'How Does That Happen?': GOP Lawmaker Grills FBI Director On Attempted Trump Assassination

3 months ago

At a House Judiciary Committee hearing held last week, Rep. Barry Moore (R-AL) questioned FBI Director Chris Wray about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.

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00:00The gentleman yields back. The gentleman from Alabama is recognized.

00:02Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Director Wray, I appreciate you being here today, and I certainly

00:06appreciate your forthcomingness and giving us information that I think that the American

00:11people want. You know, to me, you have a very difficult job right now. In the past, and

00:18under Comey, certainly, the Russian collusion narrative got out pretty heavily, and that

00:23came out of the FBI with the FISA warrants and that sort of stuff, spot on General Flynn.

00:27And then the laptop issue, the Hunter Biden laptop issue, which the FBI actually had in

00:31their possession. So, I have 800,000 people thereabouts that I represent, and our job

00:37is to restore trust. And so, in a lot of the hearings we've had this week, they said, well,

00:42the FBI is investigating that. Every answer was, the FBI is investigating this. And so,

00:47in some ways, it kind of landed in your lap, and I appreciate you being here. But, you

00:51know, it's just, for me, the question of, how does a 20-year-old acting alone get a

00:56long gun, a rangefinder? We know he bought a ladder. I guess he reconnered and realized

01:02he didn't need the ladder to get on top of the building, so he left it at the house.

01:06Get on a roof within 150 yards of the most, one of the most famous people in the world,

01:10I guess, now, and a former president. How does that happen? And how do we restore trust

01:17in the American people at the FBI and the DHS, who is under Mayorkas' directorate now?

01:23How do we verify and get trust back to the American people that these agencies are really

01:27working to protect the president? And I'm not trying to place blame specifically, but

01:32I never thought that we'd raid his house. I never dreamed that they'd raid a former

01:35president's house. I certainly never imagined that they would actually indict him. And I

01:40felt, well, they'll never find him guilty. And now we've had a threat on his life. So,

01:45how do we restore trust in the government of this country and the agencies that are

01:49here that we pay and provide $3 billion a year to the Secret Service to protect some

01:54of the leading political candidates in America? That's a lot. I'm sorry. That's a lot of questions,

01:59but I'm just, I mean, I'm going to give you a little room to talk.

02:01Right. No, no, I, I, listen, I, obviously you included a lot, as you said, in your question.

02:07And as you might imagine, I disagree fairly strongly with a number of parts of it. But

02:13sensitive to the time, I guess what I would say this, I can speak to my approach to running

02:18the FBI. Again, the FBI was not involved in the physical security of the rally. That's,

02:24you know, we come in as the investigators afterwards. And as I've said before, our investigation

02:29is an investigation of the shooter and his attack. There are separate investigations,

02:35the inspector general of DHS and this outside independent panel that's been announced that

02:39would be looking at the Secret Service's performance. And those I think will be important

02:43to trust and confidence, if you will, in Secret Service. But from the FBI perspective, we

02:49can't promise that everybody's going to like the results of what we do, right? What we

02:53can promise is that we're going to do our best to do the work in the right way. That's

02:58all we can do. And so I keep telling our folks every day on this and on everything else,

03:04our focus has to be, we got to do the work in the right way. We got to make sure we do

03:09the work in the right way. And then no matter who likes it, because everything we do, somebody

03:14doesn't like it.

03:15And it's a credibility issue at this point. Do the American people trust what the FBI

03:20and the DOJ is going to tell them? And, you know, that's the thing with this. When I was

03:26early on, and I've only been here about three and a half, four years now, but the American

03:30people was the fear of the weaponization of government. So now we have this issue. Tucker

03:34Carlson asked the president, he said, Are you afraid they'll kill you? I remember that

03:38interview and I thought, Wow, I can't believe he went there. But here we are. And so as

03:43we work through this process, I think it's so important. And I think the chairman hit

03:46on this is the audio of the shooter. You've interviewed the sniper, the Secret Service

03:54sniper that took out the target. Was he waiting on a green light? What was going on? And why

04:00did why did the Mr. Crooks have a chance to get off eight rounds? And we knew he was on

04:05the rooftop. I don't know for how long, but we know he was a marked target. So was he

04:10trying to get the green light? And was somebody not giving it to him?

04:13So again, the performance, the adequacy of the performance of Secret Service will be

04:19the subject of the Inspector General investigation and this outside independent panel. What I

04:25can tell you, and I'm glad you asked the question, because this goes to something that we, that

04:30was part of an earlier exchange. The first time that anybody from law enforcement saw the

04:40subject on the roof was a few minutes before the shooting, not with a gun. They didn't at

04:47that point, they didn't write the local law enforcement a few minutes before, saw him on

04:52the roof, and started radio.

04:55Did he have a backpack going up the roof today?

04:57Well, nobody is we haven't found anybody yet who's who saw him climbing up the roof. The

05:02reason we the reason why I've talked about how we think he got on the roof is that's

05:06based on forensic, our evidence response to and forensic analysis that we're, you know,

05:13not getting into all the details, footprints and things like that, that we can, you know,

05:16fingerprints, etc, that we can see how he got on. But we don't have an eyewitness at the

05:21moment, who saw him climbing up. So a few minutes before the shooting, local law

05:27enforcement saw him on the roof. Again, not no weapon identified at that point. A few

05:35seconds before the shooting is when the law enforcement officer that I've talked about

05:41already saw is the one who was assisted by another officer who saw up on the roof, saw

05:48the shooter in a prone shooting position with the gun. He turns How long did that happen

05:55before that was that that sighting that is the first time to my knowledge, the first

06:01time anybody from law enforcement saw him with a weapon. That is seconds before he shot

06:09at President Trump. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. So did the counter sniper not

06:13see the bad guy, the shooter until after he fired a shot?

06:20I mean, until after the subject fired a shot until after I don't, yeah, I don't. I don't

06:26know the answer to that. It's possible. We've already determined that. But I just as I sit

06:30here right now, I don't have that. But I can. Yeah, I think that's a logical next question

06:35with with where the gentleman from Alabama's was question was going the gentleman from

'How Does That Happen?': GOP Lawmaker Grills FBI Director On Attempted Trump Assassination

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