Senator Sheldon Whitehouse comes out swinging
The Senate Hearings on the January 6th Insurrection continued Tuesday with FBI Director Christopher Wray in the hot seat. Wray was forthright on certain points, there was no evidence of antifa, and white supremacists are domestic terrorists, but he dodged or shrugged off many of the Committee’s questions as to what FBI knew leading up to the Capitol riot.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat from Rhode Island, was having none of it. His pent up anger was palpable and he lit into a tirade about how the FBI under Wary’s direction has left scores of information requests and QFR’s (Questions for the Record) unanswered dating back to 2017. Wray sat there knitting his hands as Whitehouse demanded to know why certain letters from GOP Senators had been promptly attended to, while inquires into the Trump-Russia probe, mainly from Democrats had been ignored.
Wray expressed, or feigned, sympathetic frustration about the delays and promised to do better, but Whitehouse pressed on stating that the Senate Judiciary and other Committees had been given the brushoff throughout the Trump years from various agencies that Congress supposedly has oversight of in including the FBI. He explained that he will use any tools necessary, including withholding appropriations to get the answers the Committee and the American people deserve. In so many words, Whitehouse accused Wray of creating or participating in executive branch rigamarole: “When there’s a political interest in getting information out, suddenly there’s no logjam.”
