Washington, Dec 7 (AP) Countering strident attacks on hisagency from the president who appointed him, FBI DirectorChris Wray today defended the tens of thousands of people whowork with him and declared, "There is no finer institution,and no finer people, than the men and women who work there andare its very beating heart."Wray provided his first public defense of the nation'spremier law enforcement agency since a weekend of Twitterattacks by President Donald Trump, who called the FBI a biasedinstitution whose reputation is "in Tatters — worst inHistory!" and urged Wray to "clean house."The outburst from the president followed a guilty pleafrom his former national security adviser for lying to the FBIand the revelation that an agent had been removed from aspecial team investigating the Trump campaign because of textmessages seen as potentially anti-Trump.
Wray, who served as a top Justice Department officialunder President George W Bush and was nominated as FBIdirector by Trump, faced a wave of Republican criticism overperceived political bias in special counsel Robert Mueller'sprobe of possible Trump campaign ties to Russia during the2016 presidential election and in the handling a year earlierof an FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of aprivate email server that ended without criminal charges.
Although he did not mention Trump's criticism directly,Wray rebutted him directly, saying, "My experience has beenthat our reputation is quite good."Wray sought to fend off the attacks on the agency byexpressing pride in the agents, analysts and other personnelwho he said were working to protect Americans. But he alsoconceded that agents do make mistakes and said there areprocesses in place to hold them accountable.
"There is no shortage of opinions out there, but what Ican tell you is that the FBI that I see is tens of thousandsof agents and analysts and staff working their tails off tokeep Americans safe," Wray said of the agency he has led forjust four months.
"The FBI that I see is tens of thousands of brave men andwomen working as hard as they can to keep people they willnever know safe from harm."The focus on the Clinton and Trump probes reflected howthe FBI in the last two years has found itself entangled inAmerican politics, with investigations focused on theDemocratic presidential nominee and the Republican presidentand his successful campaign.
Those investigations have transformed routine oversighthearings, like the one Thursday, into platforms for tensequestions about the political leanings of an agency thatprides itself on being removed from partisan consideration.
(AP)NSA.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.