Chuck Grassley vs. Christopher Wray, utter annihilation letter edition

Suffice it to say that Sen. Chuck Grassley, the incoming chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, put together a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray that's utterly devastating. In Sen. Grassley's 11-page letter to Dir. Wray, Sen Grassley laid out in painstaking detail all of the times that the FBI failed to respond to Sen. Grassley's letters for information.

The letter starts by saying "Seven years ago, I presided over your confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, after President Trump nominated you to become only the eighth FBI Director in the Bureau’s 116-year history. The Senate confirmed you to your current position in hopes you’d bring needed change to the FBI after the politicization and scandal presided over by your predecessor, Director James Comey. While I sincerely congratulated you on your nomination, I reminded you that an FBI Director’s ten-year term is a ceiling, not a floor, and laid down my expectations for your service. These included foremost the prompt and thorough compliance with congressional oversight requests and the protection of whistleblowers, whom I’ve spent my career defending. As we stand at the threshold of a new Congress and a new administration, with seven years of water under the bridge, you’ve failed in these fundamental duties as director."

For instance, Sen. Grassley wrote this:

One of the most egregious examples is the FBI’s failure to provide basic information I requested more than two years ago related to the FBI’s ongoing mishandling of sexual harassment claims made by the FBI’s female employees. This request was not pulled out of a hat. It was based on credible whistleblower disclosures alleging hundreds of FBI employees had retired or resigned to avoid accountability for sexual misconduct. Whistleblowers also alleged the FBI had disciplined senior officials less severely than their subordinates for this misconduct. In November 2022, I released internal FBI documents corroborating these disclosures. I and my staff ever since have asked repeatedly for information sufficient to determine how FBI handled these serious claims and how widespread the problem really is. The FBI, for its part, told the media it would provide the information to me. You personally told me at a December 5, 2023, Judiciary Committee hearing, when I confronted you with the FBI’s blatant inaction, that you would check with your team and then follow up with me. Your Deputy Director, Paul Abbate, also publicly stated the FBI is serious about removing officials for sexual misconduct. After a year since you made that pledge, over three years since Deputy Director Abbate’s public comments, and after many more requests to FBI to provide this information, neither of you have followed up or followed through. This inexcusable delay and obstruction by you and Deputy Director Abbate has prevented Congress and the Judiciary Committee from addressing the shocking sexual misconduct at the FBI. This is a promise made and broken, on an issue of utmost importance.

Director Wray is great at looking competent during hearings. Unfortunately, he's worthless at getting oversight information to congrssional committees. Ignoring important details like that should get FBI directors terminated.

Likewise, in May and August of 2022, I wrote you requesting information about the vetting of individuals evacuated from Afghanistan through Operations Allies Welcome (OAW). These letters highlighted troubling revelations in a February 2022 report from the DOJ Office of Inspector General, which revealed Afghanistan evacuees weren’t vetted against all available DOD tactical data prior to being paroled into the U.S. by the Biden-Harris Department of Homeland Security.12 The report revealed the National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC) flagged at least 50 Afghan evacuees for the FBI as "potentially significant security concerns." FBI failed entirely to answer my inquiry on this serious national security issue. Instead, in July 2022, FBI participated in a classified multi-agency briefing to congressional staff on the issue, which revealed new information about additional individuals beyond the 50 individuals initially flagged by NGIC, but failed to answer my outstanding questions. At an August 4, 2022, Judiciary Committee oversight hearing, I asked you directly whether the FBI knows where certain flagged evacuees are located. Your answer left the impression that you hadn’t even looked into the matter, despite my repeated inquiries. You said, “I can’t sit here right now and tell you that we know where all are located at any given time. That’s probably true." Since that time, on October 7, 2024, the FBI arrested Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi after he allegedly planned an election day terrorist attack in the U.S. on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). The DOJ’s criminal complaint claimed Tawhedi, an Afghan national, entered the U.S. in September 2021 during the same time period as the Biden-Harris Administration’s Operation Allies Refuge and Operation Allies Welcome, and was placed on parole status pending his immigration proceedings. You’ve failed to respond to my inquiries on that serious matter as well.

In addition, in May 2024, a DHS OIG report confirmed the concerns I and my colleagues raised, that the Biden Administration has failed to properly vet Afghan evacuees. That report outlined various failures at DHS, including its failure to identify and resolve issues for noncitizens with derogatory information, and gaps in CBP, USCIS, and ICE’s responsibility for terminating parole, initiating removal proceedings, or monitoring parole expiration. The same report also noted FBI’s refusal to provide USCIS with full access to its National Crime Information Center Interstate Identification Index. The DHS OIG noted that FBI refused to provide this access because it, “deems immigration and naturalization issues as noncriminal justice matters.” 22 This position is hard to defend, especially given the fact that, again as the OIG report noted, OAW parolees, “were [] convicted of committing crimes such as abusive sexual contact with a minor, indecent exposure, sexual assault, auto grand larceny, assault, and battery.”23 Once again, FBI, with you at the helm, failed to respond to any of this, despite my repeated requests.

In short, Wray hasn't taken his oversight responsibilities seriously whatsoever. Check this out:

Sen. Grassley's letter is one of the most thorough letters I've seen to a confirmedofficial of our government. It's worth reading from start to finish.