors had compromised election infrastructure to manipulate
election results. Do you stand by that conclusion?
Mr. WRAY. We contributed obviously to the national intelligence
estimate and stand by that estimate.
Ms. SCANLON. Thank you. So, my concern is not fictitious election
interference, which we know didn’t happen, but actual election in-
fluence, which is propaganda designed to impact public opinion,
and notably the longstanding Russian efforts to undermine public
confidence in election processes and results by claiming that voting
systems have been compromised.
You said in your testimony before Homeland Security in 2020
that what concerns you the most is the steady drumbeat of misin-
formation. Americans can and should have confidence in our elec-
tion system, and certainly our democracy, but you are worried that
people will have a feeling of futility because of all the noise and
confusion that’s generated.
Should we still be concerned about a drumbeat of Russian misin-
formation propaganda that our elections are vulnerable to wide-
spread fraud or manipulation?
Mr. WRAY. I think that the drumbeat of misinformation from our
adversaries, not just the Russians but now also the Iranians, for
example, is something that we absolutely should be concerned
about. I think the country has made significant strides not just in
protecting our election infrastructure from interference, back to
your distinction there a minute ago, but, also, in highlighting the
prevalence of misinformation.
So, I do think, as a general matter, the country is getting wiser
to misinformation, and social media companies have started to play
a more responsible role than they used to in helping to counter
81
that. Just as we are upping our game, our adversaries are upping
their game too.
Ms. SCANLON. Thank you. One thing that’s become more clear
over the course of your testimony in the March report is that there
was a shift in Russian tactics in 2020, and they began to deploy
their propaganda using domestic social media, and I believe the
quote is, U.S. officials and prominent U.S. individuals, some of
whom were close to former President Trump.
Certainly, Mr. Trump and many of his supporters have promoted
conspiracy theories that claim without evidence that we cannot
trust our election results. Can you comment on whether since the
2020 election, Russia continues to promote propaganda and lies
about the integrity of our elections and whether they’re continuing
to use U.S. proxies?
Chair NADLER. The gentlelady’s time is expired. The Witness
may answer the question.
Mr. WRAY. I would just say that Russian efforts at disin-
formation in this country continue. It’s a 365-day-a-year phe-
nomenon. Beyond that, that’s really probably all I can say right
now.
Ms. SCANLON. Thank you. I would seek unanimous consent to
place in the record the March 2021 report from the National Intel-
ligence Council on foreign threats to the 2020 U.S. foreign elec-
tions. Thank you. I yield back.
Chair NADLER. Without objection.
[The information follows:]
MS. SCANLON FOR THE RECORD
84
DECLASSIFIED by DNI Haines on 15 March 2021
UNCLASSIFIED
ee
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE COUNCIL
I N Tl: I. LI<; I I\ CI CO ,\1 .\1 LIN IT Y ASS 1-: S SM EN T
10 March 2021 !CA 2020-00078D
Foreign Threats to the 2020 US Federal Elections
This document is a declassified version of a classified report. The analytic judgments outlined here arc identical to those in the
classified version, but this declassified document does not include the full supporting informati on and does not discuss specific
intelligence reports, sources, or methods .
This Intelligence Community A ssessmmt was prepared by the Na1ional Intelligence Council under the auspices of tlte National Intelligence Officer (N/ 0) for Cyber. Ji
was drafted by the National I111ellige11ce Council and CIA, DHS, FBI, !NR, and NSA, and coordinated with CIA, DHS, FBI, INR, Treasury, and NSA
UNCLASSIFIED
85
UNCLASSIFIED
Tht's page intention(llly blank.
UNCLASSIFIED
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UNCLASSIFIED
Background
This document is a declassified version of a classified report that the Intelligence Community provided to the President,
senior Executive Branch officials, and Congressional leadership and intelligence oversight committees on 07 January
2021. The Intelligence Community rarely can publicly reveal the full extent of its knowledge or the specific information
on which it bases its analytic conclusions, as doing so could endanger sensitive sources and methods and imperil the
Intelligence Community's ability to collect critical foreign intelligence. The analytic judgments outlined below are
identical to those in the classified version, but this declassified document does not include the full supporting
information and does not discuss specific intelligence reports, sources, or methods.
Scope Note
This Intelligence Community Assessment (!CA), as required by Executive Order (EO) !3848(1)(a), addresses key
foreign actors' intentions and efforts to influence or interfere with the 2020 US federal elections or to undermine public
confidence in the US election process. It builds on analysis published throughout the election cycle and provided to
Executive Branch and Congressional leaders. This !CA does not include an assessment of the impact foreign malign
influence and interference activities may have had on the outcome of the 2020 election. The US Intelligence
Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does
not analyze US political processes or actors, election administration or vote tabulation processes, or public opinion.
• Pursuant to EO 13848(1)(b), after receiving this assessment, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland
Security, in consultation with the heads of any other appropriate Federal, State, or local agencies, will evaluate
the impact of any foreign efforts on the security or integrity of election infrastructure or infrastructure pertaining
to a political organization, campaign, or candidate in a 2020 US federal election, and document the evaluation in
a report.
• Pursuant to EO 13848(3)(a), after reviewing this assessment and the report required by EO 13848(l)(b), the
Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of
Homeland Security, will impose appropriate sanctions for activities determined to constitute foreign interference
in a US election.
Definitions
For the purpose of this assessment, election influence includes overt and covert efforts by foreign governments or
actors acting as agents of, or on behalf of, foreign governments intended to affect directly or indirectly a US election-
including candidates, political parties, voters or their preferences, or political processes. Election interference is a
subset of election influence activities targeted at the technical aspects of the election, including voter registration,
casting and counting ballots, or reporting results.
Sources of Infonnation
In drafting this ICA, we considered intelligence reporting and other information made available to the Intelligence
Community as of31 December 2020.
UNCLASSIFIED
87
UNCLASSIFIED
Foreign Threats to the 2020 US Federal Elections
IO March 2021 ICA 2020-00078D
Key Judgment 1: We have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the
voting process in the 2020 US elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting
results. We assess that it would be difficult for a foreign actor to manipulate election processes at scale without
detection by intelligence collection on the actors themselves, through physical and cyber security monitoring around
voting systems across the country, or in post-election audits. The JC identified some successful compromises of state
and local government networks prior to Election Day- as well as a higher volume of unsuccessful attempts- that we
assess were not directed at altering election processes. Some foreign actors, such as Iran and Russia, spread false or
inflated claims about alleged compromises of voting systems to undermine public confidence in election processes and
results.
Key Judgment 2: We assess that Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government
organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden's candidacy and the
Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process,
and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US. Unlike in 2016, we did not see persistent Russian cyber efforts
to gain access to election infrastructure. We have high confidence in our assessment; Russian state and proxy actors
who all serve the Kremlin's interests worked to affect US public perceptions in a consistent manner. A key element of
Moscow's strategy this election cycle was its use of proxies linked to Russian intelligence to push influence
narratives-including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against President Biden-to US media
organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and
his administration.
Key Judgment 3: We assess that Iran carried out a multi-pronged covert influence campaign intended to undercut
former President Trump's reelection prospects-though without directly promoting his rivals- undermine public
confidence in the electoral process and US institutions, and sow division and exacerbate societal tensions in the
US. We have high confidence in this assessment. We assess that Supreme Leader Khamenei authorized the campaign
and Iran's military and intelligence services implemented it using overt and covert messaging and cyber operations.
Key Judgment 4: We assess that China did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy
influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US Presidential election. We have high confidence in this
judgment. China sought stability in its relationship with the United States, did not view either election outcome as
being advantageous enough for China to risk getting caught meddling, and assessed its traditional influence tools-
primarily targeted economic measures and lobbying- would be sufficient to meet its goal of shaping US China policy
regardless of the winner. The NIO for Cyber assesses, however, that China did take some steps to try to undermine
former President Trump's reelection.
Kev Judgment S· We assess that a range of additional foreign actors- including Lebanese Hizballah, Cuba, and
Venezuela-took some steps to attempt to influence the election. In general, we assess that they were smaller in scale
than the influence efforts conducted by other actors this election cycle. Cybercriminals disrupted some election
preparations; we judge their activities probably were driven by financial motivations.
1;1
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UNCLASSIFIED
Please also see DNI memorandum: Views on Intelligence Community Election Security Analysis, dated January 7,
2021.
[HJ
UNCLASSIFIED
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UNCLASSIFIED
Foreign Threats to the 2020 US Federal Elections
IO March 2021 !CA 2020-00078D
Discussion that such a continuum makes it more difficult for the US
to single out and respond to specifically election-focused
Foreign governments or other foreign actors often try to influence efforts. Finally, as more foreign actors seek to
influence the politics and policies of other countries. exert influence over US elections, additional actors may
They may, for example, advocate for and try to shape increasingly see election-focused influence efforts as an
other countries' foreign policies in ways that benefit their acceptable norm of international behavior.
political, economic, and military interests. These efforts
range along a spectrum from public statements and Greater public and media awareness of influence
foreign assistance efforts, to sanctions and other operations in 2020 compared to past election cycles
economic pressure such as boycotts, to covert or probably helped counter them to some degree. US
clandestine efforts such as covert messaging and Government public messaging as well as Government
recruiting agents of influence. When such activities are and private sector actions probably also disrupted some
intended to directly or indirectly affect an election- activities. For example, proactive information sharing
including candidates, political parties, voters or their with social media companies facilitated the expeditious
preferences, or political processes-the IC characterizes review, and in many cases removal, of social media
it as election influence. If a foreign government, as part accounts covertly operated by Russia and Iran.
of its election influence efforts, attempts or takes actions Additionally, public disclosure of Russian and Iranian
to target the technical aspects of elections-including efforts and US Government sanctions on some of the
voter registration, casting and counting of ballots, and responsible actors probably hindered their ability to
reporting of results, the IC characterizes it as election operate deniably.
interference.
Election Intetference
In 2020, the IC tracked a broader anay of foreign
actors taking steps to influence US elections than in We have no indications that any foreign actor
past election cycles, a development that may be attempted to interfere in the 2020 US elections by
explained by several factors. First, increased IC focus altering any technical aspect of the voting process,
on this issue may have uncovered a higher percentage of including voter registration, ballot casting, vote
efforts. Second, more actors may view influence tabulation, or reporting results. We assess that it would
operations as important tools for projecting power be difficult for a foreign actor to manipulate election
abroad. The growth of internet and social media use processes at scale without detection by intelligence
means foreign actors are more able to reach US collection on the actors themselves, through physical and
audiences directly, while the tools for doing so are cyber security monitoring around voting systems across
becoming more accessible. Third, some foreign actors the country, or in post-election audits of electronic
may perceive influence activities around US elections as results and paper backups. We identified some successful
continuations of broad, ongoing efforts rather than compromises of state and local government networks
specially demarcated campaigns. They may also perceive prior to Election Day. We assess these intrusions were
[![
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UNCLASSIFIE D
N I C 1111111111 '-I \ II O :\ \I I N I I I I I (, r N l'I ( 0 LIN l l 1
parts of broader campaigns targeting US networks and the consistency of themes in Russia's influence efforts
not directed at the election. Some foreign actors, such as across the various influence actors and throughout the
lran and Russia, spread false or inflated cla ims about campaign, as well as in Russian leaders' assessments of
alleged compromises of voting systems to try to the candidates. A key element of Moscow's strategy
undermine public confidence in election processes and this election cycle was its use of people linked to
results. Russian intelligence to launder influence narratives-
including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations
Over the course of the election cycle, the IC, other US against President Biden-through US media
agencies, and state and local officials also identified organizations, US officials, and prominent US
thousands of reconnaissance or low-level, unsuccessful individuals, some of whom were close to former
attempts to gain access to county or state government President Trump and his administration.
networks. Such efforts are common and we have no
indications they were aimed at interfering in the election. Kremlin Direction of Influence Activity
• Some of these government networks hosted, We assess that President Putin and other senior
among a variety of other government processes, Russian officials were aware of and probably directed
election-related elements like voter registration Russia's influence operations against the 2020 US
databases or state election results reporting Presidential election. For example, we assess that Putin
websites. We have no indications that these had purview over the activities of Andriy Derkach, a
activities altered any election processes or data. Ukrainian legislator who played a prominent role in
Russia 's election influence activities. Derkach has ties to
• Defensive measures such as firewalls, up-to-date Russian officials as well as Russia's intelligence services.
patching, cybersecurity training for government
personnel, and separation of election-specific • Other senior officials also participated in Russia's
systems from other computer networks probably election influence efforts-including senior
helped to thwart thousands of compromise national security and intelligence officials who we
attempts. Such measures probably also would have assess would not act without receiving at least
helped prevent the network intrusions we detected. Putin's tacit approval.
Russia's Efforts to Influence 2020 Election, Actors, Methods, and Operations
Exacerbate Divisions in US
We assess that Russia's intelligence services, Ukraine•
We assess that President Putin and the Russian state linked individuals with ties to Russian intelligence and
authorized and conducted influence operations against their networks, and Russian state media, trolls, and
the 2020 US presidential election aimed at denigrating online proxies engaged in activities targeting the 2020
President Biden and the Democratic Party, supporting US presidential election. The primary effort the IC
former President Trump, undermining public uncovered revolved around a narrative-that Russian
confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating actors began spreading as early as 2014-alleging
sociopolitical divisions in the US. Unlike in 2016, we corrupt ties between President Biden, his family, and
did not see persistent Russian cyber efforts to gain other US officials and Ukraine. Russian intelligence
access to election infrastructure. We have high services relied on Ukraine-linked proxies and these
confidence in these judgments because a range of proxies' networks- including their US contacts- to
Russian state and proxy actors who all serve the spread this narrative to give Moscow plausible
Kremlin's interests worked to affect US public deniabil ity of their involvement. We assess that the goals
perceptions. We also have high confidence because of of this effort went beyond the US presidential campaign
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to include reducing the Trump administration's support We assess that Russia's cyber units gathered
for Ukraine. As the US presidential election neared, information to inform Kremlin decision-making about
Moscow placed increasing emphasis on undermining the the election and Moscow's broader foreign policy
candidate it saw as most detrimental to its global interests. Through these operations, Russia probably
interests. We have no evidence suggesting the Ukrainian gathered at least some information it could have released
Government was involved in any of these efforts. in influence operations. We assess Russia did not make
persistent efforts to access election infrastructure, such as
• A network of Ukraine-linked individuals- those made by Russian intelligence during the last US
including Russian influence agent Konstantin presidential election.
Kilimnik-who were also connected to the Russian
Federal Security Service (FSB) took steps • For example, shortly after the 2018 midterm
throughout the election cycle to damage US ties to elections, Russian intelligence cyber actors
Ukraine, den igrate President Biden and his attempted to hack organizations primarily affiliated
candidacy, and benefit former President Trump's with the Democratic Party. Separately, the GRU
prospects for reelection. We assess this network unsuccessfu lly targeted US political actors in 2019
also sought to discredit the Obama administration and 2020; this activity aligned with the tactics of a
by emphasizing accusations of corruption by US larger intelligence-gathering campaign.
officials, and to falsely blame Ukraine for
interfering in the 2016 US presidential election. • In late 20 19, GRU cyber actors conducted a
ph ish ing campaign against subsidiaries of Buris ma
• Derkach, Kilimnik, and their associates sought to holdings, likely in an attempt to gather information
use prominent US persons and media conduits to related to President Biden's family and Burisma.
launder their narratives to US officials and
audiences. These Russian proxies met with and • We judge that Russian cyber operations that
provided materials to Trump administration-linked targeted and compromised US state and local
US persons to advocate for formal investigations; government networks in 2020-including
hired a US firm to petition US officials; and exfiltrating some voter data- were probably not
attempted to make contact with several senior US election-focused and instead part of a broader
officials. They also made contact with established campa ign targeting dozens of US and global
US media figures and helped produce a entities.
documentary that aired on a US television network
in late January 2020. Throughout the election cycle, Russia's online
influence actors sought to affect US public perceptions
• As part of his plan to secure the reelection of of the candidates, as well as advance Moscow's long-
former President Trump, Derkach publicly released standing goals of undermining confidence in US
audio recordings four times in 2020 in attempts to election processes and increasing sociopolitical
implicate President Eiden and other current or divisions among the American people. During the
former US Government officials in allegedly presidential primaries and dating back to 2019, these
corrupt activities related to Ukraine. Derkach also actors backed candidates from both major US politica l
worked to initiate legal proceedings in Ukraine and parties that Moscow viewed as outsiders, while later
the US related to these allegations. Former claiming that election fraud helped what they called
Ukra inian officials associated with Derkach sought "establishment" candidates. Throughout the election,
to promote similar claims throughout late 2019 and Russia's onlinc influence actors sought to amplify
2020, including through direct outreach to senior mistrust in the electoral process by denigrating mail-in
US Government officials.
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ballots, highlighting alleged irregularities, and accusing Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in January
the Democratic Party of voter fraud. 2020--at odds with Russia's preferences.
• The Kremlin-linked influence organization Project • LlR, which probably receives tasking and strategic
Lakhta and its Lakhta Internet Research (L!R) troll direction from the Kremlin, pushed stories
farm-commonly referred to by its former moniker supporting former President Trump and
Internet Research Agency (IRA)-amplified denigrating President Biden after he became the
controversial domestic issues. LIR used social presumptive nominee in April.
media personas, news websites, and US persons to
deliver tailored content to subsets of the US Evaluating Moscow's Calculus on the 2020
population. LIR established short-lived troll farms Election
that used unwitting third-country nationals in
Ghana, Mexico, and Nigeria to propagate these We assess that Russian leaders viewed President
US-focused narratives, probably in response to Biden's potential election as disadvantageous to
efforts by US companies and law enforcement to Russian interests and that this drove their efforts to
shut down UR-associated personas. undermine his candidacy. We have high confidence in
this assessment.
• Russian state media, trolls, and online proxies,
including those directed by Russian intelligence, • Russian officials and state media frequently
published disparaging content about President attacked President Biden for his leading role in the
Biden, his family, and the Democratic Party, and Obama administration's Ukraine policy and his
heavily amplified related content circulating in US support for the anti-Putin opposition in Russia,
media, including stories centered on his son. These suggesting the Kremlin views him as part of a
influence actors frequently sought out US reflexively anti-Russia US foreign policy
contributors to increase their reach into US establishment. Putin probably also considers
audiences. In addition to election-related content, President Biden more apt to echo the idea of
these online influence actors also promoted American "exceptionalism," which he and other
conspiratorial narratives about the COVID-19 Kremlin leaders have often publicly criticized as
pandemic, made allegations of social media problematic and dangerous.
censorship, and highlighted US divisions
surrounding protests about racial justice. • Moscow's range of influence actors uniformly
worked to denigrate President Biden after his
Russian online influence actors generally promoted entrance into the race . Throughout the primaries
former President Trump and his commentary, and general election campaign, Russian influence
including repeating his political messaging on the agents repeatedly spread unsubstantiated or
election results; the presidential campaign; debates; misleading claims about President Biden and his
the impeachment inquiry; and, as the election family's alleged wrongdoing related to Ukraine. By
neared, US domestic crises. Influence actors contrast, during the Democratic primaries Russian
sometimes sought to discourage US left-leaning online influence actors promoted candidates that
audiences from voting by suggesting that neither Moscow viewed as outside what it perceives to be
candidate was a preferable option. At the same an anti-Russia political establishment.
time, Russian actors criticized former President
Trump or his administration when they pursued • Even after the election, Russian online influence
foreign policies-such as the targeted killing of actors continued to promote narratives questioning
the election results and disparaging President Biden
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and the Democratic Party. These efforts parallel and that such efforts are endemic to geostrategic
plans Moscow had in place in 2016 to discredit a competition.
potential incoming Clinton administration, but
which it scrapped after former President Trump's • Russian officials probably also assess that
victory. continued influence operations against the United
States pose a manageable risk to Russia's image in
We assess Russian leaders preferred that former Washington because US-Russia relations are
President Trump win reelection despite perceiving already extremely poor.
some of his administration's policies as anti-Russia.
We have high confidence in this assessment based in Iran's Influence Campaign Designed to
part on the Kremlin's public comments about him and Undercut Former President Trump's
the consistency and volume ofanti-Biden messaging we Reelection, Sow Discord
detected from Russian online influence actors.
We assess with high confidence that Iran carried out
As the election neared, Kremlin officials took some an influence campaign during the 2020 US election
steps to prepare for a Biden administration, probably season intended to undercut the reelection prospects of
because they believed former President Trump's former President Trump and to further its
prospects for re-election had diminished. lon~tanding objectives of exacerbating divisions in
the US, creating confusion, and undermining the
• Putin-while praising former President Trump legitimacy of US elections and institutions. We did not
personally during an interview in October-noted identify Iran engaging in any election interi'erence
that President Biden appeared willing to extend the activities, as defined in this assessment. Tehran's
New START Treaty (NST) or negotiate a new efforts were aimed at denigrating former President
strategic offensive reduction treaty. The comments Trump, not actively promoting his rivals. We assess that
were consistent with Russian officials' view that a Tehran designed its campaign to attempt to influence US
potential Biden administration would be more policy toward Iran, distract US leaders with domestic
open to arms control negotiations. issues, and to amplify messages sympathetic to the
Iranian regime. Iran's efforts in 2020-especially its e-
Moscow almost certainly views meddling in US mails to individual US voters and efforts to spread
elections as an equitable response to perceived allegations of voter fraud-were more aggressive than in
actions by Washington and an opportunity to both past election cycles.
undermine US global standing and influence US
decision-making. We assess that Moscow will • We assess that Tehran's efforts to attempt to
continue election influence efforts to further its influence the outcome of the 2020 US election and
longstanding goal of weakening Washington because Iranian officials' preference that former President
the Kremlin has long deemed that a weakened United Trump not be reelected were driven in part by a
States would be less likely to pursue assertive foreign perception that the regime faced acute threats from
and security policies abroad and more open to the US.
geopolitical bargains with Russia.
• Iran's election influence efforts were primarily
• Russian officials are probably willing to accept focused on sowing discord in the United States and
some risk in conducting influence operations exacerbating societal tensions-including by
targeting the US-including against US creating or amplifying social media content that
elections-because they believe Washington criticized former President Trump-probably
meddles similarly in Russia and other countries because they believed that this advanced Iran's
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longstanding objectives and undercut the prospects
for the former President's reelection without Post-Election Activity
provoking retaliation.
We assess that Iran continues to use influence
Actors, Methods, and Operations operations in attempts to inflame domestic tensions
in the US. For example, in mid-December 2020,
We assess that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei Iranian cyber actors were almost certainly
probably authorized Iran's influence campaign and responsible for the creation of a website containing
that it was a whole of government effort, judging from death threats against US election officials.
the involvement of multiple Iranian Government
elements. We have high confidence in this assessment. • We assess Iran is also seeking to exploit the
post-election environment to collect
• Iran focused its social media and propaganda on intelligence.
perceived vulnerabilities in the United States,
including the response to the COVID-19 pandemic,
economic recession , and civil unrest.
During this election cycle Iran increased the volume We assess that Iranian actors did not attempt to
and aggressiveness of its cyber-enabled influence manipulate or attack any election infrastructure.
efforts against the United States compared to past
election influence efforts. This included efforts to send • In early 2020, Iranian cyber actors exploited a
threatening e-mails to American citizens and to amplify known vulnerability to compromise US entities
concerns about voter fraud in the election. associated with election infrastructure as a part of a
broad targeting effort across multiple sectors
• In a highly targeted operation, Iranian cyber actors worldwide. Given the breadth and number of the
sent threatening, spoofed emails purporting to be targets, we judge that Iran did not specifically
from the Proud Boys group to Democratic voters in intend to use the results of this effort as part of its
multiple US states, demanding that the individuals election influence campaign.
change their party affiliation and vote to reelect
We assess that Iran primarily relied on cyber tools and
former President Trump. The same actors also
produced and disseminated a video intending to methods to conduct its covert operations because they
demonstrate alleged voter fraud. are low cost, deniable, scalable, and do not depend on
physical access to the United States. Iranian cyber
• Since early 2020, Iranian actors created social actors who focused on influence operations targeting the
media accounts that targeted the United States and election adapted their activities and content based on
published over 1,000 pieces of online content on political developments and blended cyber intrusions with
the United States, though US social media online influence operations.
companies subsequently removed many. Tehran
expanded the number of its inauthentic social • As part of their influence operations, Iranian cyber
media accounts to at least several thousand and actors sought to exploit vulnerabilities on US
boosted the activity of existing accounts, some of states' election websites, as well as news website
which dated back to 20 I 2.
content management systems.
• Iranian cyber actors sent spearphishing emails to
current and former senior officials and members of
political campaigns, almost certainly with the
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intent to gain derogatory information or accesses preference for stability in the bilateral relationship,
for follow-on operations. their probable judgment that attempting to influence
the election could do lasting damage to US-China ties,
China Did Not Attempt to Influence and belief that the election of either candidate would
Presidential Election Outcome present opportunities and challenges for China.
We assess that China did not deploy interference • We judge that Chinese officials would work with
efforts and considered but did not deploy influence former President Trump if he won a second term.
efforts intended to change the outcome of the US Beijing since at least 2019 has stressed the need to
presidential election. We have high confidence in this improve bilateral ties after the election regardless of
judgment. China sought stability in its relationship with who won.
the United States and did not view either election
outcome as being advantageous enough for China to risk • In addition, China was probably concerned the
blowback if caught. Beijing probably believed that its United States would use accusations of election
traditional influence tools, primarily targeted economic interference to scapegoat China. This may in part
measures and lobbying key individuals and interest account for Beijing waiting until 13 November to
groups, would be sufficient to achieve its goal of shaping congratulate President Biden.
US policy regardless of who won the election. We did
not identify China attempting to interfere with We assess that Beijing also believes there is a
election infrastructure or provide funding to any bipartisan consensus against China in the United
candidates or parties. States that leaves no prospect for a pro-China
administtation regardless of the election outcome.
• The IC assesses that Chinese state media criticism
of the Trump administration's policies related to China probably expected that relations would suffer
China and its response to the COVID~ 19 pandemic under a second term for former President Trump because
remained consistent in the lead~up to the election he and his administration would press for further
and was aimed at shaping perceptions of US economic decoupling and challenge China's rise. It
policies and bolstering China's global position probably also believed that China in this scenario could
rather than to affect the 2020 US election. The increase its international clout because it perceived that
coverage of the US election, in particular, was some of the Trump administration's policies would
limited compared to other topics measured in total alienate US partners.
volume of content.
• Beijing probably expected that President Biden
• China has long sought to influence US politics by would be more predictable and eager to initially
shaping political and social environments to press deescalate bilateral tensions but would pose a
US officials to support China's positions and greater challenge over the long run because he
perspectives. We did not, however, see these would be more successful in mobilizing a global
capabilities deployed for the purpose of shaping the alliance against China and criticizing China's
electoral outcome. human rights record.
Beijing probably judged risk of interference was • Beijing probably judged that Russia's efforts to
not worth the reward interfere in the 2016 election significantly damaged
Moscow's position and relationship with the
We assess that Beijing's risk calculus against United States and may have worried that
influencing the election was informed by China's Washington would uncover a Chinese attempt to
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deploy similar measures to influence or interfere in
the election and punish Beijing. some-and later increased-its election influence
efforts, especially over the summer of 2020. The
Beijing probably continued to collect intelligence NIO assesses these indications are more persuasive
on election-related targets and topics than other information indicating that China
decided not to intervene. The NIO further assesses
China probably also continued longstanding efforts to that Beijing calibrated its influence efforts to avoid
gather information on US voters and public opinion; blowback.
political parties, candidates and their staffs; and senior
government officials. We assess Beijing probably sought
to use this information to predict electoral outcomes and
to inform its efforts to influence US policy toward China
Other Actors
under either election outcome, as it has during all
election cycles since at least 2008 and considers an
A range of additional foreign actors took some steps to
acceptable tool of statecraft.
attempt to influence the election. In general, we assess
that they were smaller in scale than those conducted by
• We assess Beijing did not interfere with election
Russia and Iran.
infrastructure, including vote tabulation or the
transmission of election results.
We assess that Hizballah Secretary General Hassan
N asrallah supported efforts to undermine former
President Trump in the 2020 US election. Nasrallah
Minority View
probably saw this as a low-cost means to mitigate the
The National Intelligence Officer for Cyber assesses risk of a regional conflict while Lebanon faces political,
that China took at least some steps to undermine financial, and public health crises.
former President Trump's reelection chances,
We assess Cuba sought to undermine former President
primarily through social media and official public
Trump's electoral prospects by pwhing anti-
statements and media. The NIO agrees with the [C's
Republican and pro-Democrat narratives to the Latin
view that Beijing was primarily focused on
American community. Cuban intelligence probably
countering anti-China policies, but assesses that
conducted some low-level activities in support of this
some of Beijing's influence efforts were intended to
effort.
at least indirectly affect US candidates, political
processes, and voter preferences, meeting the
The Venezuelan regime of Nicolas Maduro had an
definition for election influence used in this report.
adversarial relationship with the Trump
The NIO agrees that we have no information
administration and we assess that Maduro had the
suggesting China tried to interfere with election
intent, though probably not the capability, to try to
processes. The NIO has moderate confidence in
influence public opinion in the US against the former
these judgments.
President. We have no information suggesting that the
current or former Venezuelan regimes were involved in
This view differs from the IC assessment because it
attempts to compromise US election infrastructure.
gives more weight to indications that Beijing
preferred former President Trump's defeat and the
Foreign Cybercriminals Disrupted Some Election
election of a more predictable member of the
Preparation
establishment instead, and that Beijing implemented
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Profit-motivated cybercriminals disrupted election • In October, a hacker briefly defaced a presidential
preparations in some US states with ransomware campaign website after gaining access probably
attacks intended to generate profit. We have no using adminisrrative credentials.
indications that these actors sought to use these attacks
to alter election functions or data, nor do we have
indications that they were acting on behalf of any
government.
• For example, in late October, probably foreign
ransomware actors demanded payment from a
New York county after encrypting 300 computers
and 22 servers on the network with Ragnarok
malware that prevented it from connecting to a
statewide voter registration system. County
officials directed voters who had applied via email
for an absentee ballot to call and verify their ballot
application had been received and processed.
• We do not know whether cybercriminals
specifically targeted election-related networks with
profit-making schemes or whether their activity
reflected a general targeting of state and local
government networks that also happen to host
election-related processes.
• We assess foreign cybercriminals probably did not
work to interfere or influence the US elections on
behalf of or at the direction of a nation state. We
have low confidence in this assessment. We assess
that some cybercrime groups probably operate with
at least the tacit approval of their nation state hosts.
Foreign Hacktivists
The IC tracked a handful of unsuccessful hacktivist
attempts to influence or intetfere in the 2020 US
elections.
• In November, hackers promoting Turkish
nationalist themes breached and defaced a website
previously established for a candidate in the US
presidential campaign, according to US
cybersecurity press.
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Estimative Language
Estimative language consists of two clements: judgment about the likelihood of developments or events occurring and
levels of confidence in the sources and analytic reasoning supporting the j udgments. Judgments are not intended to
imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is
often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation ,and precedents.
Judgments of Likelihood
The chart below approximates how judgments of likelihood correlate with percentages. Unless otherwise stated, the
Intelligence Community's judgments are not derived via statistical analysis. Phrases such as "we judge" and
"we assess" - and terms such as "probably" and "likely"-convey analytical assessments.
Almost Very Very Almmt
no chance unlikely Unlikely Roughly even chance Likely likely ttrtainly
0 20 40 60 80 100
Highly Highly Nearly
Remote improbable Improbable Roughly even odds Probable probable ccnain
Confidence in our Judgments
Confidence levels provide assessments of timeliness, consistency, and extent of intelligence and open source reporting
that supports judgements. They also take into account the analytic argumentation, the depth of relevant expertise, the
degree to which assumptions underlie analysis, and the scope of information gaps.
We ascnbe high, moderate, or low confidence to assessments:
• High confidence generally indicates that judgments are based on sound analytic argumentation and high-
quality consistent reporting from multiple sources, including clandestinely obtained documents, clandestine
and open source reporting, and in-depth expertise; it also indicates that we have few intelligence gaps, have
few assumptions underlying the analytic line, have found potential for deception to be low, and have
examined long-standing analytic judgements held by the IC and considered alternatives. For most intelligence
topics, it will not be appropriate to claim high confidence for judgements that forecast out a number of years.
High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments
might be wrong even though we have a higher degree of certainty that they are accurate.
• Moderate confidence generally means that the information is credibly sourced and plausible but not of
sufficient quality or corroborated sufficiently to warrant a higher level of confidence. There may, for example,
be information that cuts in a different direction. We have in-depth expertise on the topic, but we may
acknowledge assumptions that underlie our analysis and some information gaps; there may be minor analytic
differences within the IC , as well as moderate potential for deception.
• Low confidence generally means that the information 's credibility and/or plausibility is uncertain; that the
inforation is fragmented, dated, or poorly corroborated; or that reliability of the sources is questionable. There
may be analytic differences within the IC, several significant information gaps,high potential for deception or
numerous assumptions that must be made to draw analytic conclusions. In the case of low confidence, we are
forced to use current data to project out in time, making a higher level of confidence impossible.
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Chair NADLER. The gentlelady yields back. Mr. Fitzgerald.
Mr. FITZGERALD. Director Wray, on May 14, 2021, yourself as Di-
rector of the FBI and the Secretary of DHS, in consultation with
Director of National Intelligence jointly produced the report con-
taining the strategic assessment and data on domestic terrorism.
Of note, the FBI finally designated the 2017 shooting of Congres-
sional Republicans as an Act of domestic terrorism carried out by
a domestic violent extremist, rather than suicide by cop, as the FBI
initially had classified the shooting. How did the FBI initially reach
its conclusion that the attack was suicide by cop, and who made
the determination and then, ultimately, why was there a change,
do you believe?
Mr. WRAY. Well, Congressman, I appreciate the question. So, as
you may know, after a very thoughtful conversation I had with
Congressman Wenstrup in April, I asked my team to go back and
take a hard look at that particular shooting.
I think what we found is that from the time that I first arrived
as Director, the FBI’s understanding of domestic violent extremism
has evolved. More and more we see domestic violent extremists mo-
tivated by mixes or almost mishmashes of ideological, sociopolitical,
and personal grievances.
I think the shooter at the baseball practice that day, back in
2017, is fairly considered an early example of that phenomenon. So,
that’s part of why I want it to be clear that the FBI considers that
shooting an Act of domestic terrorism, that we look at it under the
umbrella of domestic violent extremism, and that if it—same thing
had occurred today, we would absolutely open it as a domestic ter-
rorist investigation. We tried to make that explicit, both directly to
Congressman Wenstrup and in the report, which you referred to,
which we formally transmitted to Congress.
Mr. FITZGERALD. So, would you consider that a change in posture
by the FBI on domestic terrorists overall?
Mr. WRAY. Well, it’s part of a—I don’t know about posture, but
it’s part of a more evolved understanding of the way in which do-
mestic violent extremism affects this country. We are seeing much
more often now not people who commit attacks based on some nice,
neat, cookie-cutter ideology, and this is their sole motivation, but
rather, people who take bits and pieces of things together with
some personal beef and then attack.
We consider that to be, in many ways, the most increasingly
common form of domestic violent extremism. So, again, I would
view it not so much a change in posture as that attack was one of
the earlier versions of this phenomenon that is quite rampant now.
Like just the other day, we had these folks in Minneapolis, for
example, who were so-called Boogaloo boys, but they were ulti-
mately charged with trying to provide material support to Hamas.
We had a guy the other day who was subscribing to various
Islamist violent extremism but also considered himself a neo-Nazi.
Then with all of them wrapped up with them, you have these
people who blend into it personal agendas, having nothing to do
with ideology at all. So, when you put all that together in sort of
a salad bar of motivations, we think it’s fair to look at something
like the Simpson field shooter as a domestic violent extremist, a do-
mestic terrorist. That’s why, again, if it would happen today, I
100
think we would certainly consider that part and parcel of what we
call domestic terrorism.
Mr. FITZGERALD. So, since the George Floyd incident, there’s
been hundreds of flare-ups domestically in many of the large mu-
nicipalities throughout the Nation. It was a long, hot summer last
summer. What is the approach that the FBI is taking as we—here
we are at the beginning of June—as we look forward, and what is
the approach that the FBI is using with those types of domestic
flare-ups that we are seeing, again, across the Nation?
Mr. WRAY. Well, we are latched up very tightly with our State
and local partners. When I go, and I’ve been to all 56 of our field
offices, most of them more than once, I am almost at all of them
at least twice now, I’ve met with law enforcement from all 50
States, chiefs, sheriffs, commissioners, colonels, et cetera, and we
are all very concerned about the rise in violent crime, the homicide
rates in particular. We all think that, in some ways, the summer
could be the worst yet to come in a while.
So, through our safe streets task forces, through on the terrorism
side, our joint terrorism task forces, our violent crime gang task
forces, a whole variety of ways we are working, trying to be latched
up very tightly with our State and local partners to do our part.
Again, the FBI is just one part of a broader law enforcement re-
sponse, to try to make sure that we do our best to protect our
neighborhoods.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time is expired.
Mr. FITZGERALD. Yield back.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman yields back.
Ms. Garcia.
Ms. GARCIA. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First, I want to thank Director Wray for coming to visit with us
again. I know it’s been a long day, but just take a deep breath. We
are almost there. There’s just a few more of us to go. I want to first
thank you and your 37,000 employees for the great job that you do
in keeping America safe.
I just want to first associate myself with all the concerns that
many of us have raised about the January 6th incident and every-
thing that has happened. I think that it would be important for us
to continue a full investigation. That’s why I do support a 9/11-type
commission so that we can get an investigation top to bottom, to
make sure we find out who is responsible, holding them account-
able, and taking steps so it doesn’t happen again. So, hopefully, the
FBI can play a role in that as we continue forward.
I want to change the focus now on some of the hate crime issues
that I have seen generally across America, but here in my city of
Houston. Let me be clear: It is inherently un-American and uncon-
scionable for anyone to discriminate against another because of the
color of your skin, or where they’re from. Yet, here in Houston, just
this last month, we’ve seen two incidents that tell me that we are
not doing enough.
On May 14, a bus driver who refused to get off a bus, attacked
the Hispanic bus driver saying he hates wetbacks, which you may
know is a very derogatory term. Several charges were filed with an
enhancement to a hate crime. Now, this was February 14th. Two
days later, May 16th at a mall where they had one of these car-
101
nivals that come and go, a group of carnival workers punched and
kicked a man after they pulled him out of his vehicle and yelled
racial slurs. They told the victim that they do not like, quote,
‘‘Black people and they threatened to hang him.’’
Two reported incidents almost back-to-back, and both charges
were filed for some other things, and they were all enhanced to
hate crimes. This tells me that it’s still happening and happening
too much.
Our police department’s hate crime report indicates that in
Houston, the hate crimes have almost tripled in the last 50 years.
Many of the crimes here in Houston have been formulated to at-
tacks against Latinos for as this—the instance that I mentioned on
May 14th of people thinking they’re, quote,‘‘wetbacks’’unquote.
So, my question to you is, is this a trend that you are seeing na-
tionally of more attacks against Latinos or immigrants; and if so,
what has that cost you to do to reallocate your resources and to
make sure that the FBI has what they need to investigate?
I am sure my compadre, Veronica Escobar, would like for me to
talk about the most horrific about the hate crimes, which was the
gun shooting in El Paso. What are you all doing to step it up, to
make sure that we protect everyone no matter where they’re from?
Mr. WRAY. Well, I appreciate the question. Hate crimes are cer-
tainly a high priority for us. We, in fact, had a—from fiscal years
2019–2020, a 63 percent increase in FBI hate crimes investigations
opened. This year, fiscal year 2021, we have had the highest num-
ber of hate crime investigations initiated in the past five years. So,
yeah, that’s about 307 or so hate crimes investigations pending,
and they cover the waterfront.
You also heard me refer earlier to the domestic terrorism hate
crimes fusion cell that we created to try to capture the synergy be-
tween those two, so that’s part of it. As far as—and we also do a
lot and we are trying to do a lot to engage with the community and
with State and local law enforcement, because one of the things we
know about hate crimes really across the gamut is that they are
historically underreported. So, a big part of it is trying to get—
Ms. GARCIA. My question was, have you seen an increase in at-
tacks against Latinos, and what are you doing to reallocate your
resources to get to the root causes of that?
Mr. WRAY. Well, I am not sure about root—investigating root
causes. We are investigating hate crimes, including against
Latinos. I don’t have the figures for you about increases by a demo-
graphic, but—yeah.
Ms. GARCIA. Well, let me move on because you also mentioned,
because my concern is that if you don’t do enough, then we’ll see
what happens here in Houston that even victims don’t report be-
cause they’re scared, number one, and two, there’s language bar-
riers, and they don’t see enough outreach from the FBI for people
not being able to know.
You told us earlier, you want to—if we see something, we need
to say something. Unless you tell that to people in Spanish, or you
make sure you let them know that if they’re victims of crimes, that
they should report it, it’s just not going to happen.
Mr. WRAY. I agree that public outreach is important.
102
Chair NADLER. The gentlelady’s time expired. The Witness may
answer the question.
Mr. WRAY. Certainly, for example, with the rise in hate crimes
against the Jewish community, we have, for example, in New York,
done an advertising campaign recently both in Hebrew and in Yid-
dish to try to make sure we are reaching people there. So, it may
be that a similar approach is underway from the relevant field of-
fices. I know in El Paso, I personally visited the crime scene myself
as a measure of how seriously I take that attack.
Ms. GARCIA. Thank you. I yield back.
Chair NADLER. The gentlelady yields back.
Ms. Fischbach.
Ms. FISCHBACH. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to yield my
time to the Ranking Member, Mr. Jordan.
Mr. JORDAN. I thank the gentlelady for yielding.
Director, it always seems that the leaks from our institutions in
government agencies benefit Democrats. I mean, we just had the—
as Mr. Bishop pointed out, we just had the fact that the IRS leaked
personal tax returns of U.S. citizens. It just happened to be at the
time that Democrats are trying to raise taxes on the American peo-
ple.
Then, of course, there’s what happened if—someone from the FBI
or DOJ leaking information about the fact that Mr. DeJoy, at least
has been reported, that Mr. DeJoy is under investigation, under in-
vestigation for, if you can believe what’s written in the press, for
alleged campaign finance violations that took place between 2004
and 2015. So, even if he did it, it seems to me the statute of limita-
tions has run.
So, I want to ask about that in particular. Is there an internal
investigation at the Justice Department, or more specifically, at the
FBI? I know you have an inspections division. This is the division
on—my understanding that looked into Andy McCabe’s issue when
he leaked information that he shouldn’t have leaked. Is there some
kind of internal investigation going on?
Mr. WRAY. Well, as you by now, have probably come to expect
from me, Congressman, of course, I can’t confirm any specific inves-
tigations, but what I can tell you—
Mr. JORDAN. No, I am not talking about an investigation that the
FBI is—I am talking about an internal investigation to actions that
someone in your division may have leaked information to the press
regarding the Postmaster General.
Mr. WRAY. Likewise, I wouldn’t confirm a specific investigation.
Our inspection division has a unit dedicated to internal investiga-
tions, and we’ve put some of our best people in it because of how
important it is. We also have, that I stood up in the last Adminis-
tration, in our counterintelligence division, a dedicated leak unit to
pursue criminal investigations where that is appropriate. In some
cases, they work with each other, because there’s an administrative
side and a criminal side. Really that’s all I can say. I can’t really
confirm specific investigations.
Mr. JORDAN. No, I understand. You’ve given that answer that to
us, and I get that. You’ve given that answer to us a thousand times
a day and a thousand times in the other times you testified. I un-
derstand that. We are talking about the Postmaster General of the
103
United States. We are talking about the tax returns of the Amer-
ican—of American citizens, again, all conveniently timed, it seems
to me.
I mean, last summer the Democrats—many of the Democrats
called for the Postmaster General to step down. They left had all
kinds of protesters at his house last summer and the whole debate
about mail-in voting. Then we see this story sort of out of nowhere
that supposedly he’s under investigation. I just was curious if you’d
tell us if it’s internal.
Does the FBI give critical race theory training to your agents and
employees?
Mr. WRAY. Not to my knowledge. We certainly provide different
kinds of diversity training just like almost any organization these
days, but certainly, I’ve never heard of any kind of critical race the-
ory training.
Mr. JORDAN. Is that a yes or no? Is there a critical race theory
training going on at the FBI? Yes or no?
Mr. WRAY. My answer is, not that I am aware of.
Mr. JORDAN. Not that you are aware of, okay. How about the
issue of this—Washington Post reported back in April that the FBI
sent, quote, ‘‘geofence search warrants to Google and got informa-
tion about January 6th,’’ phone numbers of folks here on Capitol
Hill, and that include Members and staff and others who were au-
thorized to be in the Capitol on that date.
How did you distinguish—it’s our understanding, according to
the news reports, there’s an exclusion list of folks who were sup-
posed to be in the Capitol that day. How is that all being handled?
How did you determine who’s on the exclusion list? Who isn’t? How
did you get that information? What are you doing with that infor-
mation now, particularly the phone numbers and identifying
phones of Members of Congress and staff who are supposed to be
on Capitol Hill?
Mr. WRAY. So, I think you anticipated probably the most impor-
tant part in your question, which is, again, and I want to be careful
not to talk about any specific investigation, but the geolocation
data that we are talking about is, again, it doesn’t identify a per-
son. It identifies a device.
So, one of the first things we needed to do, because on January
6th itself our focus was on trying to secure you all and the facility,
so we weren’t arresting people here on site. So, after the fact we
needed to figure out who was here by looking at the list of device
numbers.
Then with that, we needed to be able to get from—and I think
we got it from the Capitol Police, but I am not sure about that, a
list of who was, as you said, supposed to be here so that we could
exclude those people and focus on the numbers—
Mr. JORDAN. We know that—
Mr. WRAY. —of people that were not supposed to be here, and
then using those numbers, then start to pursue logical investiga-
tive leads on the people who were not supposed to be here.
Mr. JORDAN. No, I appreciate that, and thank you. Some people
who were supposed to be here we know were subsequently called
by the FBI, and they were staff on Capitol Hill. That’s because you
104
didn’t know? You were finding out? I mean, what was going on
there?
Chair NADLER. The gentlelady’s time is expired. The gentleman
may—the Witness may answer the question.
Mr. WRAY. Well, again, I don’t want to speak to any specific in-
vestigation, but our reasons for going to interview witnesses about
things are a lot more than geolocation data. So, it may have been
that we saw a video footage of somebody, and we think this person
saw something in this place, or some witness told us go talk to this
person because they know what happened over here.
So, there’s a whole host of reasons why we would have gone to
interview somebody that might have nothing to do with geolocation
data. So, I can’t really speak to any specific person who—
Mr. JORDAN. The exclusion—
Chair NADLER. The gentlelady’s time is expired.
Mr. Neguse.
Mr. NEGUSE. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Director Wray, first, I want to say thank you for your testimony,
and I want to thank you as well for your service to our country.
Several years ago, as you might be aware, a young man named
Elijah McClain died in Colorado, my State, after being placed into
two chokeholds by police officers, and then being administered
ketamine by paramedics during the arrest.
Nearly one year ago, on June 30th of 2020, the Colorado U.S. At-
torney’s Office, the Department of Justice, and the Denver Division
of the FBI announced that in 2019, they had begun reviewing the
facts of this case for potential Federal civil rights investigation.
I’ll quote from their statement. They said, quote, ‘‘The standard
practice of the DOJ is to not disclose the existence or progress of
investigations. However, there are specific cases in which doing so
is warranted if such information is in the best interest of the public
and public safety. Recent attention on the death of Elijah McClain
warrants such disclosure,’’ end quote.
Given that statement, Director Wray, can you confirm whether
the DOJ has opened a Federal civil rights investigation into this
matter?
Mr. WRAY. I would need to consult with the Department about
what information we can provide in response to that question, but
I am happy to have my staff circle back to you after we’ve done
that.
Mr. NEGUSE. Thank you. I appreciate that, Director Wray, and
we’ll follow up with your team.
As I mentioned, Mr. McClain was administered the ketamine by
EMS personnel. In your opinion, are there any acceptable, nonmed-
ical reasons for law enforcement officers to administer or encourage
attending EMS personnel to use sedatives or other medications to
subdue a person under arrest?
Mr. WRAY. I am really not comfortable trying to answer a hypo-
thetical that cuts across such a broad range of possible scenarios,
so I am afraid I am going to have to decline to really offer much
on that particular subject. I am not sure I am the right person to
speak to it.
Mr. NEGUSE. Well, I appreciate that, Director Wray. I would just
simply say, in my opinion, it’s not acceptable for law enforcement
105
to administer—EMS personnel to be administering ketamine to
subdue a person under arrest outside of a hospital setting. It’s why
we’ll be introducing legislation to ensure that ketamine is used for
medical purposes only and not as a tool for restraint. We look for-
ward to working with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies
on that legislation.
I want to turn to a different topic, which my colleague, Rep-
resentative Cicilline touched on earlier, you’ll recall, Director Wray,
during the morning portion of today’s hearing, which is the epi-
demic of gun violence in America.
On March 22nd of this year, a gunman killed 10 people, includ-
ing a police officer at a grocery store in my district, Boulder, Colo-
rado, allegedly using an AR–15-style pistol which fired rifled
rounds and had been modified with an arm brace. The AR pistol
brace attachment, as you know, allows a shooter to fire an easily
concealable pistol with rifle-like accuracy and firepower.
I would like you, Director Wray, if you might, to describe, in your
view, how these types of weapons, these short-barreled rifles, can
pose additional risk to law enforcement and ultimately to a commu-
nity.
Mr. WRAY. Well, I appreciate the question, Congressman. First,
just to be clear, I don’t want to be weighing in on specific legisla-
tive proposals. From a law enforcement perspective, and, of course,
there are a variety of different types of high-powered or high-capac-
ity type weapons that are out there, those are things that can be
of particular concern to—any time there’s an operation that law en-
forcement is conducting, it’s something that we have to be particu-
larly mindful of.
Of course, this hits particularly close to home for me and for us
at the FBI, because the two special agents that I mentioned in my
opening, Laura Schwarzenberger and Dan Alfin, were shot and
killed by an individual child pornography subject using an AR-style
weapon. He killed those two agents and injured four others who,
thankfully, have survived.
So, it’s an illustration of how the wrong weapon in the wrong
hands is something that we should all be deeply concerned about.
Mr. NEGUSE. I appreciate that, Director Wray, and we certainly
grieve and mourn with you for the agents that you’ve lost and for
their families. We recognize their great sacrifice and service to our
country. I share your concern, and I think many here on Capitol
Hill do as well.
It’s why the Biden Administration’s decision, at least with re-
spect to the short-barreled rifles and assault pistols, regulations
that they now—the President has asked the ATF to issue. I joined
the President and Attorney General Garland at a press conference
not that long ago, about seven weeks ago, regarding that step. I
think it was an important step and moves us in the right direction.
I think there’s clearly other steps that we need to take as Con-
gress to ensure that these weapons of war are not in our commu-
nity, so that we can keep the entire community, including Members
of law enforcement, safe.
With that, I thank you again, Director Wray. I would yield back
the balance of my time, Mr. Chair.
106
Ms. SCANLON. [Presiding.] The Chair recognizes representative
Owens for five minutes. Can you unmute?
Mr. OWENS. Sorry. Okay. According to USA Today, last year,
2020, United States counted more than 20,000 murders, the high-
est total since 1995, and 4,000 more than 2019. Preliminary FBI
data for 2020 points to a 25 percent surge in murders, the highest
single year increase since the agency began publishing uniform
data in 1960.
For the record, hate is hate. Hate is evil regardless of the color.
To the victims of hate and their families, it makes no difference the
color of the perpetrator. The result is the same: Death. Looking at
the numbers, I am going to guess that White on Black crimes are
up, Black on White crimes are up, Black on Asian crimes are up,
attacks against Hispanics and Jewish community are up, and for
sure, Black on Black crime is up.
Ninty percent of the Black crimes perpetrated on Black Ameri-
cans are done by other Blacks. This evil of hate has become so
prevalent, that too many Americans, both Black and White, simply
shrug their shoulders, think it’s normal, and turn the page.
I keep hearing from my friends across the aisle about White su-
premacy. Based on the unconscionable high death tally of Black
Americans in their own communities, it’s evident that evil White
supremacist is not the greatest threat. Are evil Black perpetrators,
predators leading among us?
I ask my fellow lawmakers not to continue to think this plague
of evil is normal, shrug our shoulders, and turn the page. It’s time
for us to work together to end the policies that is keeping too many
poor Black Americans, living mostly in urban cities, living in fear,
illiteracy, joblessness, hopelessness, and anger.
With that, I want to turn the remainder of my time over to Mr.
Jordan.
Mr. JORDAN. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I appreciate his
important points.
Director, earlier you said, and I think I am quoting accurately
here, we pass information back and forth with social media compa-
nies. Can you explain that, because, I mean, just read maybe out
of context, I think people have concerns about that. Can you tell
me what that means?
Mr. WRAY. I appreciate the question. As I think back to my an-
swer to that question, I was fearful that it might get misconstrued,
so I appreciate you asking. What I was referring to is a couple dif-
ferent things, so, one, in connection with foreign misinformation,
election influence stuff from, for example, the Russians, there have
been instances where we will, based on intelligence we’ve received
from overseas or other places, pass that to social media companies
saying, hey, we know this particular account is actually controlled
by some Russian troll farm, for example. Then social media compa-
nies then take action against that account. They then do their own
international investigation, and that then sometimes leads them
to—
Mr. JORDAN. Are we talking about a foreigner or an American?
Mr. WRAY. What’s that?
Mr. JORDAN. Are we talking about a person, and if we are talking
about a person, is it a foreign person or an American person?
107
Mr. WRAY. Well, the classic example, the one that I just gave is,
a foreign source, who is essentially posing as a U.S. voice, and
that’s the essence of the Russian troll farm that’s been—gotten so
much attention.
So then, in turn, the social media companies take action. They
often will find other accounts linked to that account and take ap-
propriate action. We’ve seen the same thing, to some extent, with
the Iranians in connection with the last election. You may remem-
ber when Director Ratcliffe and I did a press conference.
Mr. JORDAN. Right.
Mr. WRAY. It’s a little bit of that going on there. So, that’s the
essence of the back and forth of social media companies that I was
referring to. There are other situations, other situations where
sometimes social media companies see a threat to life, a violent
threat of some sort on their platforms that they will refer to us,
which is the responsible thing to do.
Mr. JORDAN. Thank you. So, I just want to be clear, there are
times at the direction of the government social media companies
take certain action?
Mr. WRAY. Not at the direction, no.
Mr. JORDAN. Well, you just said, you give them information. You
said, we were concerned about this who we believe to be a foreign
actor. I mean, let me step back a second. The broader concern is
we just recently saw communications that were largely redacted
between Dr. Fauci and the CEO or the head of Facebook, most of
it redacted, and we know what the result of all that was a year
ago. It was keeping information that they, at the time, deemed mis-
information but, in fact, wasn’t very credible information that they
kept from the American people.
So, that’s my broader concern. It sounds to me like you are—this
is something different potentially, but that’s the concern we have,
I think as Members of the Judiciary Committee, and, frankly, I
know American citizens have. So, when you say passing informa-
tion back and forth working with the social media companies, we
are in the context now of this communication, this email commu-
nication between Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Fauci that is largely re-
dacted, but we know that they colluded to keep information from
the American people.
Mr. WRAY. I understand that you are concerned. We are talking
about two very different things.
First, social media companies aren’t taking action under their
terms of service at our direction. Some days I wish they might, but
that ain’t happening.
Mr. JORDAN. I don’t wish—
Mr. WRAY. I am kidding.
Mr. JORDAN. I am nervous about all of it.
Mr. WRAY. I am being a little flippant, but—
Mr. JORDAN. I get it.
Mr. WRAY. No, we pass information. We are investigating. We
ask them for information. In the course of passing information to
them, they then use that information and sometimes make deci-
sions, again, they would tell you, very much on their own.
Mr. JORDAN. If this information involves an American citizen
there would have to be a warrant involved, right?
108
Ms. SCANLON. The gentleman’s time has expired. You can answer
this question. Thank you.
Mr. WRAY. I am sorry. Could you repeat the question?
Mr. JORDAN. If the information involves an American citizen,
there will have to be some kind of warrant involved. If the govern-
ment’s asking for information from a social media company, there
would have to be some kind of warrant involved for you to get that
information.
Mr. WRAY. Well, there’s a variety of legal process—subpoenas, et
cetera—where we pass information, where we are asking for infor-
mation from them, they provide information in response to the
legal process from us.
A lot of the engagement that we are talking about is not that dif-
ferent from the engagement that we have with lots of other indus-
tries, as well as financial services, et cetera.
Ms. SCANLON. Thank you.
The gentlewoman from Texas, Ms. Garcia, is recognized for a
unanimous consent.
Ms. GARCIA. Madam Chair, I ask for a unanimous consent to
submit three documents for the record.
One is a Click2Houston report on ‘‘ ‘They threatened to hang
him’: Carnival worker charged with hate crime after punching,
kicking man in parking lot of Almeda Mall.’’
The second is from channel 13, ‘‘METRO rider charged with hate
crime enhancement after allegedly attacking bus driver and 2 offi-
cers.’’
The third is the Houston Police Department annual Hate Crime
Report that indicates the three-times increase in hate crimes.
Madam Chair, I ask for unanimous consent.
Ms. SCANLON. Without objection.
[The information follows:]
MS. GARCIA FOR THE RECORD
110
= ~
NEWS SPORTS TH INGS TO DO FIND YOUR CI TY DISCOVER HOUSTON LIFE WEATHER TRAFFIC
7 warnings m effect for 11 counties m the area
LOCAL NEWS
1
They threatened to hang him•: Carnival worker
charged with hate crime after punching, kicking
man in parking lot of Almeda Mall
Andy Cerota , Anchor & Reporter
Published: May 18, 2021 6:38 pm
Tags: Hate Crime, Carnival, Man Injured, Racism
111
'f
HOUSTON - You've probably seen them, or perhaps visited one, a traveling carniva l, which is usually set up in the
parking lot of a mall.
On Sunday, prosecutors said someone driving through Almeda Mall's parking lot became the victim of a hate crime
when he was attacked by a group of carnival workers.
"The staff at the carniva l was pretty upset about where he was driving through. And it's one of those situations w here
they could have handled the situation very, very differently. They slashed one of his tires, they're banging on windows,
they're punching the hood, t hey're punching the car itself," said Chandler Raine, Assistant Harris County District
Attorney.
Prosecutors said they began punching and kickingJaylonJohnson after they pu lled him out of his vehicle and yell ed
racial slurs whi le they beat him.
"They told him that they do not li ke Black people. They threatened to hang him while they were there," Ra ine said.
Take control of your IMPORTANT SAFETY
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EYLEA• {a fl iberce pt) Inj ection is a
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A hate crime enhancement was added to the assault charge against Gilbert Herrera, the one carnival worker w ho
po li ce identified and arrested.
"When they're tormenting any individual based on who they are, we are going to prosecute," Raine said.
KPRC 2 reached out to the Wagner Carniva l for a comment and is awaiting a response. With the hate crime
enhancement, Herrera cou ld face anywhere from 180 days up to a year in jail if convicted.
Copyright 2021 by KPRC C/ick2Houston ~ Alf rights reserved.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
~ NEWS SPORTS TH INGS TO DO FIND YOUR CITY DISCOVER HOUSTON LIFE WEATHER
112
METRO rider charged with hate crime
enhancement after allegedly attacking bus driver
and 2 officers
~ By Steven Romo
Friday, May 14, 2021 SHARE TWEET EMAIL
METRO police said the 29-year-old is also accused of assaulting one of their officers and a county jail officer, both of
whom are also Hispanic.
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) --A METRO rider who refused to get off a bus allegedly attacked the driver
and later two officers, one with the public transit and another at the jail where he was detained.
According to METRO police, 29-year-old Dillon Burdick is also accused of attacking the Hispanic
driver based on race after he told an officer that he "hates wetbacks, "
Recent Stories from ABC 13
113
I 'War on my rights': High school valedictorian
scraps approved speech, delivers abortion rights call
Police said the ordeal happened Wednesday at about T30 p.m. at the end of a bus route in the 13900
block of Veterans Memorial. The bus operator called for help for a man who had fallen asleep on board,
refused to get off, and then proceeded to slap him.
A METRO officer who responded to escort the man was then spat on by him, according to police.
The belligerent bus rider also tried kicking at the officer while being placed in a patrol car. It was then
inside the cruiser that the officer asked why the suspect attacked the METRO driver, to which the man
replied about his hatred of Hispanic people, police said.
As if that wasn't enough, the man, booked into Harris County Jail as Burdick, allegedly kicked a
detention officer.
METRO Police Chief Vera Bumpers noted the driver and the two officers that Burdick is accused of
attacking are all Hispanic.
114
Burdick was charged with assault on a public servant and two counts of harassment of a public servant,
all enhanced to a hate crime.
Burdick is being held on bond totaling $7,500. He was not present for his initial appearance in
probable cause court because he was being combative at the time.
A follow-up court date was scheduled for Monday.
Follow Steven Romo on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram .
Report a correction or typo
RELATED TOPICS:
houston metro officer injured bus hate crime discrimination hate crime investigation hispanic
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Copyright©2021 KTRK-lV. All Rights Reserved
HOUSTON POLICE DEPARTMENT
Annual Hate Crime Re2ort
HATE CRIMES HATE CRIMES: BIAS TYPE BY YEAR
A hate crime is defined as a crimina l offense against a person or
property motivated in who le or in part by an offender's bias 35
against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethn icity,
gender, or gender identity.
30
IMPACT OF HATE CRIMES
Hate crimes victimi ze not only the individuals or institutions who
are targeted, but also the entire community or group they 25
represent. Violent hate crimes may lead to cycles of reta liation
and vigilant ism that can engu lf communities and perpetuate
hatred and prejudice. 20
115
DEPARTMENT POLICY
The Houston Police Department views all hate crimes as major, 15
and possibly organized, acts, wh ich are given the highest
investigation priority possible to ensure rapid apprehensio n of
all persons, involved . HPD's Crim in al Intelligence Division 10
investigates all reported hate crimes and has the ultim ate
responsibility for determining whether a crime is reported to
federal or state record keeping agencies as a hate crime.
HOW TO REPORT
If you are a victim or a witness to a crime, please report the
Race/ Sexual
I Gender
incident as soon as possible. If th e incident is happening now or Religion Disability Gender Annual Total
Ethnicity Orientation Identity
just happened, call 911 immediately.
■ 2015 10 3 9 0 0 3 25
■ 2016
For additional resources, please co ntact :
■ 2017 3 5 1 0 0 2 11
Houston Police Hate Crimes information line 713 .308 .8737
■ 2018 13 9 8 0 0 1 32
Houston Police Victims Services 713.308.0800
■ 2019 10 3 8 2 0 3 26
Anti-Defamation League 713.627 .3490
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116
Ms. GARCIA. Thank you, and I yield back.
Ms. SCANLON. Sure. Thank you.
The gentlewoman from Georgia is recognized for five minutes.
Ms. MCBATH. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you so much
for conducting this oversight hearing today.
Thank you, Director Wray, for being here. We really appreciate
your time and effort.
I represent Georgia, where we have unfortunately had some very
high-profile incidents of violence in the very past few years, includ-
ing the Ahmaud Arbery killing as recent and also eight individuals
and including six women of Asian descent that just happened this
past March. So, these shootings just have continued to rattle our
communities and are especially troubling for communities of color.
Unfortunately, we know that these high-profile incidents are just
part of a broader trend of increasing hate crimes that we are seeing
all across the country. My colleagues have already earlier today
just mentioned the startling statistics from the FBI’s annual report
showing the increases in hate crimes against Latinos, Jewish peo-
ple, and those of Asian descent.
I just have one question in this regard there. How is the FBI tak-
ing steps to help local police respond to the rise in the anti-Asian
hate crimes?
Mr. WRAY. So, as I mentioned, hate crimes are a high priority
to me. You mentioned Georgia. Of course, that is my home as well,
so I take those cases particularly seriously and personally there.
We do a number of different things.
One, we, obviously, investigate hate crimes wherever we can. As
I mentioned, we have had the highest number of hate-crime initi-
ations this year that we’ve had in the past five years and about a
63-percent increase in hate-crimes investigations initiated over the
past couple of years or so. So, it’s about 370, give or take, hate-
crimes investigations ongoing right now.
We also provide support to State and local, because sometimes
the most readily provable offense is a State or local offense. Even
in those instances, we provide support with forensics expertise,
that kind of thing.
We work with the Civil Rights Division over at the Justice De-
partment to figure out when Federal charges can be brought.
We also do a lot of public outreach, both to the community and
to law enforcement. One of the themes we’ve heard about a little
bit already today and discussed is the fact that these crimes aren’t
reported reliably enough—it’s just a chronically underreported
area.
That is something that we need to reach out to the communities
and to law enforcement, so we do trainings, liaison events. For ex-
ample, in the AAPI community, I think we’ve done 60 or so events,
liaison events, specifically targeting that community just since last
March, right through the pandemic.
With the Jewish community, I think there have been 340 or so
training and liaison events. I mentioned earlier, in New York, we
recently put out sort of a public service campaign, including put-
ting it in Hebrew and Yiddish to reach certain parts of the commu-
nity that might be reluctant or unwilling to report.
117
So, there’s a whole bunch of things like that that we are trying
to do to help.
Ms. MCBATH. Thank you for that. I really appreciate it.
I’d also like to discuss, though, guns. Just recently, the President
and the Attorney General proposed new regulations, for parts need-
ed to build ghost guns to have serial numbers, and those that are
purchased, seeing them undergoing background checks. As you
know, ghost guns are firearms that can be easily produced from an
online kit that requires no background check or has no serial num-
ber.
Is the current data showing an increase in ghost guns found at
crimes scenes? You can just give me a simple ‘‘yes’’ or ‘‘no’’ answer
to that.
Mr. WRAY. I am not sure I have the reliable numbers, but I do
believe we are anecdotally starting to seize so-called ghost guns
more and more frequently. Of course, in the wrong hands, those
can be very dangerous, just like other kinds of guns. I believe, as
you alluded to, DOJ has recently issued a proposed rule on the sub-
ject.
Ms. MCBATH. All right.
As you know, law enforcement relies heavily on gun tracing in
their criminal investigations. I understand that law enforcement is
just unable to trace those guns because they lack those serial num-
bers.
So, can you please tell us why gun tracing is so important? How
does the inability to trace ghost guns impact criminal investiga-
tions and your own, the FBI’s ability to help the public stay safe?
Mr. WRAY. Well, tracing firearms is a time-honored tactic in law
enforcement investigations of crimes of violence. It’s an all-too-com-
mon scenario where you are recovering a firearm and need to fig-
ure out where it came from. So, absolutely, it’s something we need
to do as much as we can.
That’s why, for example, outside the concept of ghost guns, you
have individuals, for example, who will obliterate serial numbers.
The reason they try to obliterate the serial numbers is precisely the
reason that you alluded to, which is they want to prevent us from
being able to trace the weapon.
That is already a crime, to obliterate a serial number, but, cer-
tainly, it’s a subject that is increasingly concerning to us as we
start to seize ghost guns, so-called ghost guns, in a number of our
cases.
Chair NADLER. [Presiding.] The time of the gentlelady—
Ms. MCBATH. Thank you.
I yield back the balance of my time. Thank you.
Chair NADLER. The gentlelady yields back.
Mr. Stanton?
Mr. STANTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Good morning, Director Wray. Good afternoon, at this point. Be-
fore I begin, I just want to say thank you for the job that you do,
and please pass on my thanks to the women and men who serve
with you at the FBI. Their efforts are diligent, tireless, and too
often thankless, so please let them know we appreciate their work.
I have a couple lines of questions that I have for you.
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First, I’d like to ask you about an ongoing violent epidemic, an
issue that’s of critical importance to me and my home State of Ari-
zona. As you may recall, the last time you testified before this
Committee, we discussed the crisis of missing and murdered indig-
enous women and girls.
It’s a grim reality that Native-American women are murdered at
a rate 10 times the national average. For Native-American women,
homicide is the third-leading cause of death. The National Crime
Information Center has reported approximately 1,500 missing in-
digenous people, and Arizona, tragically, has the third-highest
number of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in
the country.
Recently, Congress acted. We passed Savanna’s Act, which di-
rects the DOJ to review, revise, and develop protocols to address
this crisis, and the Not Invisible Act, which coordinates intergov-
ernmental efforts to combat this violence.
There is a Presidential task force addressing this crisis. Our
former colleague, Secretary Deb Haaland, established the Missing
and Murdered Unit at the Department of the Interior. The FBI has
directed to enhance its investigations into missing and murdered
indigenous women and girls.
So, as FBI Director, what specifically are you doing to seek jus-
tice for these victims? What are you doing to coordinate with other
agencies? What additional training and resources are you providing
to your agents in Indian Country?
Mr. WRAY. Well, I appreciate the question. I do remember our ex-
change from the last time we testified—or the last time I testified
before this Committee on this subject.
Certainly, as you mentioned, there is the task force that’s specifi-
cally focused on missing and murdered American Indians and Alas-
kan Natives.
Our primary vehicle to engage on this subject is through the
FBI’s Safe Trails Task Forces, which include not just FBI per-
sonnel but partner personnel from other agencies, including Tribal
law enforcement. I think we have about 140, give or take, agents
that I’ve dedicated specifically to those Safe Trails Task Forces.
That number is actually probably almost double that now, in a
way, because, as you may know, in Oklahoma, because of the Su-
preme Court’s McGirt decision, the range of crimes that’s now con-
sidered Native-American jurisdiction has dramatically expanded.
So, we have probably about 140 surged agents to deal with crime
of the sort you are describing in that State.
I also took the head of our FBI field office in Arizona but also
in New Mexico with me, together, and met with the head of the
Navajo Nation and spent some time with his leadership team and
drove around Indian Country to get a better sense of the challenges
out there. I am told that I am the first FBI Director to ever go
meet with them.
Mr. STANTON. Thank you, Director, very much.
I’d like to shift gears a little bit and talk some more about
ransomware, a subject that other Members have asked about. In
this case, I want to talk specifically about the issue of ransomware
attacks that threaten local governments and local infrastructure.
119
Before serving in Congress, I served as a Mayor, Mayor of Phoe-
nix, Arizona. So, I am particularly concerned about cyber criminals
targeting our local governments. In recent years, we’ve seen major
U.S. cities like Atlanta and Baltimore hampered by ransomware at-
tacks.
So, based upon the data and pattern of attacks the Bureau has
identified, what local infrastructure facilities do you believe are
most at risk of being targeted? What can Congress and the FBI do
to better support our local government officials?
Mr. WRAY. Well, I am not sure I could give you a specific type
of local network that’s most at risk, because it has less to do with
the type of service they provide so much as it is with their own IT
infrastructure and the vulnerability that it represents, combined
with the perception that ransomware actors have that they would
be a particularly easy-to-leverage target.
You are absolutely right that one of the trends we are particu-
larly concerned about with ransomware is more sophisticated tar-
geting of, for example, municipalities or in, say, States that are
more rural, rural hospitals and things like that. School systems is
another example.
So, we are trying to go after the ransomware actors through a
variety of means. Our National Cyber Investigative Joint Task
Force leads a whole-of-government campaign that’s prioritizing the
most damaging variants of ransomware and going after the entire
cybercriminal ecosystem.
So, by that, I mean not just the people demanding the ransom,
but the malware developers, the money launderers, the shady
internet service providers. We are going after the actors, their help-
ers. We are going after the criminals’ infrastructure. We are going
after their cryptocurrency.
So, we are trying to engage in joint, sequenced operations de-
signed to maximize the impact on the adversaries. Then we are try-
ing to feed the information we get back and learn from those inves-
tigations in the form of intelligence that we share with potential
victims—so, in your example, local governments, municipalities,
but also all the victims in the private sector—indicators of com-
promise and things like that, and then working with CISA over at
the Department of Homeland Security to better help those victims
protect themselves.
This is—I used the expression before—a team sport. This is a
team sport where the team is not just government, Federal govern-
ment, not just, frankly, local government, but also, very impor-
tantly, the private sector in a whole variety of ways.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s time has expired.
Ms. Dean?
Ms. DEAN. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Director Wray, for being here today, more impor-
tantly, for your service to our country. Especially, the tremendous,
talented men and women of the FBI, thank you for their service.
As you’ve said often, the mission of the FBI is to protect the
American people and to uphold the Constitution of the United
States. Two important parts of that mission.
My first focus today will be on the scourge of gun violence and
how we can partner, continue to partner. Because it’s going to be
120
all-hands-on-deck to reduce and, I hope, someday eliminate the
scourge of gun violence.
Before I came to Congress, I served in the Pennsylvania House
for 61⁄2 years and had the chance to meet with the State Police who
administered our PICS system, the Pennsylvania Instant Check
System. As you know, the FBI, administer the NICS system.
The difference between the two systems is important. The NICS
system, has both, I want to say, operate with tremendous speed.
I give all those who administer this great credit.
The PICS system has a difference that is critically important
that I hope we will someday build into the NICS system. PICS al-
lows 10 days for the State to try to get clarity on a background
check to see if the person is a prohibited purchaser, and, after
those 10 days, if there is not clarity, it defaults to ‘‘no.’’ The NICS
system, as you know, allows just three days, and if it can’t get clar-
ity, it defaults to allowing the purchase of the gun.
Sadly, we know that it was that same loophole that allowed
Dylann Roof after three days to purchase a weapon which he later
used to murder nine people at Emanuel AME Church in Charles-
ton. Just several days later, it was revealed that he was a prohib-
ited purchaser.
In 2018, more than 270,000 NICS background checks not com-
pleted within three business days resulted in more than 4,800 gun
transfers to people whose background checks ultimately revealed
they were prohibited purchasers. Per the most recent FBI report,
about 3,000 people a year pass the NICS background checks as a
result of this loophole.
We passed H.R. 1446, which would be the enhanced background
closing of that Charleston loophole. Do you agree that NICS could
be a more effective background system if we put forward that log-
ical 10-day default to ‘‘no’’?
Mr. WRAY. Well, as is customary, I am not in a position to com-
ment on specific legislative proposals, as FBI Director, and get out
in front of the Administration on that.
What I would say is that our NICS folks work incredibly hard,
and, last year, even with 40 million, a record number of back-
ground checks, and even with the pandemic, they were still able to
process 96 percent, or close to 96 percent, within the required time.
Certainly, it gets hard. COVID made it even harder, in many
ways, because, of course, part of the drill—and it’s probably the
same with PICS—they have to reach out to the State and local po-
lice.
Ms. DEAN. I appreciate that. I absolutely admire the work and
the commitment of the folks who are administering NICS. With
their pressure—the increased numbers and the increased pressure
to get it done in three days, otherwise it’s allow the purchase, that
has proven to be a lethal loophole, as we know, way too many
times.
In November of 2017, Congress passed the Fix NICS Act—and it
was following another shooting, in a church in Sutherland Springs,
Texas—to ensure that Federal agencies were reporting convictions
that would prohibit firearm ownership.
121
However, recent data shows a gross underreporting coming from
DOD, in which all four military branches provided less than 31
percent of the requisite background check information.
Is the FBI committed to supporting agencies to meet the Fix
NICS requirements?
Mr. WRAY. Well, certainly, the Fix NICS Act has been a big help
to us, and we’ve had a significant, very significant, increase in new
records over the past three years.
We are trying to do our part to engage with our partners, Fed-
eral, State, and local, to increase the information that’s in there.
That’s the whole point, that’s the essence of the system. We are
doing a lot of outreach and engagement. We’ve got massive staffing
and technological resources devoted to it, and we’ve asked for more
in the various budgets that have been put forward.
Ms. DEAN. I know my time is up, sadly. There’s so much more
I’d like to you ask. I do hope that FBI will partner with us, the
legislative branch and this Administration, to do something about
gun violence.
Also, the second area that I wanted to make sure we talk about
at some point is the use-of-force statistics and the collection of that
data. So, maybe I’ll have a chance to talk with you and your staff
separately and offline.
With that, I yield back, and I thank you, Mr. Chair.
Chair NADLER. The gentlelady leads back.
Ms. Escobar?
Ms. ESCOBAR. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Director Wray, thanks so much for being here, and many thanks
to you and the women and men of the FBI for your service.
We know that, leading up to the January 6th attack, former
President Donald Trump and others pushed the ‘‘big lie’’ that the
election was stolen. We know that his political organization funded
the January 6th ‘‘Stop the Steal’’ rally in Washington, DC. We
know that he told his supporters to attend. At the rally, we know
he whipped them up into a frenzy and warned them that if they,
quote, ‘‘don’t fight like hell, you are not going to have a country
anymore,’’ end quote. Then he directed them to go to the Capitol.
Leading up to and even still in the wake of the deadly attack on
the Capitol, we’ve seen and heard Republican Members of Congress
as well as Republican State and local leaders and candidates con-
tinue to spread the dangerous and deadly ‘‘big lie.’’ We’ve also seen
it amplified by very irresponsible media outlets.
Earlier, you told us, if you see something, say something. Well,
I’ve seen and heard something, so I am telling you about it today.
There’s a new and dangerous lie. The former President is
telegraphing that he will be reinstated in August. This lunacy is
being amplified by incredibly irresponsible parties.
What’s most alarming is that this new lie is quickly gaining sup-
port in Trump’s political party. Currently, one in three Republicans
believes he will be reinstated as President in August.
Despite everything we knew via open sources about threats of vi-
olence on January 6th, there were catastrophic failures leading up
to the attack on our Capitol and on our democracy. Taking into
consideration the growing popularity of this new dangerous lie, as
FBI Director, is this on your radar? Are you concerned about this?
122
What are you doing ahead of August to prevent another January
6th?
Mr. WRAY. So, I guess a couple things I would say on this.
First, as I think I testified earlier, like former Attorney General
Barr, like former Acting Attorney General Rosen, we’ve looked at
the issue with an open mind, but we did not find the evidence of
fraud that would have changed or could have changed the outcome
of the Presidential election.
Now, as to rhetoric that’s out there, I have to be careful not to
be weighing in, as FBI Director, on different people’s rhetoric. We
speak through our work; we speak through our investigations.
We have a very, very active domestic terrorism investigation pro-
gram. We have—even before January 6th, under my watch, we ele-
vated, as you’ve heard me testify earlier today, elevated racially
motivated violent extremism to our highest threat band. We have
doubled—I doubled the amount of domestic terrorism investiga-
tions, including in this space, over the prior years. Now, with Janu-
ary 6th, that number has exponentially increased.
So, we are very actively at work on this subject and determined
to do our part to make sure that what happened on January 6
never happens again.
Ms. ESCOBAR. Director Wray, are you paying attention to what’s
happening with regard to the claims about August, yes or no?
Mr. WRAY. We are looking at all sorts of information that’s out
there as we try to evaluate and distribute intelligence and conduct
investigations. That’s what I would say on that subject.
Ms. ESCOBAR. Okay.
Well, I want to shift now a little bit. We’ll shift the subject to
White supremacy, anti-immigrant rhetoric, and the threat that this
toxic combination poses to security in communities like mine.
We have and will unfortunately continue to hear Republican
Members of Congress try to paint immigrants as criminals, asylum
seekers as invaders, and border communities like mine as unsafe.
That rhetoric, especially the use of the word ‘‘invasion,’’ which one
of my colleagues on this Committee used multiple times in this
hearing—the use of the word ‘‘invasion’’ is dangerous.
Indeed, that same language was used by a domestic terrorist who
drove from his home in Allen, Texas, to my community, El Paso,
Texas, on August 3rd to slaughter Mexicans and immigrants.
Members have more than once asked you questions about terror-
ists at the border. I am sure, Mr. Wray, as FBI Director, that you
are aware that attempted entry into the U.S. by known terrorists
is extremely rare on the southern border and, in fact, far more like-
ly to happen and is happening frequently at airports.
So, when responding to questions like those you’ve heard from
my colleagues about terrorists on the border, questions that are in-
tended to fuel xenophobia, I am asking that you, as FBI Director,
that you provide the context I just provided. It would be important
to defuse the anti-immigrant rhetoric that puts communities like
mine at risk.
I thank you for your testimony.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chair NADLER. The gentlelady yields back.
Mr. Jones?
123
Mr. JONES. Well, thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Director Wray, for your time today. You’ve been very
patient with all of us.
Before I go further, I do want to encourage you to allow your
staff to receive an education in critical race theory. I know that cer-
tain Members of this Committee could certainly benefit from that
kind of educational experience.
Unsurprisingly, I want to ask you about what happened on Janu-
ary 6th.
A sitting Member of Congress recently described that assault as
a, quote, ‘‘normal tourist visit,’’ if you can imagine that. Would you
describe what happened at the Capitol on January 6th as a, quote,
‘‘normal tourist visit’’? Just yes or no.
Mr. WRAY. That’s not the way I would describe it.
Mr. JONES. Okay. Thank you.
The insurrectionists were seen with handcuffs, zip ties, explo-
sives devices, bear spray, and tactical gear. Director, yes or no,
would you bring those weapons on a tourist visit to the Capitol?
Mr. WRAY. No.
Mr. JONES. Okay. Thank you.
The January 6th attack on the Capitol was planned out in the
open. It was incited by the former President of the United States,
make no mistake about that.
The danger did not end on January 6th. As many of my col-
leagues today have discussed, the threat of domestic terrorism by
White supremacists, anti-government forces, and militias is at an
all-time high.
With that in mind, Director, I want to ask you whether several
troubling recent incidents raise red flags in your mind about these
threats.
For example, Michael Flynn, the former National Security Advi-
sor, said at a rally, quote, ‘‘I want to know why what happened in
Myanmar can’t happen here. No reason it shouldn’t happen here.’’
Does that suggestion of a military coup raise a red flag to you,
Director? A simple yes or no.
Mr. WRAY. With respect, I just don’t think it’s appropriate for
me, as FBI Director, to be weighing in on other people’s public com-
ments.
It’s not that I am not sympathetic to the reason you are asking
the question, but, in my role, I think I have to be careful to speak
through our work. When the FBI Director speaks, I speak through
our investigations and our intelligence products.
So, I don’t think I should be starting to start chiming in on other
people’s public chatter or rhetoric, no matter what it is.
Mr. JONES. Well, Director, it’s true that you have an obligation
to protect the American public, right? To the extent you can help
the American public to understand what kind of dangerous rhetoric
poses a threat to the safety and security of the American people,
you can do so as a public service.
I mean, it’s pretty simple, right? I mean, this guy is calling for
a military coup. Is that something that would not be of concern to
you in your capacity as the FBI Director?
Mr. WRAY. A military coup would be of great concern to me if I
thought it was happening.
124
Mr. JONES. Thank you, Director.
Or consider this: Prominent officials within one party—I’ll just
say it—the Republican Party, have attended events and spoken
alongside White nationalists, instigators of the insurrection on Jan-
uary 6th, and leaders of domestic terrorist groups.
When leaders of one of our major political parties in this country
attend extremist events, does their attendance lend legitimacy to
those extremists who are seeking to bring other folks into fold and
convert people to their ideologies, yes or no?
Mr. WRAY. Again, I am not trying to be difficult here, but it’s
just, with respect, I don’t think it’s my role or the appropriate role
for any FBI Director to be weighing in on other people’s First
Amendment activity.
What I think we need to do at the FBI is to Act through our
work, to aggressively investigate domestic violent extremism, to ag-
gressively investigate election influence or interference, to aggres-
sively investigate the things that we are entrusted with inves-
tigating to protect the American people and uphold the Constitu-
tion.
Mr. JONES. Let me ask you this.
Mr. WRAY. It’s not that I am unsympathetic to why you are ask-
ing the question, but I don’t think that’s my role.
Mr. JONES. I understand.
I suspect the answer is yes, if you were to be forthcoming about
that.
How about this: A former attorney to President Trump falsely
stated, quote, ‘‘It should be that he can simply be reinstated.’’ I
think you’ve heard other of my colleagues say this today. To finish
this quote, ‘‘Biden is told to move out of the White House, and
President Trump should be moved back in.’’
Could statements like that encourage attacks of the kind that we
saw on January 6th, yes or no?
Mr. WRAY. Same answer.
Mr. JONES. Wow.
Director Wray, I’ve asked you these questions because the insur-
rectionists threatened more than our lives; they threatened our de-
mocracy, and the fact is, they still do. I hope that you see that.
Those who incited the assault with their calls to ‘‘stop the steal’’
now threaten to incite another one with their calls to stage a coup
or to, quote, ‘‘reinstate’’ Donald Trump.
The violent far-right nationalism that caused the insurrection is
still with us, stoked by elected officials and even the former, dis-
graced, defeated President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.
The American people, sir, need to know that the FBI is working as
hard to protect our democracy as the far right is working to over-
turn our democracy.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman’s—
Mr. JONES. I hope that we can have that confidence.
I yield back, Mr. Chair.
Chair NADLER. The gentleman yields back.
Ms. Ross?
Ms. ROSS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much, Director Wray, for being with us today
and for your patience. I know it’s been a long day.
125
I have two lines of questioning, so hopefully we can get through
the first one quickly, because my second one is the area where Con-
gresswoman Dean wanted to talk about, use of force.
The first I have to go to because I am from North Carolina, and
it deals with the Colonial Pipeline. In my district, during that hor-
rible week-long period, about three-quarters of our gas stations
simply didn’t have the fuel for my constituents.
Can you walk me through the different ways that a company em-
ploying inadequate cybersecurity measures could endanger Federal
supply chains like this case, and especially with crucial needs like
oil and gas infrastructure?
Mr. WRAY. Well, of course, a very good question, but I think a
fulsome answer to that would way exceed the amount of time we
have allotted. So, I want to be sensitive to your time constraints
here.
Certainly, all critical infrastructure increasingly is dependent on
internet connectivity and increasingly online. So, to the extent that
a company doesn’t have strong cybersecurity, we are more and
more dependent on their cybersecurity for our physical security.
I think that’s one of the things that the recent ransomware at-
tacks demonstrate, is that it’s not just affecting those companies,
but it can affect the average American at the gas pump or when
they’re buying a hamburger.
Ms. ROSS. So, Director Wray, do you think that Congress should
take actions to have mandatory cybersecurity standards for private
folks doing critical infrastructure?
Mr. WRAY. Well, again, as I’ve said in response to other topics,
I want to be careful about proposing or weighing in on specific leg-
islation.
I will say that I do believe that the private-sector piece of our
cybersecurity as a Nation is absolutely indispensable. Until we fig-
ure out a way to ensure that the private sector has adequate cyber-
security—and, maybe just as importantly, a key part of cybersecu-
rity is closely latched up and informing, informing the Federal gov-
ernment, the FBI, CISA, et cetera—we are going to have a problem
adequately defending the country.
So, I think anything that goes at those issues is something worth
taking a close look at.
Ms. ROSS. Thank you very much for that answer.
On the use-of-force issue, I want to quickly follow up on that
issue, especially since Representative Dean didn’t get a chance to
ask her question. I want to talk about the FBI’s collection of use-
of-force data.
I worked on this issue in North Carolina with full cooperation
from law enforcement on traffic statistics and who gets stopped and
who gets searched. We have a pretty model legislation in North
Carolina for doing that.
Given the possibility that the FBI National Use-of-Force Data
Collection Program may be discontinued as early as December of
2022, what other options are there for collecting law enforcement
use-of-force data? What have you considered, and how long would
it take to establish an alternative?
Mr. WRAY. Well, I’d be happy to have my staff help with more
detailed information. What I would say is that we are working very
126
hard to increase the reporting, and we’ve been—of national use-of-
force data, because we believe strongly that only through that are
we going to be able to have a thoughtful, informed conversation
that’s actually based on the hard facts.
I think we’ve made good progress. I think we’ve recently now
crossed the threshold of about 40 percent of sworn—I think that’s
about right—40 percent of sworn Federal, State, and local law en-
forcement officers across the country. We are driving hard to try
to get that number high enough so that we can start sharing the
results of that collection more broadly.
So, it was a big milestone, one of them, one of the milestones we
crossed recently; allowed us to take certain steps. We are hoping
to cross future milestones before too long. Anything that you can
do to encourage the law enforcement community—not just you per-
sonally, but Members of Congress, can do to encourage State and
local law enforcement in their communities to provide that data,
that would certainly be appreciated.
Ms. ROSS. Well, I will certainly do that in North Carolina.
Do you have any estimated time for when you might be able to
provide some information when you have a critical amount of that?
Chair NADLER. The gentlelady’s time has expired. The Witness
may answer the question.
Mr. WRAY. Let me have somebody follow up with you about
where we are on time estimates. I am not sure if I’ve got the latest
on that.
Ms. ROSS. Thank you, Mr. Director.
Mr. Chair, I yield back.
Chair NADLER. The gentlelady yields back.
Ms. Bush?
Ms. BUSH. St. Louis and I thank you, Chair, for convening this
hearing today.
Director Wray, thank you for being here as well. Thank you for
being here with us, taking this time.
So, as an activist and as an organizer from the front lines of the
Ferguson movement, I am intimately aware of the tactics the Bu-
reau has used when surveilling and investigating and intimidating
activists like myself, from the height of the civil rights movement,
to Ferguson in 2014, to today. We now know that the Bureau did,
in fact, investigate and surveil those protesting for racial justice
and against police brutality.
In anticipation of this hearing, I wrote to you on June 4th re-
questing access to all the information that the Bureau may have
gathered about me since 2014, the Ferguson uprising, and up to
now. When can I expect to hear back from the Bureau regarding
that information?
Mr. WRAY. Congresswoman, I was just recently told that you had
sent such a letter asking for information. As you know, we receive
thousands of requests for files, as it were, and there’s a process for
that. I would be happy to have my staff follow up with yours to
help you understand how the process works, and that can give you
a little bit better sense about timing and other steps that have to
be gone through.
Ms. BUSH. Okay.
127
Mr. WRAY. As you probably can determine from the way I’ve an-
swered a lot of questions today, I am very much a process guy and
I want to make sure we follow the process here.
Ms. BUSH. That’s fine. Sure.
In the next 7 days, is it possible that we can get this resolved,
possibly? I mean, we can go through the steps; I just want to—
Mr. WRAY. I’ll have somebody follow up with you about the right
process.
Ms. BUSH. We can follow up. Okay. Thank you.
I ask because I am concerned about the FBI’s treatment of pro-
testers. I want to walk through the FBI’s response to the White su-
premacist insurrection on the Capitol and the FBI’s response to
mass protests that swept through the country last year seeking jus-
tice for George Floyd and for Breonna Taylor.
Isn’t it true that the Department deputized and deployed thou-
sands of Federal law enforcement, including FBI personnel, in,
quote, ‘‘response to the events related to civil unrest,’’ end quote,
during the summer of 2020? A yes or no is fine.
Mr. WRAY. Well, I am not sure I have a yes or no answer to that.
I don’t know that the FBI—I don’t recall the FBI being deputized
for things. The FBI fulfilled our mission, some of which I’ve de-
scribed earlier in response to one of your colleague’s questions.
Whether other agencies were deputized by the Justice Depart-
ment would be a question better referred to the Justice Depart-
ment.
Ms. BUSH. Okay. I think that the answer that we are looking for
is yes. We have this information—we have evidence that the
records that identify SWAT resources and special agent bomb
techs, that they were deployed. That’s what’s in my hand.
What about, was the FBI authorized to use force in response to
the January 6th White supremacist insurrection on the Capitol?
Just a yes or a no.
Mr. WRAY. Was the—
Ms. BUSH. Was the FBI authorized to use force in response to the
White supremacist attack on January the 6th?
Mr. WRAY. I think the—I am not aware of any specific authoriza-
tion to use force. I think the FBI has policies about its use of force,
and those policies would have been in effect on January 6.
Ms. BUSH. Thank you.
So, you stated earlier that the Bureau does not surveil First
Amendment protests. Director Wray, isn’t it true that the FBI did
deploy some 120 surveillance aircraft—I know it was alluded to
earlier—to monitor ‘‘Justice for George Floyd’’ protests around June
1st in Washington, DC? That can just be a yes or a no.
Mr. WRAY. Well, again, I am not sure it lends itself to a yes or
no answer. We have specific policies that govern our use of various
techniques and tools that we have available to us, the Attorney
General guidelines and the DIOG that I referred to earlier.
Ms. BUSH. Okay.
Mr. WRAY. So, the circumstances under which we would’ve used
aviation assets over the course of the summer would’ve been cov-
ered by those.
Ms. BUSH. So, yes, Director, here are the flight path records.
128
I’d like to introduce this article that cites the flight path
records—flight paths into the record.
[The information follows:]
MS. BUSH FOR THE RECORD
130
8/8/22, 2:38 PM FBI Conducted Aerial Surveillance Of Black Lives Matter Protests In DC
ITS MORE THAN CHOCO
SCIENCE
The FBI Used Its Most Advanced Spy
Plane To Watch Black Lives Matter
Protests
The aircraft is normally used to provide surveillance for big federal drug and gang
busts - but flew over the Black Lives Matter protests in DC earlier this month, as
well as over Baltimore during the protests following Freddie Gray's death.
Peter Aldhous
Bu zz Feed News Reporter
Posted on June 20. 2020 at 10:35 am
View 14 comments
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8/8/22, 2:38 PM FBI Conducted Aerial Surveillance Of Black Lives Matter Protests In DC
The FBI's Cessna Citation jet.
HR Planespotter
Shortly before n p.m. on Monday, fune 1, just hours after federal police used tear gas
and batons to clear protesters from the front of the White House for President Donald
Trump's Bible-wielding photo op, a Cessna Citation jet took off from Manassas Regional
Airport in Virginia. Until about 1.30 a.m., it flew in a 7-mile circle around central
Washington, DC, surveilling the protests, flight tracking records show.
The aircraft is a one-of-a-kind spy plane operated by the FBI, fitted with sophisticated
cameras for long-range, persistent video surveillance, day or night. It repeated its late-
night circling around the city as protests continued the following two nights, and made
a shorter flight on fune 6.
ADVERT ISEM ENT
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8/8/22, 2:38 PM FBI Conducted Aerial Surveillance Of Black Lives Matter Protests In DC
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Fl ights by the FBl 's Cessna Citation jet from June 1 to June 6.PeterAldhous/BuzzFeed
News/ Via ADS-B Exchange/ Flightradar24
Normally, this elite spy plane is deployed for some of the FBI's most important
surveillance missions, providing eyes in the sky when federal agents arrest drug
traffickers or violent gang members. But this isn't the first time it has flown over Black
Lives Matter protests: A Buzz Feed News review of flight tracking records has established
that the same aircraft circled above Baltimore in April and May of 2015, during the
unrest that followed the death of Freddie Gray from severe injuries sustained in police
custody.
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133
8/8/22, 2:38 PM FBI Conducted Aerial Surveillance Of Black Lives Matter Prolests In DC
FBI surveillance of protests, even if they happen after a curfew has been declared, is
controversial because the agency says it does not monitor activity protected by the First
Amendment.
"It's now been well documented that a number of federal agencies wildly overreacted to
protests in DC in deeply troubling ways;' Nathan Freed Wessler, an attorney with the
American Civil Liberties Union's Project on Speech, Privacy, and Technology, told
BuzzFeed News. "To learn that the FBI deployed its state-of-the-art surveillance plane to
watch these historic protests raises additional troubling questions."
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The FBI has a fleet of more than 120 surveillance aircraft, covertly registered to
fictitious companies. In 2016, BuzzFeed News analyzed more than four months of flights
by these planes.
"It should come as no surprise that the FBI uses planes to follow terrorists, spies, and
serious criminals;' said then-deputy director Mark Giuliano in June 2015, in a rare
public statement on the agency's aviation program. "We have an obligation to follow
those people who want to hurt our country and its citizens, and we will continue to do
so."
The vast majority of the FBI's planes are small, propeller-driven Cessnas, according to
Federal Aviation Administration registration records for the agency's front companies.
The jet that flew over BLM protests is the only aircraft of its type operated by known
FBI fronts. It is registered to the National Aircraft Leasing Corporation, identified as an
FBI alias in the 2012 book Intel Wars, an analysis of the "war on terror" written by the
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former intelligence analyst Matthew Aid. The address given on the plane's registration
documents is a UPS Store in Greenville, Delaware.
Other FAA documents. submitted to verify that the plane is safe to fly, reveal how it has
been outfitted for advanced surveillance.
It was fitted with video cameras in 2006, by a company called Alpha Research &
Technology. Photos on the firm's website show the plane and the two-person, three-
screen console used to control its surveillance cameras from inside the main cabin. The
plane now carries a Wescam MX- 20 steerable camera turret, described by its
manufacturer as ideal for high-altitude, persistent surveillance. It can monitor targets
day and night, see through haze, and provide infrared thermal imaging.
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Other FBI planes carry less capable cameras requiring the aircraft to fly at altitudes of
around 5,000 feet, where they would more easily be spotted from the ground. Those
planes watch suspects in FBI investigations in the same region as their home airport.
The Citation jet, by contrast, is deployed across the entire nation, and often circles its
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8/8/22, 2:38 PM FBI Conducted Aerial Surveillance Of Black Lives Matter Prolests In DC
targets at altitudes of 15,000 feet or more. During the flights above Washington, DC, in
early June, it flew at between 13,000 and 17,500 feet.
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BuzzFeed News obtained flight tracking records for the plane going back to the start of
2015 from the website Flightradar24, linking several of its flights to high-profile raids on
drug traffickers and violent gangs. These included major drug trafficking busts in
Puerto Rico in 2018 and 2019, drug and money laundering arrests in northern Alabama
in October 2019, and the capture of members of prisoner-led gangs in Woodland,
Northern California, in February 2018.
Interested in Science articles?
CJ
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8/8/22, 2:38 PM FBI Conducted Aerial Surveillance Of Black Lives Matter Prolests In DC
Flights by the FBl's Cessna Citation jet across the US from January 2015 to May
2020. Use the search box to look in other locations and click on the tracks for the
dates of the flights. Peter Aldhous I BuzzFeedNews/ ViaFlightradar24
But the plane's recent outing above DC is not the first time it has watched BLM protests.
In May 2015, the ACLU noted that an unidentified Cessna Citation had circled above
Baltimore during the unrest triggered by the death of Freddie Gray. An FBI propeller-
driven Cessna was also tracked circling over the city at that time.
Through a Freedom of Information request to the FBI, the ACLU later obtained flight
and evidence logs from the agency's flights over Baltimore, plus video surveillance
footage recorded by its planes.
In 2015, the FBI Cessna Citation's identity was masked on public flight tracking
websites, but from the Flightradar24 data BuzzFeed News has now confirmed that the
same plane that flew over the BLM protests in DC in June following George Floyd's
death also conducted surveillance in Baltimore after Freddie Gray was killed.
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8/8/22, 2:38 PM FBI Conducted Aerial Surveillance Of Black Lives Matter Prolests In DC
Flights by the FBl's Cessna Citation jet from April 29 to May 3, 2015. PeterAldhous/
BuzzFeed News / Via Flightradar24
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Although there had been violent clashes and looting in the days before the FBI planes
were deployed above Baltimore, more than 18 hours of video footage subsequently
released by the agency showed peaceful marches and people moving around on the
streets at night.
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8/8/22, 2:38 PM FBI Conducted Aerial Surveillance Of Black Lives Matter Protests In DC
In 2015, the Baltimore Police Department asked for the FBI's help in monitoring unrest
in the city. But the DC Metropolitan Police Department said it did not request the
flights above the nation's capital in early June.
"MPD did not request FBI aerial support," department spokesperson Alaina Gertz told
BuzzFeed News by email.
The surveillance flights over DC began the day after another branch of the Department
of Justice, the Drug Enforcement Administration, was given the authority to "conduct
covert surveillance" and collect intelligence on people protesting the killing of George
Floyd by Minneapolis police.
The FBI can also equip its planes with devices called cell site simulators that mimic a
cellphone tower and can be used to locate and track people via their phones. But Heath
Hardman, a lawyer who used to operate similar devices for the US Marine Corps, could
find no evidence of antennas that would be used for this purpose in the FAA documents
for the Citation jet, and said that a plane tracking phones would be unlikely to fly so
high. "You want to be as low as you can without being detected;' he told BuzzFeed News.
The FBI declined to answer specific questions from BuzzFeed News about the evidence
collected by the plane, and whether it conducted any forms of surveillance other than
video monitoring.
"The FBI is supporting our state, local, and federal law enforcement partners with
maintaining public safety in the communities we serve," the agency responded in a
written statement. "Our efforts are focused on identifying, investigating, and
disrupting individuals that are inciting violence and engaging in criminal activity. The
FBI respects those who are exercising their First Amendment rights, including the right
to peacefully protest."
The FBI's Cessna jet wasn't the only sophisticated government spy plane to fly over DC
in early June. On June 3 and 4, an RC-26 surveillance aircraft operated by the Air
National Guard flew in tighter circles at altitudes of less than 7,000 feet. These planes,
like the FBI's jet, are commonly used in counter-drug trafficking operations.
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8/8/22, 2 :38 PM FBI Conducted Aerial Surveillance Of Black Lives Matter Prolests In DC
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The Air National Guard told Air Force magazine that these flights were "responding to a
District of Columbia National Guard request to provide airborne situational awareness
of key lines of communication and critical infrastructure within the District?'
The Air Force Inspector General is now investigating whether this aircraft improperly
monitored protesters, the New York Times reported on June 18.
"It would be inappropriate to comment further at this time due to the ongoing nature
of the investigation," National Guard spokesperson Wayne Hall told BuzzFeed News by
email.
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140
Ms. BUSH. Was the FBI authorized to conduct surveillance or de-
ploy surveillance aircraft and/or drones in response to the January
6th White supremacist insurrection on the Capitol, yes or no? I am
going to—I would love for you to answer that.
Mr. WRAY. I don’t recall whether or not aviation assets were
called for or used in the January 6th.
Ms. BUSH. Well, you can just—that’s fine. That’s fine.
Mr. WRAY. I just don’t know off the top of my head.
Ms. BUSH. Okay. The evidence is clear. We’ve witnessed it with
our own eyes. The Bureau has a White supremacy problem within
its ranks. The choice to not pursue White supremacist violence like
what we saw on January 6th is not because the Bureau does not
have the resources or the statutory discretion to do so; it is a bla-
tant dismissal of White supremacy as a threat. It is racist. It’s un-
ethical. It’s unconscionable.
Protestors last summer rose up to save lives, and they were vio-
lently removed with chemical weapons, pepper spray, tear gas,
smoke canisters, stun grenades, and rubber bullets.
That’s why we, as activists and protesters, must continue to pur-
sue transparency from the Bureau. I am talking to activists right
now: File your FOIA requests.
We are not a threat.
Thank you, and I yield back.
Chair NADLER. The gentlelady yields back.
This concludes today’s hearing. We thank Director Wray for par-
ticipating.
Without objection, all Members will have 5 legislative days to
submit additional written questions for the Witness or additional
materials for the record.
Chair NADLER. Without objection, the hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:32 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
QUESTIONS AND RESPONSES FOR THE
RECORD
142
OVERSIGHT OF THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER WRAY
JUNE 10, 2021
Questions For The Record
Submitted By Rep. Zoe Lofgren
I . Over the past year, there have been multiple press reports that government law
enforcement and surveillance agencies, including the FBI, have bought large volumes of
personal data and other information linked to individual persons in the United States -
including information originally collected from and/or generated by the activities of
individual users of electronic devices and online services - from private data brokers and
other private sources. I have several related questions:
a. Does the FBI purchase any products or services from private entities that give it
either direct or indirect access to nonpublic information originally collected from
and/or generated by the activities of individual users of electronic devices,
software and/or online services? To be clear, this question would include services
that allow the FBI to search or otherwise use databases of such privately collected
data, even if the agency does not take immediate possession of databases or
information itself.
b. In what year did the FBI first start making such purchases?
c. What types of such personal information (i.e ., that is linked or otherwise related to
an identifiable indi vidual) have been included in such purchases? In particular
(and without limiting other categories identified in a complete response to the
above question), which of the following have been included: geolocation data;
photographic or video images of recognizable faces ; information reflecting user
activity on social media websites and services; information reflecting logs,
histories, or equivalents of user activities in web browsers or other software
applications?
d. For what purposes does the FBI use personal information purchased from private
entities (including any products and services giving either direct or indirect access
to such information)?
e. Has any such information purchased from private entities been used in the course
of criminal investigations by the FBI? If so, are the defendants in any legal
proceedings resulting from such investigations notified about these uses of
purchased information?
2. Section 702 prohibits the FBI from "intentionally target[ing] a person reasonably
believed to be located outside the United States if the purpose of such acquisition is to
target a particular, known person reasonably believed to be in the United States." Has the
FBI used Section 702 to acquire information when targeting a particular, known person
reasonably believed to be in the United States is one of several purposes of the
acquisition? In other words, does the FBI understand Section 702 (as codified in 50
143
U.S.C. § !88la(b)(2)) to prohibit an acquisition targeting a particular, known person
reasonably believed to be in the United States only if that is the sole purpose of such
targeting?
3. Has the FBI purchased internet metadata, including " netflow" and Domain Name System
(DNS) records?
4. Has the FBI purchased domestic internet communications (in which the sender and all
recipients are associated with U.S . IP addresses)?
5. Has the FBI purchased internet communications in which one party is associated with a
U. S. IP address and another party is associated with a non-U.S. IP address?
144
OVERSIGHT OF THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER WRAY
JUNE 10, 2021
Questions For The Record
Submitted By Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee
On January 6th the domestic terrorists who beat law enforcement officers and breached the
Citadel of democracy of the United States wore insignias of White Supremacist groups, waved
confederate flags, hung a noose on the lawn, and they were shouting racial epithets. As indicated,
NYPD sent a packet of raw intelligence concerning potential violence.
Qi: With all of that information, including an assessment al headquarters why did the FBI not
issue a formal threat assessment that violence al the U.S. Capitol on Janua,y 6, 2021 was a
foreseeable probability? Also, please explain in detail what other actions, if any, were taken by
the FBI. Provide documentation.
The Norfolk FBI office issued a Situational Information Report (SIR) which contained the
following message from extremist groups it had been monitoring:
"Be ready to fight, Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in,
and blood from their BLM, Black Lives Matter, and ANTIFA slave soldiers being
spilled. Get violent, stop calling this a march, or rally, or protest Get ready for
war
Q2: Would you agree that these words clearly indicate racial bias and an attempt to use race
and racism as a potential motive for violence?
Q3: Was the FBI aware of online threats to the Vice President, Speaker of the House, and
specific members of Congress connected with January 6th ?
Q4: On the day of, but in advance of the Janua,y 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, did FBI
Headquarters contact the Vice President? The Speaker of the House? Any member of Congress
on the day ofJanuary 6th? Please copies documenting any such communications.
Let us explore the connection of race and Donald Trump, who was President of the United States
during the events in question, the president, former president of the United States. On December
19th , he tweeted: "Big protest in D.C on January 6th , be there, will be wild." At 12:15 p.m. on
January 6tl' he said to the assembled multitude on the Ellipse: " You will never take back our
country with weakness." Less than an hour later, at 1:10 p.m., he admonished the crowd: "We
fight like hell , and if you don't fight like hell you will not have a country anymore." At 2:11 p.m.
the Trump-incited mob breached police lines on the west side of the capitol.
Q5: ls ii the position of the FBI that in the totality of the circumstances the words of Donald
Trump cited above indicate that the former President knowingly motivated the domestic terrorist
attack on Janua,y 6th. Have any of these words been reviewed to determine whether Donald
-1-
145
Trump should be referred to the Department of Justice for investigation, arrest, and prosecution
in connection with January 6, 2021 attack on the US. Capitol. Please provide documents
supporting your response.
There are only 4.7% of African American in the FBI. Much has come to my attention of the lack
of promotion, opportunities for leadership in the FBI, and the diversity office that you have does
not report directly to the FBI director.
Q6: Please provide in writing a status update on the FBI 's actions to ensure diversity and
equality of opportunity within the Bureau, especially for racial and ethnic minorities,
particularly African Americans?
-2-
146
OVERSIGHT OF THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER WRAY
JUNE 10, 2021
Questions For The Record
Submitted By Rep. Tom McClintock
1. How many persons on the Terrorist Watch List have been encountered this
year crossing through our southern border and how many persons with
criminal records or criminal warrants have been encountered this year
crossing our southern border?
2. What is the current FBI estimate of how many terrorists, criminals, and gang
members are among the hundreds of thousands of got-aways tl1e Border
Patrol was not able to intercept?
3. On that point, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy sent you a letter in
April requesting a briefing on this subject. Will you commit to providing all
members of this committee with the briefing you provided to Mr. McCarthy
to keep us fully infonned on tl1is issue?
4. With regards to announcement of the Joint Task Force Alpha to combat the
human trafficking that the Biden open border policies made possible, how
many agents will be assigned to this endeavor? How much money will back
this task force?
147
OVERSIGHT OF THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER WRAY
JUNE 10, 2021
Questions For The Record
Submitted By Rep. Scott Fitzgerald
I . According to the Department of Homeland Security, upwards of 80-90% of counterfeit
goods globally originate in China, costing U.S. manufacturers and other businesses
billions of dollars annually. Similarly, China is responsible for an enormous share of
global piracy of American movies, music, sports broadcasts, and other content protected
by intellectual property. There are criminal statutes in place to prosecute those
responsible, and the Justice Department and FBI have an important role together with
DHS to fight these criminals. As the head of the country' s top law enforcement agency,
what steps are you and the Biden Administration taking to prevent IP theft?
2. You and the FBI hold an important role in the Biden Administration in protecting
American citizens and businesses from Chinese IP theft. But the Administration recently
announced plans to support foreign adversaries, including China, in taking U.S.
intellectual property relating to COVID-19 vaccines, including state-of-the-art new
mRNA drug development platforms. Have you or anyone else in the Administration, to
your knowledge, advised the President that supporting foreign countries' waivers of this
U.S. intellectual property essentially endorses IP theft?
3. The crisis at the Southern border was caused by the radical immigration policies of the
Biden Administration and raises serious national security risks. The FBI utilizes several
programs that target fentanyl crimes, including the Prescription Drug Initiative, Safe
Street Task Forces, I-CODE, and the Transnational Organized Crime Programs. I
introduced the Stopping Overdoses ofFentanyl Analogues Act to keep fentanyl
designated as a schedule I drug. Can you comment on the affect that designation, which
was put in place in February 2018, has had on the flow offentanyl and its derivatives into
the United States?
148
OVERSIGHT OF THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER WRAY
JUNE 10, 2021
Questions For The Record
Submitted By Rep. Cliff Bentz
I. The Western United States is suffering from the impact of the greatest drought in modern
history. Some 70 million people are affected, and almost the entire west half of the US.
is at risk. One of the unfortunate impacts of the drought is to turn our beautiful usually
green millions upon millions of acres of forest into tinder dry opportunities for massive
and cataclysmic infernos capable of causing billions in damage, loss of thousands of
homes, and destruction of human and animal life Many communities are just a single
match strike away from disaster. What is the FBI doing to anticipate the possibility of
terrorists using our forests against us as a weapon of mass destruction?
2. In your opening remarks you mentioned the "attacks on minorities, Asians, Pacific
Islanders, and Jewish people" . These attacks appear to be prompted by the worst kind of
racial bias. I also note that recently Attorney General Garland, in speaking about White
Supremacy, described supremacists as " specifically those who advocate for the
superiority of the white race." In this time of past due sensitivity toward challenges
facing minorities in the United States, why is the FBI failing to bring its own
demographics into some meaningful comparison to the percentages of minorities and
women in our country? (To the point I note that only 4% of the Agency is black, and that
the Agencies ' "special agents" as of February oflast year were 79.1 % male. This is a
problem of long duration apparently the result of means the Agency uses to select and
then advance agents in the system.)
3. I quote: "China' s theft of technology is the biggest law enforcement threat to the United
States". This is from a presentation you gave on February 61h, 2020. What is the Agency
doing in this area and does it have the funding to adequately address this challenge?
4. Cyber security and Artificial Intelligence are two of the greatest threats to America. Does
your Agency have the technical expertise and staff needed to keep up with China, Russia
and other countries engaged in these spaces?
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