Senate Homeland Security Committee chairman Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) on Tuesday discussed his decision to subpoena FBI Director Christopher Wray for records related to the bureau’s Russia probe.
Johnson said he subpoenaed Wray because he “finally ran out of patience” with the FBI slow-walking the committee’s requests for documents.
“I finally ran out of patience,” Johnson told Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom” host Sandra Smith. “You know, certainly my committee wanted me — well, they granted me this subpoena authorization to try and get everybody’s voluntary compliance, but it simply hasn’t worked. The FBI continues to slow-walk our requests for documents, which really date back years. I sent a summary request to Attorney General Barr, who, by the way, has been great. The hang-up is within the FBI. Back in September 2019, basically relisting all the requests we had for information, and we really haven’t gotten squat basically. And what we’re seeing now is we’re seeing, you know, dribs and drabs. The most recent revelation is the document that Lindsey Graham released on Sunday, which should shock people. I mean the fact that a year after the FBI was fully aware of the fact that the Steele dossier was chock full of Russian disinformation, they’re coming from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and briefing them falsely that they still had confidence in the Steele dossier?”
He continued, “This is beyond the pale. And the FBI’s got to come clean, and they’ve got to produce documents now based on our subpoena by August 20th. I’m done fooling around. Hopefully, we’ll be able to engage counsel within the White House, as well as the attorney general’s office, to extract the documents out of the FBI. This is ridiculous.”
Johnson emphasized that because of what happened was under Wray’s watch, the FBI director is “going to have some real explaining to do.”
“Either gross managerial incompetence or he’s trying to hide something or, again, he just simply doesn’t recall,” he added. “We’re probably going to hear an awful lot of the ‘I simply don’t recall,’ because that’s a lot easier to say than, ‘Oh, no, I was involved in wrongdoing.’ We need to get to the bottom of this, which is why we need these documents, which is why I issued the subpoena.”
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent
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