Christopher Wray referred to DOJ over claims he misled lawmakers on Catholic memo, China probes

Fox News

6 days ago

A Washington-based government transparency watchdog has referred former FBI Director Christopher Wray to the Department of Justice and the FBI, urging a criminal investigation into allegations that he had made false statements to Congress and obstructed proceedings in two high-profile cases.
Oversight Project President Mike Howell told Fox News Digital that the group is specifically asking officials to examine Wray's congressional testimony on the so-called Richmond memo from the FBI office in Virginia that exposed an anti-Catholic bias there, and his testimony about a Chinese plot to disseminate illicit driver's licenses before the 2020 election.
In July 2023, Wray testified before the House Judiciary Committee on the FBI-Richmond memo that had labeled Catholics as potential domestic threats.
"Well, what I can tell you is you're referring to the Richmond product, which is a single product by a single field office, which as soon as I found out about it, I was aghast and ordered it withdrawn and removed from FBI systems," Wray said.
The Oversight Project alleges that statement was ultimately misleading or false.
Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Wis., pressed Wray on the Richmond memo and so-called "Trump questionnaire," which was circulated at the FBI and asked about allegiance to the president and whether agents had attended any protests or rallies associated with the Jan. 6 Capitol Breach.
"We keep hearing about these 'isolated examples' whether it's Richmond Catholics, this [questionnaire] -- isn't it a pattern?" Tiffany asked.
The Oversight Project pointed to Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley's opening remarks from a June hearing on Biden-era "cover-ups," in which Grassley said the Richmond memo "used the shoddy research of the radical Southern Poverty Law Center to accuse traditional Catholics of being violent extremists."
"Based on records I released the other week, there wasn't just one FBI document that used biased anti-Catholic sources, but over a dozen," Grassley said. The referral also notes that this remark by Grassley belies Wray's testimony suggesting a one-off incident.
"And more FBI field offices were involved than we'd been led to believe," Grassley, R-Iowa, said.
A second Richmond memo similar to the first that went unreleased following the backlash was part of a partially redacted series of documents Grassley's committee transmitted to FBI Director Kash Patel in June. It stated that the bureau "assesses RMVE (Racially Motivated Violent Extremism) interest in RTC (Radical Traditional Catholic) ideology is likely to increase … in the run-up to the [2024] general election cycle."
"Director Wray's testimony was inaccurate not only because it failed to reveal the scope of the memo's production and dissemination, but also because it failed to reveal the existence of a second, draft product on the same topic intended for external distribution to the whole FBI," the Oversight Project said in a separate statement. "That draft product was intended for distribution as a Strategic Perspective Executive Analytic Report ("SPEAR"). It was clearly a separate product."
The Oversight Project specifically alleged violations of obstruction of proceedings before Congress, perjury and false statements.
Fox News Digital reached out to Grassley, who also told Fox News' Bill Hemmer in June that he had found 13 other documents similar to the Richmond memo. Grassley said the documents had gone out and that "at least 1,000 people had access to information that … was telling people that the Catholic Church needed to be watched because it could be considered a terrorist organization."
Fox News Digital reached out to a phone number connected to Wray but did not receive a response.
Patel cited the CCP influence case in a June statement, declaring that "former FBI leadership withheld the facts and misled the public on China's 2020 election interference. And they did so for political gain. This FBI is exposing all of it and giving Americans the truth they deserve."
Patel claimed the FBI in 2020 "buried" evidence "for political convenience" and thanked Grassley for helping the current FBI brass bring the topic to light.
During September 2020 testimony, Wray told Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., that the FBI had "not seen historically any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether by-mail or otherwise."
Wray added that the FBI had identified localized voter fraud and that his testimony was not intended to downplay the overarching threat.
Howell's group argues those statements were belied by documents Patel gave to Congress in June that reportedly showed concerns in August 2020 that China had mass-produced such fake IDs to help former President Joe Biden.
The criminal referral against Wray also cites a related August 2020 seizure of 20,000 counterfeit licenses by Customs and Border Protection in Illinois. A Chicago port official told Fox News at the time that the proliferation "can lead to disastrous consequences."
It is unclear if any ballots were cast as part of the scheme.
During a 2020 address to the Hudson Institute, Wray did warn of the CCP threat to the upcoming election and beyond:
"China's malign foreign influence campaign targets our policies, our positions, 24/7, 365 days-a-year. So it's not an election‑specific threat. It's really more of an all‑year, all‑the‑time threat. But certainly that has implications for elections, and they certainly have preferences that go along with that," he said.
The FBI and Department of Justice did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.