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Senators Grill FBI Director Over Insurrection, Domestic Terror. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired March 02, 2021 - 11:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[11:30:00]

SEN. MIKE LEE (R-UT): And I certainly wouldn't expect you to be aware of every circumstance, I would though like to know whether you do that at all, whether that is ever that basis for. And I would appreciate if you could answer that. If you're not aware of it right now, that is great. But if you could let me know sometime today or tomorrow, that would be great. I'm sure there is someone who can provide a yes or no answer to that question.

Over the years, I've raised a number of questions, and it is one of the things that prompted my question here, about FISA, and related questions just about the collection of metadata from communications, providers and so forth.

Over the years, and by over the years, I mean, literally, over the last ten years, the entire ten years I've served as a member of this committee and as a member of the United States Senate, I've been told fairly consistent answers under FBI directors and different presidential administrations run by different parties.

But the most consistent theme in those answers has been, just trust us. Don't worry, we have got good people, smart people, law-abiding people who are running this and we have got procedural safeguards in place to prevent the type of abuse that you're concerned about.

Now, Inspector General Horowitz issued a report in 2019 regarding crossfire hurricane and through a subsequent memorandum dealing with Woods File issues that really help prove my point. At the time in response to those concerns, you issued statements suggesting that you would take concrete actions to make sure that these things were changed.

Could you tell me what some of those actions are? Have you taken the actions you referred to in response to Horowitz's report and his subsequent memo on the Woods File issues?

CHRISTOPHER WRAY, FBI DIRECTOR: Yes, Senator, I welcome the question. So, first off, as you know, we accepted all of the findings and recommendations in the inspector general's report. I ordered at the time over 40 corrective actions to go above and beyond the recommendations of the inspector general's report and those have been implemented. Those include everything from strengthening our procedures, to ensure accuracy and completeness, to make sure the court gets all of the information it is supposed to, changes in our protocol for CHS', Confidential Human Resource's training changes. I created a new office of internal audit that's specifically focused on FISA auditing.

There is a whole number of things I would be happy to walk through but I recognize that our time is limited so you tell me how much --

LEE: No, I appreciate that. And I appreciate anything that you've done within the agency to do that. And I hope you could understand my concern, which is that we've been told over and over again, we already have strong procedures in place internally. Those strong procedures apparently haven't over the last ten years proven enough.

My view is that, in addition, to anything that you may be doing, that may well be helpful and I appreciate anything that you're doing that is helpful, we probably ought to have some statutory restrictions as well. So that it is not the FBI and the FBI alone acting solely upon the FBI's internal guidance documents from which the FBI could have, of course, choose to depart at any moment.

I would love to see reforms in this area and particularly protect the civil liberties of the American people. I think we need some reforms to our domestic surveillance tools, including things like FISA, that would apply to strengthening at the amicus provisions of the FISA court, requiring the FBI to disclose all material, exculpatory evidence that's presented to the FISA report.

No less important here than in an Article 3 court sitting in its capacity of adjudicating criminal cases. In fact, if anything, it is more important here because in the FISA context, it is not public. Increasing the standard for warrants under Section 215 to require probable cause and requiring a probable cause warrant to obtain internet search history, internet browsing history and geo-location information.

Are those reforms that you would be willing to support?

WRAY: Well, Senator, I would be happy to work with you to provide sort of operational assessment of the impact of different legislative ideas. Certainly, we view our responsibility as not just to protect the American people but also to uphold the Constitution.

And we say that every day in the FBI. Certainly, I would want to make sure that any legislative changes to FISA didn't have unintended, very damaging impact on everything, from our sharing of information with our foreign partners, our intelligence community partners, that we didn't elevate the standard in FISA above the level of what we could get, for example, in an ordinary criminal case, things like that.

[11:35:10]

But we would be happy to engage with you on this subject.

LEE: Mr. Chairman, my time is expired. Can I add one sentence at the end just to complete the thought?

Thank you for your willingness there. We have been told over the last ten years since I've been here we will work with you. We will work with you as translated into opposition from inside the FBI, every single time. We tried to bring about one of the reforms, every time. As sure as the sun will come up in the east tomorrow, we've been told by the FBI, you can't do that. Don't worry, we've got it with our own internal controls.

I hope you'll be sympathetic to me this time around recognizing that I've been told that over and over and over again. And we're not going to accept that answer any more. Thank you.

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL): Thank you, Senator Lee. Senator Klobuchar?

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN): Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Welcome, Director Way.

You and I have talked many way and I appreciate the work of your agents in Minnesota, whether it is investigating buildings that have been attacked and burned or whether it is the work that your agents did in investigating the bombing of a Mosque in Minnesota, where you -- which resulted in indictments and convictions. So I thank you for that.

So, last week, I chaired a joint hearing of the Rules and Homeland Security Committees on what happened on January 6th. We're having another joint hearing with Homeland Security tomorrow. Several members of this committee participated in that.

And I want to start out with something that became an issue in the hearing really because of one member's questions. Our witnesses all agree that there is now clear evidence that supports a conclusion that this insurrection was planned and a coordinated attack on the Capitol, that white supremacists and extremist groups were involved and that what happened would have been much more dangerous if not for the brave actions of law enforcement. Would you agree with that?

WRAY: Certainly, there were aspects of it that were planned and coordinated, but, yes.

KLOBUCHAR: Well, there was -- I just noted that just today, a reporting in The Washington Post, that on Monday, a complaint was filed against a member of the Proud Boys in Washington State, where federal prosecutors alleged that, in fact, there were plans made for many different entries into the Capitol, is that correct?

WRAY: Yes. There have been a growing number of charges as we continue to build out the investigation. Either individuals who are now starting to get arrested that involved charges more things, like planning and coordination or in some instances individuals who were charged with more simple offenses but now we're superseding as we build out more of an understanding of what people were involved.

And there were clearly some individuals involved which I would consider the most dangerous, most serious cases among the group, who did have plans and intentions and some level of coordination.

KLOBUCHAR: And I think you've arrested now20 members of that group or -- is that right?

WRAY: I don't know the number off the top of my head. Yes.

KLOBUCHAR: Well, so what I was thinking when Senator Graham was talking is that if, and they show up in this complaint with encrypted two-way Chinese radios and military gear, that you must -- there must be moments where you think if we would have known, if we could have infiltrated this group or found out what they were doing, and that -- you have those moments?

WRAY: Absolutely. I will tell you, Senator, and this is something I feel passionately about, that any time there is an attack, our standard at the FBI is we aim to bat a thousand, right? And we aim to thwart every attack that is out there. So any time there is an attack, especially one that's this horrific, that strikes right at the heart of our system the government, right at the time of transfer of power is being discussed, you can be darn tooting that we are focused very, very hard on how could we get better sources, better information, better analysis so that we can make sure that something that what happened on January 6th never happens again.

KLOBUCHAR: Okay. So there have been a lot of discussion about this Norfolk memo that arrived, as you noted, with key people in the Capitol Police and others the night before. They testified last week, the chief, that he didn't even know about it until a few days before our hearing.

And, in fact, while there may be some that downplays that intelligence, I will note while we don't have the memo publicly, that in that memo that it were statements that Congress needs to hear the glass breaking, doors being kicked up, blood being spilled, we get our president, or we die, go there ready for war, some of the specific calls for violence that we know were posted at that time.

[11:40:16]

We know that President Trump had called on people to go there on January 6th. We know that he told them to go wild. We know that in that memo, there were discussions of, as reported in the news, perimeter maps, bringing back the wounded. And to me, it is just seems like it's beyond aspirational in nature that it seems like some of these reports that we now know exist out there were specific in terms of the plans that were going on.

And I'm just -- one of my questions that we will continue to be asking as part of this investigation we're doing with the Rules Committee and Homeland Security is how can we change this so this never happens again. So these type of threats and this type of information gets to the right people. And do you have any response on that?

WRAY: Well, as I said, in connection with the particular report that you're referring to, the Norfolk SIR, as they call it, we did communicate that information in a timely fashion to the Capitol Police and MPD in not one, not two, but three different ways.

KLOBUCHAR: If you think it is enough just to send an email?

WRAY: It is more than just an email, right? So, first off, the email itself went to -- I think there are may be as many as five Capitol Police task forces officers on the Joint Terrorism Task Force. And the whole point of the Joint Terrorism Task Force is for the chosen representatives of the partner agency to be there in the loop real- time so that everybody has got the same information so that each agency can use that information to do what it needs to do.

But in addition to the email, so belt and suspenders, it was verbally briefed and I don't -- it is hard sometimes for members of Congress to picture what these command post briefings are like, but picture the command post that we had stood up at the Washington Field Office, representatives of all of these agencies in the room, people are coming up to the microphone one at a time saying, okay, now we're tracking this, we're seeing this, we don't know if it is real or not but here is what we're seeing, everybody is taking notes. And the whole idea is they're supposed to go back and pass it up the chain of the command.

And then third, in addition to that, it was put into the leap, the law enforcement portal to make sure that everybody got it.

KLOBUCHAR: Yes, you explained that.

WRAY: So, having said that, I do not consider what happened on January 6th to be an acceptable result and that is why we're looking at figuring how can the process be improved.

KLOBUCHAR: Right. And some of this, of course, is the whole structure that we have with this Capitol Police board that somehow the chief was still calling while the insurrection was going on. These two sergeant at arms, they tried to get permission to get the National Guard and, clearly, there has to be some major changes to what is going on here. I acknowledge that and I'm going to push for them.

But there still, to me, seems like they rely on the FBI and other federal agencies to get information and we know that the New York Police Department sent intelligence reports to them, to the Capitol Police, that is on them, and the FBI's Washington Field Office in late December indicating there would be violence on January 6th. Any comments on that?

WRAY: So, while I'm not familiar with the specific NYPD product you're referring to, I will tell that you we, the FBI, over the course of 2020, put out a number of intelligence products specifically warning about domestic violent extremism, and including specifically a warning about in connection with the election, including specifically warning that about threat in relation to the election, continuing past Election Day itself and up through the inauguration and including a product that I think we put out with DHS in December of 2020.

So we have tried to push out information. I am reluctant to arm chair quarterback any else in their jobs. I can tell you, we at the FBI are determined to do our part, our part, to make sure that what happened on January 6th doesn't happen again. We find it personally infuriating any time we're not able, as I said, to bat a thousand and we're going to keep working to get better.

KLOBUCHAR: Thank you. And I will say that the work you've done on your -- your agents have done in investigating these cases, to me, that is very helpful to get those arrests out there and those prosecutions. Not only because people should be brought to justice, but, to me, it is a major deterrent for people doing this again. Thank you.

DURBIN: Thank you, Senator Klobuchar. Senator Cruz?

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Director Wray, welcome, thank you for your service and thank you for the heroic service of the men and women at the FBI.

[11:45:00]

Congress has now heard from numerous law enforcement officials that there is significant evidence that the January 6th attack on the Capitol was premeditated, planned and coordinated, and you just had an exchange with Senator Klobuchar where you, if I understood you correctly, expressed the FBI's view that it was indeed planned and coordinated.

I recognize this is an ongoing investigation and that you're still learning the details, but at this point, what do we know about the planning and coordination that occurred surrounding the January 6th attack?

WRAY: So, I guess let me step back and say, first thing is there are sort of three groups of people involved in January 6th. The first group, the largest group, the group we need to spend the least time talking about is peaceful, maybe rowdy protests but who weren't violating the law.

And there is a second group, take it like a reverse pyramid, a second group of people would may have come intending to just be part of peaceful protest but either swept up in the motives or emotion or whatever, engaged in kind of low-level criminal behavior, trespass, say, on the Capitol grounds but not breaching the building. Still, criminal conduct still needs to be addressed but more on the fly in the moment opportunistic.

The third group, the smallest group numerically, but by far in a way the most serious group, are those who breached the Capitol grounds, who engaged in violence against law enforcement, who attempted to disrupt the members of Congress in the conduct of their constitutional responsibilities. And of those, some of those people clearly came to Washington, we know, with plans and intentions engage in the worse kind of violence we would consider domestic terrorism.

And so some of that coordination appears to have been coordinated travel, coordinated meeting up, coordinating in terms of what kind of gear they might be wearing or bringing with them, that kind of thing. Again, ongoing, obviously, ongoing, much more to come.

CRUZ: And, often, in an investigation, law enforcement follows the money. Is there evidence at this point of coordinated funding prior to January 6th, providing military equipment, providing communications equipment or the like?

WRAY: Certainly, that is a topic that we're looking at. I don't know that there is anything I can say right now in terms of funding or coordinated funding.

CRUZ: There has been considerable discussion at this hearing also about the Norfolk report. At the time, how credible and reliable did the FBI consider the Norfolk report as an actionable piece of intelligence?

WRAY: Senator, my understanding is that our folks at the time viewed it as raw, unverified and, therefore, of unknown reliability information. But because of the level of detail that was in it, and some of this is art, not science, unfortunately, in the world of intelligence, the judgment was that given the press of time, given the specificity, even though it sounded somewhat aspirational in nature and was unverified, the smartest thing to do, the most prudent thing to do was just to push it to the people who needed to get it and, as I said, that happened in three different ways.

CRUZ: You had a conversation with Senator Grassley about the death of Officer Sicknick and there obviously is considerable interest and concern in the Senate and across the country as to the circumstances of Officer Sicknick's death.

There have been conflicting reports about the circumstances of his death. You told Senator Grassley that the FBI at this point is not in a position to confirm a cause of death. Is there any information that the FBI can share with the American people about what we know of the circumstances surrounding his tragic death?

WRAY: Although I certainly understand and appreciate the keen interest in it for all of the reasons we have discussed at moment, other than to say the Capitol Police has, of course, categorized it, I think, appropriately as a line of duty death, there is nothing really that I could share right now.

Certainly, I understand why it is very top of mind for people and I think it speaks well of the members of Congress that they're so interested in somebody who lost his life protecting all of you. So as soon as we're in a position when the investigation has gotten to a stage where we can share information, we want to able to do that.

CRUZ: Now, let's talk more broadly because domestic terrorism, because the riot on January 6 didn't come out of nowhere. And last year, the Department of Justice created a task force to investigate and understand the growth of political violence.

[11:50:05]

The memo creating the task force states, amid peaceful demonstrations protected by the First Amendment, we have seen anti-government extremists engaged in indefensible acts of violence designed to undermine public order. Among other lawless conduct, these extremists have violently attacked police officers and other government officials, destroyed public and private property and threatened innocent people.

Is that task force still operating?

WRAY: I know the work that the task force began is still ongoing.

CRUZ: In the past year, we have seen massive rioting and violence as extremists, many of them, leftist extremists took to the streets across the country. In just two weeks at the end of May and early June, over 700 law enforcement officers were injured. Looking at all of 2020, over 14,000 people have been arrested in 49 cities and at least 25 people have died in the violence. And it's estimated the property damages from these riots could exceed $2 billion.

What is the FBI doing to counter this ongoing pattern of domestic terrorism?

WRAY: So, Senator, certainly, we tried to respond aggressively with our partners to the domestic violent extremism that we saw playing out in streets all across the country this summer. Most of that activity, a lot of that activity, I would say, fell in what we would categorize as anti-government, anti-authority violent extremism. Some of it is anarchist violent extremism, some of it is militia violent extremism, some of it might even be sovereign citizen violent extremism.

But we saw a huge uptick in violent extremism in that broad bucket over the course of the last year. And so we're trying to be aggressive with tools that we have in terms of the charges we're bringing. We're trying to, as we talked about, frankly, in connection with January 6, same thing for the summer. We're trying to look at sources of funding, planning, coordination, trying to learn more about trade craft and tactics and things like that so that we can be better prepared to prevent it and feed information to our state and local partners so they can be better prepared to prevent it.

As I think I said to Senator Grassley last year, we had three times the number of anarchist violent extremists' arrests from, say, the prior year, I think it was. Certainly, more last year than the prior three years combined. And we did see last year, Senator Grassley noted in his opening comments, the first murder by an anarchist violent extremist last year in quite some time, certainly, which was the individual who in Portland killed a supporter of an opposing viewpoint. And then the individual in question, the violent extremist, was himself killed in a shootout as the marshals were trying to apprehend him.

CRUZ: Thank you.

DURBIN: Senator Coons?

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): Thank you, Chairman Durbin. Director Wray, welcome. Thank you for your service and your testimony today. And let me join with my colleagues in conveying our condolences on the line of duty deaths of Special Agents Daniel Alfin and Laura Schwarzenberger. It has been a long time since there's been a special agent line of duty death but every loss of life by those who are serving us and protecting us is too many. We join in grieving their loss and hope you will convey that to their families.

But our purpose here today is to focus principally on what happened in this complex, in this building, in the Capitol on January 6, Charleston, Charlottesville, Pittsburgh, El Paso, Kenosha and right here in the U.S. Capitol. These are just some of the recent examples where far-right extremists and white supremacists have terrorized this country, their fellow citizens and murdered individuals. We all condemn violence by anyone of any political persuasion, but we have to be honest about the significant threats we face, and that's the only way we can work together to take steps to confront them.

I think it's critical to that process for us to uncover the real facts of what happened, and given some of the misinformation being spread by some colleagues, I just would appreciate your readdressing a couple of questions. Can you speak with clarity about what we know about the January 6th riot here at the Capitol? You've said there have been, I think, 280 arrests so far. Has there so far been any evidence that the January 6th riot here, the insurrection, was organized by people simply posing as supporters of President Trump's?

[11:55:06]

WRAY: We have not seen any evidence of that. Certainly --

COONS: Is there any evidence at all that it was organized or planned or carried out by groups like Antifa or Black Lives Matter?

WRAY: We have not seen any evidence to that effect thus far in the investigation.

COONS: And is there any doubt that the people who stormed the Capitol included white supremacists and other far-right extremist organizations?

WRAY: There is no doubt that it included individuals that we would call militia violent extremists, and then in some instances, individuals that were racially motivated violent extremists who advocate for the superiority of the white race, but the militia violent extremist probably at the moment trending the biggest bucket, if you will.

COONS: Well, you have faced challenges. We as a nation face challenges with extremists of all stripes, types, backgrounds, motivations. As the new chair of the subcommittee on privacy and technology and law, I'm concerned about how extremists have used social media platforms to organize and incite violence and in some ways about how social media platforms work to accentuate or accelerate those who have extreme views and to potentially radicalize those who don't hold those views.

I let a letter with 14 colleagues last November to Facebook raising concerns about the adequacy of their enforcement of their own policies against violence and incitement. Can you speak to the extent to which the January 6th attack on the Capitol was organized through social media platforms?

WRAY: So, certainly, social media on January 6th, as for the domestic violent extremist threat more broadly, has become a major factor, a catalyst, if you will. The increased speed dissemination, efficiency, accessibility that it provides, it facilitates a greater, interconnected nature in a more decentralized way. And so I sometimes say terrorism today, and we saw it on the 6th, moves at the speed of social media.

And we try to work with social media companies to get them to more aggressively use the tools that they have to police their own platforms under terms of service, et cetera, and in particular, to cooperate with us so that we can bring justice for those who hijacked these companies' platforms to engage in some of the conduct we're talking about.

And that's where you heard a little bit about the encryption issue come up. That's an important part of this. We are moving in a direction. We saw it on the 6th, and we're seeing it more and more every day in this country, where violent extremists, just like other bad actors, are taking advantage of encrypted platforms to invade law enforcement.

And the social media companies and the technology companies are moving more and more in the direction where if we don't come up collectively with some kind of solution, it's not going to matter how bulletproof the legal process is or how horrific the crime is or how heartbreaking the victims are, we will not to be able to get access to the content and evidence that we need to protect the American people. And then I think we will all rue the day.

COONS: Director, this area raises a lot of very complex questions of civil liberties, of individual rights, fundamental rights to free expression, but I am also concerned about ways in which online disinformation and conspiracy theories lead to radicalization and help pave the way for this particularly tragic event in the history of our democracy, and how some of the ways in which social platforms are structured, social media platforms are structured accelerate the spread of disinformation.

How policymakers and platforms confront these issues are going to be complex, and I look forward to working with you to get the facts, as the FBI develops them about what happened on January 6th.

Two last questions, if I might. My colleague, Senator Whitehouse, asked about responding to outstanding requests for information, and I agree, some of the stonewalling that we saw by a number of agencies over the previous administration isn't acceptable.

Can you just reassure me the FBI will be as responsive as possible to information requests from this committee?

WRAY: Absolutely. My strong view is you all have an important key function to perform in terms of your oversight of the FBI, as with other agencies. And it pains and frustrates me when we're not able to be as responsive as you need us to be, and I commit to doing my best to see if we can work with you all to get better on that front.

COONS: Thank you. Last, Senator Feinstein asked you a series of questions about the record number of nixed denials last year.

[12:00:03]

This is when someone goes in, tries to buy a gun, gets run through the background system and is denied.