Christopher Wray referred to FBI by Oversight Project for lying to congress

The Oversight Project has submitted a criminal referral to the Department of Justice and the FBI, requesting that federal authorities investigate former FBI Director Christopher Wray for allegedly making false and misleading statements to Congress during his time in office. 

The statements noted by the Oversight Project were made on September 24, 2020; March 2, 2021; July 12, 2023; and December 5, 2023. The comments were in relation to voter fraud and his agency targeting Catholic Americans. 

In a September 2020 hearing before the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee," Wray said that "we have not seen historically any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election whether it’s by mail or otherwise." 

He said during the March 2021 hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, "We are not aware of any widespread evidence of voter fraud, much less that would have affected the outcome in the Presidential election."

This comes after current FBI Director Kash Patel handed over an FBI intelligence report dated August 2020 to Congress that raised concerns over China mass-producing fake US driver’s licenses to fraudulently cast mail-in ballots for then-candidate Joe Biden. Around 20,000 counterfeit driver’s licenses had been seized by Border Patrol on August 5, 2020.

Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said in a joint statement on Tuesday, "Based on our continued review and production of FBI documents related to the CCP’s plot to interfere in the 2020 US Presidential election, previous FBI leadership chose to play politics and withhold key information from the American people – exposing the weaponization of law enforcement for political purposes during the height of the 2020 election season."

The Oversight Project also noted testimony from then-Deputy Assistant Director for Counterterrorism at the FBI Nikki Floris from October 2019, in which she said, "[m]ake no mistake, China is aggressively pursuing foreign influence operations," and said that the FBI was focusing on countering these threats. 

Floris "routinely, if not daily, briefed FBI Director Christopher Wray on threats to the integrity of the 2020 election," the Oversight Project wrote. 

"Ultimately, Wray was the FBI Director. He was briefed constantly by Floris on this specific topic, and he was certainly aware this topic was a matter of burning national interest and would be raised in any oversight hearing," they later added, writing that statements made in a 2020 and 2023 hearing showed that Wray was aware of the threats that China posted to the US, including in relation to elections.

The Oversight Project also highlighted the FBI’s targeting of Catholic Americans with a memo released that identified them as possible domestic terrorists.

Wray said during a July 2023 hearing when asked about an FBI intelligence memorandum that listed Catholic Americans 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."

He said in a December 2023 Senate Judiciary hearing, "This notion that the other field offices were involved is a garble and let me explain why I say that. The only involvement of the two other field offices was the Richmond authors of the product included two sentences or thereabouts references each of these other office’s cases."

Senator Chuck Grassley said earlier in June, "There wasn’t just one FBI document that used biased anti-Catholic sources, but over a dozen." He found that the Richmond memo had been distributed to over 1,000 FBI agents nationwide before it was publicly disclosed.

The Oversight Project said that "there is a reasonable basis to believe" that Wray’s conduct violated law, including Obstruction of Proceedings Before Congress, False Statements, and Perjury.