FBI Director Christopher Wray was on Capitol Hill today and this exchange with Rhode Island Democrat Jack Reed is the big gotcha
The set up is Reed, acting as smug as any 90 IQ guy can possibly look, asks if President Trump has specifically ordered the FBI to take specific actions to stop the diabolical Russkies in their tracks.
WRAY: We’re taking a lot of specific efforts to blunt Russian efforts.
REED: As directed by the president?
WRAY: Not as specifically directed by the president.
This is vintage Reed, a guy who always managed to make Chuck Hagel look like the smartest guy in the room. And isn’t that Kamala Harris who keeps acting like Reed just broke wind from a huevos rancheros breakfast?
If you think back to the early days of the Trump administration we were lectured over and over on how improper it was for the President to have direct contact with the FBI director on any law enforcement matter. In fact, former FBI Director James Comey testified before the U.S. Senate that he never spoke to Obama on the phone and only spoke to him twice in person. So the president telling the FBI director how to run what amounts to a counterintelligence operation seems, well, profoundly stupid. Secondly, what possible guidance could this president or any president give the FBI on how to foil the Russian menace? Obama’s biggest direction to the FBI seems to have been “get FISA warrants on Trump so we can eavesdrop on his transition team.”
The implication in this, of course, is that unless the president tells the FBI to act, it will just hang out in “Andy’s office” and shoot the sh** about the presidential campaign. This is ludicrous.
But I will bet you dollars to doughnuts that the left and the never Trumpers, to the extent they are different entities anymore, will be screaming that Trump is negligent because he hasn’t told Wray how to do his job.
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