Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) ridiculed Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie for calling the House Judiciary Committee’s grilling of FBI Director Christopher Wray “theater” and a fundraising stunt.
Wray appeared before the House committee to testify about the alleged weaponization of the FBI. Christie defended the FBI director as a “good guy” who could fix a lot of the problems within the federal agency, and as one who had “already fixed” a lot of problems.
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“He said that Christopher Wray had delivered extraordinary results. The problem is they’re just extraordinarily awful,” Gaetz told Hannity about Christie’s comments. “Like, Chris Christie criticized us for engaging in fundraising theater during this committee. I’m not going to take my notes on fundraising from a guy who was a lobbyist and was snout down in the lobbyist financial money laundering situation when he was raising money from them as governor of New Jersey.”
“So, I’m more likely to take Chris Christie’s exercise plan than his fundraising strategy,” Gaetz added.
Along with Gaetz, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) appeared on Hannity to slam the testimony of Wray, suggesting the FBI director had lied.
“That’s why we got to use the power of the purse and the appropriations process to limit how American tax dollars can be spent,” Jordan said. “That’s why we can’t reauthorize FISA in its current form. And that’s why we should look at moving the headquarters, not give them a new building in the D.C. area, but moving the headquarters to Huntington, Alabama. That makes sense to us. So, we’re looking at all that.”
Jordan also claimed that Wray’s answers “weren’t answers.”
“I think the big takeaway,” Jordan added, “was when he talked about how Americans’ privacy, how their data is being swept up. He was asked twice, ‘Is the FBI buying private data from brokers in the private sector? Are they buying this information?’ … And both times, he said, ‘I’ll have to get back with you.'”
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Gaetz called Wray’s testimony “a cascade of lies,” suggesting the FBI director lied about the repositioning of assets to investigate parents’ comments at school board meetings and about the inappropriate use of FISA.
Ahead of Wray’s appearance, the House Judiciary Committee claimed the FBI had “violated the First Amendment rights of Americans and potentially undermined our national security,” by aiding censorship requests for social media companies “on behalf of a Ukrainian intelligence agency.”
