I cut FBI Director Christopher Wray a fair amount of slack on Wednesday because the majority of his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee appeared to be refreshingly forthright. That was, of course, the testimony that had to do with the FBI’s investigation and findings — so far — regarding the July 13th assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. There’s no way to know for certain what made Wednesday’s appearance different from so many before it, but as I’ve alluded to previously, my working theory is that the FBI doesn’t have an actual dog in this fight. The massive security failures at play here aren’t on them and there’s largely bipartisan interest in Congress at getting to the bottom of what went wrong here, so the FBI is incentivized to play ball. On that subject.
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Perhaps not so much on other topics. While most of the questioning and discussion Wednesday centered on the rally shooting, there were occasional references to other matters, such as January 6th, “gun control,” FBI fitness standards, and one that caught my attention when I heard it raised: the “Trump questionnaire.” I first became aware of this item in June when Empower Oversight President Tristan Leavitt directed a letter to U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz detailing the agency’s abuse of the security clearance process to force out employees with disfavored views.
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When Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI) questioned Wray on Wednesday, he raised the issue of the questionnaire:
Here’s the clip of the exchange… pic.twitter.com/jgZmr5Fnm9
— Tristan Leavitt (@tristanleavitt) July 24, 2024
TIFFANY: Is support for President Trump a security concern amongst your employees?
WRAY: No.
TIFFANY: Is objection to the COVID-19 vaccine a security threat?
WRAY: Not from my perspective.
TIFFANY: Who approved what is termed the “Trump questionnaire” within the FBI that was done by SIIs? Dena Perkins, Jeffrey Veltri were behind it — who is responsible for that, and did you know that there was a “Trump questionnaire” out there?
WRAY: So, the document you’re asking about is an interview outline that we only recently learned about and, in my view, is completely inappropriate. I asked my team to get to the bottom of what happened and to ensure that doesn’t happen again, and I’ve learned that it’s not an FBI form; that its use was isolated; that it was created not by an FBI employee but by an outside contractor, and that individual is no longer affiliated with the FBI. But we are sending what we have found to the Office of Inspector General…and will cooperate, of course, with anything they—
TIFFANY: Mr. Chairman, I will just close with this: We keep hearing about these isolated examples, whether it’s Richmond with Catholics, this instance, when is it…isn’t it a pattern?
Tiffany is spot-on to note these purportedly “isolated” incidents that keep cropping up and seem to reveal a pattern of punitive behavior directed at disfavored views.
Not only that, but according to Leavitt, Wray’s testimony on the matter was misleading:
To be clear, Wray did not say the contractor was fired, just that he is “no longer affiliated with the FBI.”
We know he left the FBI on his own within days of the interview.
— Tristan Leavitt (@tristanleavitt) July 24, 2024
As Leavitt notes, Wray is hiding the ball here. Another whistleblower, who happens to be a Democrat, has disclosed to the Inspector General and to Congress that the types of questions included on the “Trump questionnaire” were frequently asked in interviews, even if not formally typed out ahead of time. Moreover, “our Security Division whistleblower says these inappropriate factors were routinely considered by FBI management in whether to take clearance actions against FBI employees.”
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In a July 2nd letter to congressional oversight committees, Leavitt urged the committees to get to the bottom of this apparent political retaliation, writing:
The FBI is not a private club for FBI executives to make in their own image. Empower Oversight respectfully requests that you work swiftly to independently corroborate the information in the attached disclosure with other witnesses, publicly document your findings, hold Director Wray and any responsible FBI officials accountable, and pass legislation to fix the abusive security clearance process and successfully protect future whistleblowers.
Thus, whether the written questionnaire was drafted by a contractor no longer affiliated with the FBI or not, the impetus for it and the practice of vetting employees with such politically charged questions is not “isolated,” as Wray implied, but rather reflective of a larger problem within the agency that needs to be addressed. Hopefully, the information from the whistleblowers will help the OIG and congressional oversight committees see that it is.
