Republicans grill FBI Director Wray over collusion with social media

House Judiciary Committee Republicans took aim Wednesday at FBI Director Christopher Wray after a federal judge ruled that the bureau colluded with social media companies to throttle free speech that “was conservative in nature.”

Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) kicked off a tense hearing by citing a Louisiana federal judge’s decision last week that revealed government agencies reached out to Big Tech to help suppress posts about COVID-19 vaccines, masking measures, lockdowns and the authenticity of first son Hunter Biden’s laptop, among other issues.

Jordan, who quoted at length from the ruling in his opening statement, noted that the FBI had declined to answer when companies like Facebook asked whether the laptop was “Russian disinformation,” which “misled” millions of Americans about its contents before the 2020 election.

“When the court says the FBI misled, that’s a nice way of saying they lied,” Jordan said. “They lied and as a result, important information was kept.”

US District Judge Terry Doughty, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, said in his 155-page order on July 4 that “the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’”

The Biden administration unsuccessfully sought a stay of the order while it appealed the ruling, a bid which was blocked by Doughty on Monday.

Wray did not mention the ruling during his opening statement, commenting instead on the bureau’s “work going after the cartels exploiting our Southwest border,” the trafficking of fentanyl and thousands of investigations concerning Chinese espionage and the theft of American innovation.

The FBI director, who served as a federal prosecutor under former President George W. Bush, at one point told panel members: “The idea that I’m biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me given my own personal background.” Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) noted favorably that Wray was “a registered Republican.”

Asked by Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) whether he was “deeply disturbed” by Doughty’s findings, Wray answered that the FBI’s “focus is not on disinformation, broadly speaking.”

“That’s not accurate,” Johnson shot back. “You need to read this court opinion because you’re in charge of enforcing it.”

“The FBI is not in the business of moderating content or causing any social media company to suppress or censor,” Wray replied.

“That is not what the court has found,” Johnson said, adding that the FBI also suppressed online information about the so-called “lab leak theory” of COVID-19’s origins. “The FBI was the only agency in the entire intelligence community to reach the assessment that it was more likely than not that that was the explanation, but your agents pulled it off the internet, sir. That’s what the evidence in the court is.”

Johnson also quoted from the ruling, which called the FBI’s involvement in the suppression “arguably the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.”

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) also pressed Wray about online censorship, questioning whether the FBI had the authority to involve itself in such matters.

“We don’t ask social media companies to censor information or suppress information when it comes to national security threats,” Wray said. “So what we do do is alert them when some other intelligence agency gives us information about a foreign intelligence service being behind some account, we will call social media companies’ attention to that.”

“The suggestion of the most powerful law enforcement operation is not a suggestion, it is in fact, effectively an order,” Issa said, cutting Wray off.

Jordan directed Wray to other actions by the Justice Department to target parents at school board meetings and an FBI field office’s memo that designated Catholics as an extremist group, citing FBI whistleblowers who testified before the committee.

He further pointed to the charging of pro-life activist and Catholic Mark Houck, who was arrested in a show of force by armed agents at his Pennsylvania home last year. Houck was later acquitted of assault charges in connection with a confrontation outside a Philadelphia abortion clinic.

“The Justice Department, the FBI want the taxpayers they censored, the parents they labeled, pro-life Catholics they call radical — they want them to pay for a new FBI headquarters,” Jordan said, citing plans to replace the current bureau building in the nation’s capital.

Wray told Jordan the anti-Catholic memo left him “aghast” and he ordered it withdrawn and it has since been rescinded, but Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice has not rescinded its own memo authorizing the investigation of agitated parents at school board meetings as potential “domestic terrorists.”

Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jerry Nadler (D-NY) did not mention the ruling and dismissed the hearing as a political stunt launched by the Republican-led committee as part of an “array of baseless investigations into the FBI” to “protect Donald Trump from the consequences of his actions to return to the White House in the next election.”

“This is where the extreme MAGA leadership of this Congress has brought us today,” the Manhattan lawmaker said.

Nadler also tried to sow doubt about FBI whistleblowers who have come before the committee, as well as interviews the chairman has conducted with bureau officials — accusing Jordan of having provided incomplete transcripts of a June deposition of Steven D’Antuono, a former FBI assistant director in Washington.

Jordan took a swipe at Nadler in response, correcting his pronunciation of D’Antuono’s last name, and adding it was “something the ranking member might have known if he’d actually shown up at the deposition like I did.”