Major problems at a heavily politicized FBI predated the June 2017 ascension of Christopher Wray to the bureau’s directorship, but Wray has no excuse for failing to fix them in the five years since.
If there is truth to even a significant portion of the allegations in a July 25 letter from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) to Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland, a corrupt subculture continues to exist, without effective rebuke, in some major ranks of the FBI. Grassley wrote that numerous whistleblower reports indicate Timothy Thibault, the assistant special agent in charge of the Washington field office, along with Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten, and others, combined to help cover up apparent “derogatory information connected to Hunter Biden,” the now-president’s son.
Grassley says Auten and others falsely labeled the Biden material as “disinformation,” presumably of Russian origin, and that Thibault not only ordered inquiries into other derogatory information about the younger Biden closed, quite wrongly, but also “attempted to improperly mark the matter in FBI systems so that it could not be opened in the future.”
Auten already had made significant errors that contributed to the bogus allegations that then-candidate Donald Trump had conspired with Russian agents to help him win the 2016 presidential election. And Grassley in May had accused Thibault, completely apart from the Biden matter, of “likely violations of Federal laws, regulations, and [FBI] guidelines … based on a pattern of active public partisanship in his then-public social media content.” Grassley also said these agents or others deliberately tried to undermine ongoing Senate investigations, led by Grassley, into numerous suspicious activities of Hunter Biden and other Biden family members.
“The FBI inquiry into Hunter Biden reportedly began as a tax investigation,” reported the Washington Examiner’s Jerry Dunleavy, “then expanded into a scrutiny of potential money-laundering and foreign lobbying.” Evidence from the younger Biden’s laptop also suggests he may have broken federal drug laws and human trafficking laws.
Meanwhile, Grassley said “the volume and consistency of these [whistleblower] allegations substantiate their credibility” and that they and other reports indicate that the Justice Department and FBI are “institutionally corrupted to their very core,” with “systemic and existential problems within your agencies.”
What’s worse is that the alleged and apparent impropriety of FBI agents regarding the interconnected Biden-Trump-Russia imbroglios seems to be only one part of the FBI’s malfeasance. Reports emerged in March that a 2019 internal FBI audit found FBI agents broke the rules at least 747 times in just a year and a half in high-profile investigations — and even that audit covered less than half of FBI matters listed as “sensitive” during the relevant time period.
Also in March, Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Nancy Mace (R-SC) asked the Governmental Accountability Office to review the FBI’s use of certain surveillance activities because the lawmakers had information suggesting the bureau was involved in “improper monitoring of protected First Amendment activity.”
Despite all this evidence of laxity and corruption, there is little attestation that the FBI has taken significant disciplinary steps against any of its errant personnel. When Wray took over the FBI, he had a stellar reputation, but after five years, there is almost no indication that he has righted the bureau’s ship. Grassley has every good reason to suspect that corruption in large parts of the FBI is “systemic and existential.”
The situation at the FBI is unacceptable. Period. If Wray cannot prove by year’s end that he has taken major, effective steps to fix it, he should lose his job.
