FBI director defends agency before Republican lawmakers

Director Chris Wray defended the “real FBI” at a legislative hearing on Wednesday, rejecting a series of complaints from Republicans who harshly criticize federal police, threaten to defund certain operations and charge that the Justice Department is unfair to federal police. conservatives.

Wray declined to answer questions about ongoing federal investigations, including those involving former President Donald Trump and Hunter Biden. President Joe Biden’s son reached an agreement recently to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses, which Republicans scornfully call treatment in his favor.

In heated discussions with Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, Wray rejected the charge that the FBI favored the Biden family and said the idea that the agency was involved in the assault on the capitol of January 6, 2021 was “absurd”.

“The work that the men and women of the FBI do to protect the American people goes far beyond the one or two investigations that seem to grab all the headlines,” Wray said.

The director spoke of the task of fighting crime, taking down drug cartels, arresting some 60 criminal suspects daily and protecting Americans from a “daunting array of crimes.”

“That’s the real FBI,” he said.

It was a sign of the new normal in Congress, where Republicans, who portray themselves as defenders of the police and champions of “law and order,” are deeply at odds with federal police and accuse the FBI of being biased.

The new dynamic has put Democrats in the position to defend these previously harshly criticized federal agencies.

The committee’s chairman, Republican Jim Jordan, says he is trying to prevent what Republicans call “weaponization” (weaponizationin English) of federal justice that, according to them, is biased against the right, including Trump and his allies.

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