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Christopher Wray: We've Tried To Get Social Media Companies To Police Themselves & Work With Us To Stop "Bad Actors"; Christopher Wray: "Biggest Chunk" Of Domestic Terror Cases, Most Lethal Domestic Terror Incidents, Are Racially Motivated; Christopher Wray: FBI "Repeatedly" Warned Of Domestic Extremism, Especially Surrounding Election Issues; Christopher Wray: Hate Crimes Are Historically Under- Reported, Unclear If They Are Increasing, Or Reporting Is Increasing; Senators Grill FBI Director Over Insurrection, Domestic Terror. Aired 12-12.30p ET

Aired March 02, 2021 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): This is when someone goes in and tries to buy a gun, gets runs to the background check system and is denied. There are person prohibited often because there are a convicted felon.

I am soon going to be introducing a bill with a colleague on this committee. That would simply require that when there is a, an attempt to buy that is denied because someone is a person prohibited that notification be given to state law enforcement.

That is the law in some states that is not the law in a majority of states. Does that seem to you something that would be a good additional tool in the toolkit to allow state and local law enforcement to act on the tip that someone who is a person prohibited has just lied and tried to procure a weapon?

CHRISTOPHER WRAY, FBI DIRECTOR: Certainly I think the lied and tried information is often a valuable tool from an investigative perspective in preventing more serious conduct. And we'd be happy to meet with you or engage with you to provide a little bit better sense of how all this works from an operational perspective.

I know that the key consumer of the information here as your question eludes our state local law enforcement. So I would want to make sure that we do it in a way where we work with them as to what they would find most useful.

Certainly as I said in response to Senator Feinstein, the volume of nicks checks overall and with it, the volume as a small subset of denials has exploded over the course of the last year. And so I am mindful of the resource burden that it puts on everybody in the law enforcement system. But we're happy to talk with you more about it.

SEN. COONS: Thanks. I look forward to working with --. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Senator Sasse. SEN. BEN SASSE (R-NE): Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Director for

being here. And thank you for the way you've been available to us on this committee and on the Intel committee. We've also been grateful for your work and availability.

We've talked a good bit about the intelligence failures around January 6. But some of it is how did we sort signal from noise. And some of it is the handoff from the FBI and other entities to the Capitol Police as you do an after action.

How much of the problem is the challenge of navigating a social media world where any drunk guy in a bar now has amplification that he can be heard around the world and lots of it is just drunk guy in a bar ranting.

And some of it is more particular threats because people can find communities of kind of warped belief with other people if they're planning something wicked on social media. How much of it is the filtering through social media for you to make sense of it? And how much of the January 6 failure was the handoff from the FBI to Capitol Police?

WRAY: Well Senator as I said, when it comes to the handoff, a lot of the attention has really been about this Norfolk S.I.R which I think I've talked about it at some length where we provided the information to our partners in three different ways.

And as it was the information was raw uncorroborated information at the time certainly. I think the other part of your question, the filter, the social media piece of it is a huge issue. And it's something that we and everybody in law enforcement struggles with right now.

You know you use the drunk guy example, I guess that sometimes I refer to it used to be that some angry, demented guy living in mom's basement. Not that there's anything wrong with that. You know in one part of the country is now able to communicate with a similarly angry guy in grandma's attic in another part of the country.

And they get each other spun up now and then how to separate whose being aspirational versus whose being intentional. It won't shock you to learn and hopefully not other members of the committee that the amount of angry, hateful, unspeakable, combative, violent, even rhetoric on social media exceeds what anybody in their worst imagination is out there.

And so trying to figure out who's just saying you know, what we ought to do is x or everybody ought to do x versus the person who's doing that and actually getting traction and then getting followers. And of course that's assuming they're not communicating through encrypted channels about all that stuff.

Is one of the hardest things there is to do in today's world with the nature of the vile extremism threat we face. Social media companies play a huge role in helping us with that. But you often hear us say, if you see something, say something, to me, the refinement here would be if Americans see something on social media that seems to have crossed that line.

They need to say something because that's going to be our best source of information to prevent this.

SEN. SASSE: So it's helpful. I've heard from Nebraska law enforcement before. At one level they don't really know what to do with if you see something, say something because it's not clear exactly where they hand that information.

So let's talk a little bit more about the handoff between state and local law enforcement as Senator Coons was and the bureau. But also between platform technology, platform content moderation and the bureau, but first just inside the bureau.

[12:05:00]

SEN. SASSE: Give us comfort that we're getting a lot better at this because I don't think we're giving you enough resources to get the right kind of new human capital you're going to need. But I'd love to be wrong.

So go from three years ago to a year ago, a year ago today and a day to year from now, how are we getting better at filtering signal from noise? And what kind of new human capital are you hiring that should give us confidence that we're going to get better in this world that is exploding with lots of online rant?

WRAY: Well certainly - there's a number of things we're trying to do to get better. And I think we are making progress. But it all of it as you reference requires resources. So there's a data analytics piece because the volume is so significant that we need to get better at being able to analyze the data that we have to do it in a timely way to separate the wheat from the chaff.

And that requires both tools, analytical tools. And we've had requests for those in the budgets the last couple of years but also people data analysts who can devote their time to that who have the experience. So that's part of it.

I think a second part of it is, as I think I referenced in response to an earlier question, all of these investigations that we do, all these arrests we make are important not from - not just from a disruption perspective, but putting my intelligence hat on.

SEN. SASSE: Yes.

WRAY: They allow us to learn more about where people communicate, how they communicate, and what the magic words is all that kind of stuff. So we get better and better and anticipating from that reason. But make no mistake; we've got a long way to go.

This is an incredibly hard problem I know from communicate with my foreign counterparts, especially the five eyes that they're struggling with it too. As to your point about people knowing where to go, you know, I will tell you that our tip line, our public access tip line both the email tips and the phone tips have exploded in volume. And we're doing things to kind of get that information out to state

local law enforcement much more quickly.

And certainly the social media companies, some of them have gotten better at providing us more real time information when they see something because they have a lot of resources to devote to this problem in terms of policing their own platform. So the more we can incentivize them to do that, that's a big part of this too.

SEN. SASSE: Can I concretize the examples. So I'm a high school teacher or a high school principal. And some kid comes to me and says hey, these kids have always seemed to be online bullies. But now it seems like the things they're saying sound more violent. What do you tell them to do?

WRAY: Contact your local FBI field office.

SEN. SASSE: So it is FBI. It's not your local police department?

WRAY: Well I think they could also contact state and local law enforcement. We all now work so closely together that I think we view a call to one as a call to us all. If we get the information, we're - you know nine times out of 10 going to be pushing it to state and local law enforcement as quickly as we can.

We do a lot of outreach to the high schools like you're talking about meeting with teachers, meeting with students, and meeting with parents to try to get them to understand better what to be on the lookout for what might be that indicator.

Because the one thing we know whether it's - whether it's any kind of domestic violence, extremism. And we've talked about here this morning or frankly just the horrific active shooter, school shooter situation is that when you look back on the path, to the key moment, almost every single time there was a friend, a family member, a neighbor, a classmate, a co worker, something, somebody who knew the person well enough to know, this is their baseline.

They've now changed in a way that's scary to me. And no one knows better than the person who knows them well. And that's the person we need to come forward. When they do? And they're doing it more and more. We're able to get in front of it.

SEN. SASSE: I'm basically at time. So I won't ask you a question here. But I'll flag one that I want to continue talking with you about. I would love to hear your big national pitch for these data analysts because we need more great human capital serve their country in this way.

But I also want to be sure that our training for these data analysts have first amendment sensibilities about what they're there to do. They're looking for violence. They're not looking they're to be the national speech police. So look forward to continuing that conversation. Thanks for your work.

WRAY: Absolutely. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thanks, Senator Sasse. Senator Blumenthal.

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT): Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you Director Wray for being here today. And I want to join in expressing my condolences for the loss of those two agents. And my thanks to the thousands of agents who work day in and day out to make America safer.

When you last appeared before this committee in July of 2019, I expressed my concern that Donald Trump's attacks against members of congress and his other rhetoric, "might ignite white supremacists and nationalist organizations and encourage hate crimes."

[12:10:00]

SEN. BLUMENTHAL: I asked you whether you were concerned about the increasing number and intensity of his attacks on public officials and what the FBI was doing both proactively and responsibly about them. And you said, "I think we are very concerned about any threats of violence against any Americans, but certainly that would prominently include our elected officials.

We've seen increasing attacks by the president and others against public officials. When the writers who came to the capitol storm, the citadel of democracy on January 6 were inside they boasted proudly and loudly that they were doing what Donald Trump wanted them to do.

We have warned specifically about QAnon in a letter dated December 8 2020. Number of us members of the Senate warned that QAnon specifically was a threat. I would like to ask you whether the threat posed by QAnon.

And as you well know inherence of QAnon were among the riders very prominently who storm the capitol, whether the continuing threat is worsened when prominent elected officials including members of congress endorsed the QAnon theory.

WRAY: Well certainly we are concerned about the QAnon phenomenon which we view as a sort of loose sort of set of conspiracy theories. And we've certainly seen domestic violent extremists of the sort that you're describing who cite that as part of their motivation. So that's something that we do.

SEN. BLUMENTHAL: But I apologize for interrupting. As you know my time is limited. When members of congress as has happened endorse the QAnon theory, doesn't it worsen the threat of violence?

WRAY: Well again our focus is on the violence and on the plans to commit violence on the threats to commit violence. It's less on the rhetoric and the ideology. Obviously the folks who engage in this kind of violence draw inspiration from a variety of sources. And we're concerned about any source that stimulates or motivates violent extremism.

SEN. BLUMENTHAL: Well I'll follow up in another setting. But I am frankly disappointed that you're not discouraging one of the sources of incitement which is prominent public officials endorsing a theory that in turn resulted in storming the United States Capitol, let me turn to hate crimes.

Hate crimes are underreported. We're seeing a rising trend of hate crimes particularly directed against Asian- American pacific islanders. I have a bill called the No Hate Act that would require more reporting provide both incentives and requirements. Wouldn't you think that kind of measure is a good idea?

WRAY: So certainly we share your goal of both deterring and reducing hate crime. But also particularly relevantly in promoting better reporting more complete reporting of hate crime. And we are specifically concerned about hate crimes against Asian Americans as well.

I'm not directly familiar with the bill. But I think we share the goal of trying to figure out how to improve reporting. As you may know we have you know, neighbors which is a new system that we're rolling out and we're trying to get to 100 percent on that. And we'd be pleased to work with you on figuring out how this bill might help advance that goal.

SEN. BLUMENTHAL: Well the No Hate Act would in fact lead to better reporting if 87 percent of hate crimes are unreported now. That is a searing indictment of the present system. We need to know more and particularly about Asian Americans and Island Pacific as being victims of them.

I know you don't want to be a - as you said armchair quarterback. But you're going to be armchair quarterback by the American people.

[12:15:00]

SEN. BLUMENTHAL: And I think the American people listening to these past 10 days of hearing and knowing how much information there was out there on social media in other forums about these thugs and riders coming to Washington.

Organized groups 3 percent of proud boys and others are wondering why the FBI didn't sound the alarm. I know there was a communication through that threat assessment. I know you've talked about the agencies that were hearing that assessment.

But here we have the United States Capitol were a key function of democracy, enabling the peaceful transition of power was taking place and a threat of violence and even death to them.

Why didn't you go to the gang of eight? Why didn't you sound the alarm in some more visible and ringing way?

WRAY: Well Senator, I guess a couple things. One, over the course of 2020 we repeatedly, repeatedly put out intelligence products on this very issue. Domestic violence extremism, domestic violence extremism specifically tied to the election domestic violence extremism specifically tied to the election and continuing beyond the election up through the inauguration and specifically in December of 2020. In addition to that in connection with the one piece of raw intelligence that's been discussed so much here today, we did pass that on to the people in a best position to take action on the threat. Not one, not two, but three different ways.

Now more broadly in terms of what's out in social media, as a number of the questions here today have elicited I think it highlights and your question highlights one of the most challenging jobs for law enforcement in today's world with social media.

There is so much chatter often unattributed to somebody in a neatly identifiable way where people are saying, unbelievably horrific, angry, combative things using language about the heading and shooting and explosives and all kinds of things like that.

And separating out which ones are getting traction, which ones reflect intention as opposed to aspiration is something that we spend an enormous amount of time trying to do. Sometimes we don't have the luxury of time and the ability to make those judgments.

I can assure you that as I said I think to Senator Klobuchar my standard is we're trying to bat a thousand. We want to thwart every attack. And anytime there's an attack that's not forwarded, we and our partners want to make sure that we figure out how to do even better at preventing that.

We're pleased that the inauguration for example, went smoothly notwithstanding threats and chatter that we were seeing, not just here in the national capital region, but against state capitals all across the country.

And our focus was on engaging with, with all of our partners, our state and local partners. I did a conference call if I got thousand plus police chiefs from around the country about the state capitals.

That's the kind of thing we were doing to try to make sure that we're doing the grind the hard work to get in front of the threat and we're going to keep working at it every single day.

SEN. BLUMENTHAL: I understand your response. What I don't understand is why this chatter, raw intelligence didn't prompt a stronger warning and alarm going to the very top of the United States congress because clearly the United States congress was under severe threat.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you Senator.

SEN. BLUMENTHAL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Senator Hawley.

SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Director Wray, thanks for being here. Can I just go back to a series of questions that Senator Lee asked you? He asked you about the geo location and metadata aspects of gathering related to gathering a better data that is related to your investigation of January 6 riot?

You said you weren't familiar with the specifics. Can I just clarify your responses to him? So when you say you're not familiar are you saying that you don't know whether or not the bureau has scooped up geo location data metadata from cell phone records or cell phone towers?

Do you not know? Are you saying that the bureau maybe or maybe hasn't done it, just tell me - tell me what you know about this.

WRAY: So when it comes to geo location data specifically, again not in a specific instance but just even the use of geo location data. I would not be surprised to learn. But I do not know for a fact that we were using geo location data under any situation with connection with the investigation of the 6th.

[12:20:00]

WRAY: But again we do use geo location data under specific authorities and specific instances because this is such a sprawling investigation that would not surprise me when it comes to metadata which is a little bit different obviously than geo location data.

I feel confident that we are using various legal authorities to look at metadata under a variety of situations. But again the specifics of when, under what circumstances with whom that kind of thing I'm not in a position to testify about with the sprawl and size of the investigation and certainly not in a congressional hearing.

HAWLEY: What authorities do you have in mind? You said that you're using the relevant authorities, what authorities are they?

WRAY: Well we have various forms of legal process we can serve on companies that will allow us to get--

HAWLEY: And that's been done.

WRAY: Well when using a lot of legal process in connection with the investigation so yes.

HAWLEY: But specifically serving process on companies using invoking your various legal powers to get that data from companies that's been done in the case of gathering this data.

WRAY: In gathering metadata?

HAWLEY: Yes.

WRAY: Again I don't know the specifics. But I feel confident that that has happened because metadata is often something that we look at. And we have a variety of legal tools that allow us to do that under certain circumstance.

HAWLEY: What about the cell tower data that was reportedly scooped up by the bureau on the day during in fact, while the riot was underway? What's happened to that data? Do you still have it? Has it been retained? Do you have plans to retain it?

WRAY: Again whatever we're doing with cell phone data, I'm confident that we're doing it you know in conjunction with our appropriate legal tools working-- HAWLEY: Here's what I'm trying to get at. And I think it's what Senator Lee was trying to get it. How are we going to know what you're doing with it? And how are we going to evaluate the bureau's conduct?

If we don't know what authorities you're invoking what precisely you're doing what you're retaining? I mean this is - you said to him repeatedly, you weren't familiar with the specifics. You've now said it to me, I don't know. I'm not sure how this committee is supposed to evaluate anything that the bureau is doing.

You're basically saying just trust us. I mean, how we going to know to have to wait till the end of your investigation to find out what you've done?

WRAY: Well certainly I have to be careful about discussing an ongoing investigation, which I'm sure you can appreciate. But all the tools that we have are done in conjunction with prosecutors and lawyers from the justice department.

Now if there's information we can provide you before an investigation is completed that goes through what some of the authorities we have, the tools we have et cetera, we could probably provide some information like that that might be useful to help answer the question.

HAWLEY: That would be helpful. Thank you. I'll hold you to that. Let me ask you about some of the things that have been reported. In the press particularly there have been a series of reports that the bureau has worked with banks in the course of the investigation into the January 6 riot both before and after.

And at some banks, particular at Bank of America may have handed over data for 200 plus clients who may have used their credit or debit cards to make purchases of the dc area. Well what do you know about this? Is Bank of America voluntarily turned over information to the bureau about its customers?

WRAY: I don't know any of the specifics? I'd have to look into that.

HAWLEY: And so it has the FBI requested similar information from any other companies to your knowledge.

WRAY: Again I'm sitting here right now; I do not know the answer to that question. I do know that we work with private sector partners including financial institutions in a variety of ways all the time in a variety of investigations. But exactly the specifics of what may or may not have happened here that I don't know sitting here as we're talking today.

HAWLEY: As I'm sure you can appreciate. My concern here is that 12 USC, 34 of 3 prohibits financial institutions from turning over confidential client records, unless of course they've got reasonable suspicion that there's a crime being committed.

Now the news reports on this have indicated that the financial institutions were doing this in cooperation with the bureau without any such indication of a crime. They're just turning over reams of consumer data. That obviously would be a major legal problem and major legal concern.

Can you try and give me some answers to these questions? I appreciate you say you don't know today, you're not aware of what's going on. But can you look into this and follow up with me on this?

WRAY: I'd be happy to see if there's more information we can provide you on the subject. As I said we have a variety of ways in which we engage with financial institutions in particular. And as you referenced, there's a number of legal authorities that describe when you can and cannot do that and how that's supposed to work.

So I don't want to get out, as they say over my skis and try to characterize what may have happened in a specific instance. But I'm happy to look into it and see if there's more information we can provide.

HAWLEY: What about some of the technology companies Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple, Amazon has the FBI had contacts with those tech platforms following the events of the sixth?

[12:25:00]

WRAY: We certainly had contact with a number of the social media companies in connection with the sixth. So that much I know.

HAWLEY: Have - has the bureau sought to compel any of those companies to turn over user data related to the sixth?

WRAY: Well again, I don't - I can't tell you the specifics here. But what I will tell you is that we feel certain that we have served legal process on those companies which we do with some frequency.

And we have received information from some of those companies and whether that's true of every single one of the companies you listed. I can't say for sure, but I suspect it is because we work with social media companies quite a lot.

HAWLEY: Are you aware of any of the companies voluntarily turning over data to the bureau in relationship to the events of the sixth?

WRAY: I can't - sitting here right now, I can't say for sure.

HAWLEY: Just one more question. Mr. Chairman, times almost expired. Is the FBI - are you currently pressuring any of these platforms, these social media platforms or tech platforms to include backdoors in their software that would help defeat end to end encryption? Are we pressuring or encouraging or are you pushing for are you well desire to get to Texas?

WRAY: But we are not trying to get backdoors. That is, I think a criticism that gets leveled our way by people who don't understand our position often. So I appreciate the opportunity to address it here.

We are concerned about end to end encryption, especially default and end encryption in connection with a lot of these platforms. And we are concerned that if these companies continue to move in the trajectory that they're moving in, we're going to find ourselves in a situation where no matter how bulletproof or ironclad, the legal authority.

No matter how compelling the facts and circumstances, no matter how horrific the crime or heartbreaking the victim, we will not be able to get access to the content that we need to keep people safe what we have been suggesting.

And the cryptologers and cryptographists that I talked to say this is doable is for the companies themselves to build in a way to have legal access when confronted with a proper legal authority, so that they can get access to information and provide it in response to a warrant or a court order.

We're not going to have a key we're not asking for a backdoor. That's a myth, an urban legend that has been directed our way.

But this is a subject that I think the American people need to understand because decisions that affect the life and blood of Americans all over this country, which normally are made by our elected representatives are in effect getting made in corporate offices, in big technology companies.

And different people can come down in different places on that balancing. But I would submit that's a balancing that should be made up here and not by one company based on its business model.

And in the context for example of child exploitation, we get and to Facebook's great credit, we get millions, millions of tips on child exploitation through - every year that help us prevent and rescue kids, hundreds of kids every year.

If they move forward in the direction they're moving in, which is a direction by the way that Apple already went, we're going to be a position where those tips those leads that content, that information will drop into the abyss. So the tips will be gone.

The victims all those kids will still be out there, the pedophiles that are exploiting them, they'll still be out there. The only thing will be different is that neither the company nor we and law enforcement will know who they are, where they are or what they're doing.

And I don't think that's the situation that we want to find ourselves in. So we would welcome the opportunity to work with the companies perhaps encouraged or incentivized through congress to get to a situation where we can balance strong Cybersecurity absolutely.

It's a key part of our mission as well as the FBI along with strong flesh and blood security, especially for America's children.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Senator. Senator Hirono is on remote. Can you hear me Senator?

SEN. MAZIE HIRONO (D-HI): Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Director Wray, following the January six insurrection, you and other senior law enforcement officials were missing from public view and the people who are providing the briefings to the public. Was the DC acting U.S. Attorney and the Assistant Director of the FBI, Washington field office?

I hope you agree that at a time like this, it would be very important for high-level law enforcement people like you and others to have brief the public to limit the spread of misinformation about what happened and who was behind what happened. Do you agree?

WRAY: Certainly, I agree it's important to prevent misinformation as much as we can consistent with our legal responsibilities.

[12:30:00]