FBI Director Christopher Wray Is In the Way

July 31, 2019(EIRNS)—In a July 30th story in The Hill, investigative reporter John Solomon exposes the fact that FBI Director Christopher Wray is fighting hard to prevent exposure of FBI crimes in the recent attempted coup d’état in the United States. One person attempting to stand in the way of Attorney General William Barr’s investigation of the coup’s perpetrators, former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, is now departing the Trump Administration, despite his long-term friendship and sponsorship by Vice-President Mike Pence. Could Wray be next?

Solomon’s article concerns the FBI’s fierce resistance to an FOIA suit involving a small number of documents the State Department sent to the FBI from MI6’s Christopher Steele. Solomon writes, “To hear the FBI tell it, the release of former Deputy Assistant Secretary [of State] Kathleen Kavalec’s documents is tantamount to giving up the keys to President Trump’s nuclear briefcase, aiding the enemy or assisting terrorists.” In addition, the FBI alludes to the British temper tantrum which has occurred whenever further disclosure of their role in the coup is threatened. According to Solomon, the FBI argues that it can’t afford to “jeopardize the fragile relationships that exist between the United States and certain foreign governments.” Then comes the kicker. According to Solomon the FBI actually claimed that “FBI special agents have privacy interests from unnecessary, unofficial questioning as to the conduct of investigations and other FBI business.”

One document Wray’s FBI wants to keep secret is a five-page memo that Kavalec downloaded from Steele from an internet storage site after meeting with him on Oct. 11, 2016. She sent it to then-FBI section chief Steven Laycock, now an assistant director, two days later. It was transmitted as a non-classified email and based on open source media reporting. In it, Kavalec debunks Steele’s fake theory that the Russian Alfa Bank and Donald Trump were communicating via a server in Trump Tower, and presents other complete refutations of Steele’s garbage. Solomon states

“Under the FBI’s human source rules, a U.S. government’s negative assessment of an informer’s information would constitute ‘derogatory information’ that would have to be disclosed to the FISC if Steele’s work was being used to support a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant.”

Eight days later, the FBI made its FISA Court application to surveil Carter Page based almost totally on Christopher Steele’s dirty ramblings. The FBI affiants declared to the FISA Court, under oath, that they possessed no derogatory information about Steele. This and other coverups have occurred under Wray’s tenure as Solomon documents.

Solomon ends his article with this warning: “When the government gets stuff wrong, as it did in the Russia case on [then-FBI Director] Comey’s watch, transparency is the best panacea for restoring public trust.

“Claiming FBI agents have a privacy right to avoid facing hard questions, portraying public source documents as national secrets and doing the Muhammad Ali ‘rope-a-dope’ dance to thwart disclosure is not an acceptable alternative.

“It’s a lesson Chris Wray should learn, quickly.”