His second i promise to restore the traditional oversight will including annual oversight hearings from key agencies in the jurisdiction. There is more to come. You told us that domestic terrorism was, quote, metastasizing across the country and it is not going away soon. Today, 10 years later i am afraid the threat has grown worse. In the decades, violent white supremacist have slaughtered people. They included the Mass Shootings in the manual ame church in 2015. The pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 and a walmart in texas in 2018. A white list supremacist last year, you told the committee that the top domestic terrorist threats continues to be those who are identified as racial extremists, specifically those who advocate for the superiority of the white house. White race. I look forward to hearing from you from the steps the fbi is taking to prove protect communities. Racist acts of terror like in baltimore buffalo socalled alyssa violent extremists and other antigovernment extremist pose a threat to Law Enforcement and government officials as we saw on january six. Everyone of us should join in condemning the use of violence just yesterday, the Committee Heard from Election Officials who were receiving Death Threats because of their work during the 2020 elections. We have seen violence against school officials, judges, members of congress and the Supreme Court and we have seen unacceptable and deadly violence towards Law Enforcement who have put their lives on the line. The dual threats are heightened by easy access to firearms in america. Matthew also, the Justice Departments top counterterrorism official, said contribute significantly to their ability to kill and inflict harm. We cannot ignore the dominant role guns play in the assault and killing of Police Officers. Estimates are 400 million firearms in the nation. Some guns can peers the kevlar vest that are supposed to protect officers. We have a lot of ground to cover and i look forward to your testimony. I turned to my friend for his Opening Statement. Thank you for your service to the people of america. This committee has a constitutional obligation to ensure that the fbi complies with the laws that we write and execute those laws. In performance of our constitutional duties, we often seek answers and records from the fbi and if Congress Finds potential wrongdoing, we have an obligation to make that public. Transparency brings accountability. Just last week, the Justice Department failed to be transparent. The department failed to provide underlying information to support their assumptions that a jury would not convict fbi agents for botching the nasser investigation. I asked the fbi about the steps taken to investigate the afghan evacuations. Evacuees. Senators have done the same thing. The fbi wont Tell Congress which officers are responsible for these security matters. How does that make our communities and safer . Furthermore, based on the killing of al qaedas leader, it appears that terror terrorist groups are still using afghanistan as many of us, including you, director wray, have feared. The fbi must provide congress concrete information about the National Security and criminal risk of our communities, what they may face with reef respect to evacuees that were vetted properly. Violence is a major problem in america with rates of Violent Crime skyrocketing. The start of this violence crime rate began in 2020 asked police nationwide were pulled off the streets. Some of the main causes of this rise are antipolice rhetoric, progressive prosecution and bill form bail reform. This is happening at the same time the progressive prosecutions reviews the hold violent criminals accountable for their crimes. Witness after witness in this committee has told us that the veil Bail Reform Movement helped release violent criminals so they can commit more crimes. Congress must treat Violent Crime as a topical mooring top priority. I introduced a bill to counteract this. It contains common sense proposal to reduce the bound spike in crime. Proposals that will expand federal for expenses like murder. The Justice Department and the fbi must also make a make Violent Crime a top priority. It seems like the biting Justice Biden this department and the fbi it has been reported that the fbi has labeled parents with threat tax to investigate them tags to investigate them. This administrations failure to manage the mortar has been a drug trafficker 53 hers dream traffickers dream. Thanks to the open borders, drug traffickers are poisoning the streets and they are trafficking in a sit victims with reckless abandon innocent victims with reckless abandon. This administration is feeling the people by not securing the border. Mike rawlings my colleagues have heard me on the issue of political bias affecting the fbis decisionmaking process. Multiple Justice Department officials have approached my office with that vice bias. According to whistleblowers, babyn yar opened an investigation on the top campaign and its advisors. The ugly memo opening memo of this investigation is based on liberal news reporting and information derived from left wing nonprofits based on allegations director what director wray and another person looked at the memo and approved the investigation. If the fbi is going to open an investigation, they have to do it the right way. It appears the white the right weight was not done so lets contrast this investigation with what the fbi has done with allegedly criminal information received from numerous sources related to hunter biden. The fbis shutdown investigative activity. In august of 2020, the fbi supervisory Intelligence Analyst opened an assessment. This served as a vehicle by which the fbi headquarter team falsely labeled hunter biden information as this information disinformation. October 2020, an avenue in reporting on hunter biden was reported closed. That hunter biden information related to potential criminal activity. The reporting was either verified or verifiable via both search warrants criminal search warrants. It was shutdown. Based on allegations, the evidence did not support the finding so lets look at both of these fact patterns. The fbi green lit default investigation on from based on liberal news items and information from liberal nonprofits. The fbi close investigations and sources that provided verified or verifiable reporting on hunter biden. Director ray, you will have to explain to the committee and country on how you manage this best mess. In august 2020, and i hope my colleagues will Pay Attention to this timeline. Senator johnson and i received an unsolicited and unnecessary briefing from the fbi. This briefing related to our heart Biden Administration i did biden investigation. It was instituted after the content of that breathing was later leads in order to falsely paint the investigation as an batting advancing russian this information dis information. The fbi open the assessment that was used to label as best the hunter find information as disinformation. I am asking you, he fbis credibility the fbis credibility is on the line. Director wray, will you please stand . Did you swear the testimony will be truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you guide . God . You may perceive oc you may proceed. I passed the fiveyear year mark for my tenure director and i am proud i proud to serve along the men and women who make up the fbi. I have traveled to all 56 Fbi Field Offices. All over the country, i have spoken with prosecutors, justices and others and i continue to be impressed and moved both by what i see firsthand and what i hear from others about the quality of our workforce. We serve the public with regular rigor. The complexity of the threats are quotes are tackling rms and i continue to be inspired of the work they do each and every day. The man and the fbi are taking on the Chinese Government, our economic security, they are working with the government and private sector partners to meet the danger of cyber actors including fighting that scourge against cyber attacks. They are battling domestic terrorism and for terrorist organizations Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Pay are going after those who pray against the vulnerable. Religious institutions and other public spaces across the country. They are ensuring the integrity of elections and working to exactly election workers who administer them. I want to use these minutes to focus on one threat. Senator grassley mentioned it which is the threat of Violent Crime. I speak with cheese and sheriffs all the time chiefs and sheriffs all the time and the number one concern i hear from them isnt rising violence, whether it is gains, trigger pullers who find their way back to the streets, robbery cruise crews, the Violent Crime problem is real, we are determined to combat. The core we are working shoulder to shoulder with local partners across the country through more than 300 fbi taskforces. We are using intelligence to drive proactive investigations to identify and target the most dangerous offenders, the worst of the worst. We are working with partners to build capacity to provide tools including by providing Additional Resources to maximize impact. And we are seeing was also. Results. Fbi phoenix arrested morgan a dozen individuals on drugs and firearms charges as part of a gang investigation. Fbi sacramento has arrested eight and seized pounds of method vanity methamphetamine and fennel and seized fentanyl and seized ghost guns. Picking large quantities of methamphetamine. That is three Fbi Field Offices. You step back, fbi taskforces focused on Violent Crime, sees more than 80,000 firearms and dismantled nearly 300 gangs and criminal enterprises and we are not going to let up. Every chance i get, i try to highlight that Law Enforcement is taking on this challenge at a time when jobs are becoming more dangerous especially for our state local brothers and sisters. In 2021, 73 officers were baloney asleep bird were murdered. Pi dfp i experienced loss d f e investigating crimes against children at one of our longtime taskforces officers were shot and killed in a ambers out ambush outside of our office. This years deaths are keeping pace with last years. This june, more officers were murdered in this country than in any single month in the past four years. Men and women of Law Enforcement make orourke sacrifices and adr support heroic sacrifices and they need our support. This year has brought the harbor of Mass Shootings harbor of Mass Shootings horror of Mass Shootings. These attacks on regular people are devastating for the communities. They touched us all, i can assure you he fbi family the fbi family feels it and we are doing our part to assist our partners to support victims and families. All levels of government we make sure americans feel safe and secure and violence is one part of the at that. The range that we face range of threats that we face have never been more diverse. Our fellow citizens look to us to protect the United States from all of those threats and i am grateful to the men and women of the fbi who continued to rise to legal challenges every day to meet those challenges every day. Thank you so for your support and i am am happy and i am happy to address questions. Incomes a shooter with an ar 15. Three rounds work levered in a matter of a minute or less. There are wounds that will be there for a long time. A nineyearold boy named Cooper Roberts who was shot by this government by man gunman was released from the hospital and will be paralyzed for life. I can go through the same list you have any more but i will also i am noticing that Law Enforcement is more are more vulnerable. Bullets fired from ar 15s are powerful enough to peers soft body armor. Bullets fired by spirits are fired at a greater range and to peers all kinds of body armor. This proliferation of guns is deadly and dangerous when it comes to our Law Enforcement. What is your observation . Chairman, there are dangerous people are bare and some days, i will say to those of us in Law Enforcement, it seems there are more of them and those people are more dangerous with more dangerous weapons and i know just this week, we had a couple of our agents who were shot at with an Assault Rifle that multiple rounds penetrated the vehicle they were in that they were not injured. I worried i worry every day about that and i know my counterparts, my fellow Law Enforcement leaders worry about it all the time. We are trying to do the best we can with better protective equipment and better training and better munitions of our own. It is a dangerous world and that statistics i cited in my Opening Statement are illustrative of the dangerous world. It is up at 73 that are murdered on the line in the line of duty last year, and they alarming percentage of those were killed in ambitious ambush situations not unlike our Task Force Officer in indiana. I worry about our folks every day. The hardest thing i have ever had to do is sit and talk with the families of our fallen. One of the most outrageous examples of violence against Law Enforcement occurred right here in the u. S. Capitol complex on january 6, 2021, when an insurrectionist mob attacked the men and women trying to defend me and us and that resulted with at least five people died and 140 lawenforcement were injured. It has resulted in the largest prosecution and entered in the justice apartment History Department history. The fbi is trying to identify within 350 suspects who happen have a believe to cause attacks on capitol grounds. What has made it so difficult to identify these 350 additional suspects . In some instances, a lot of the initial people we were able to find an arrest, car arrest and charge, made himself easily identifiable on social media there were but there were more people who concealed himself themselves so that is a challenge. We are continuing to develop some of the more complicated parts of the investigation in terms of conspiracy charges. One of the other elements is whether the fbi and others should have been forward of what occurred on january 6. Would you like to comment on that . We and dhs were putting out intelligence projects worrying about the prospect of different forms of politically related violence including related to the election and potentially related to january 6. It is the reality that we did not have any specific credible intelligence that point to thousands of people preaching the capital breaching the capital so one other things we are determined to do to make sure that doesnt happen again is to see how we can develop better sources. Any in the intelligence field where there is any kind of successful attack, you make a point in trying to figure out are there better ways to develop higherquality sources. Given the extensive online planning of the violence on january 6, i was surprised to hear jill sanborn saying last year that is not within the fbi s authorities to monitor publicly available social media channels. Have you wrecked the tile how do you reconcile s reference, what we can cannot do is cover the and it is more complicated topic but what i would say and i think what former ead jill sanborn was trying to say is that we dont have the authority to participate persistently and passively monitors social media. There are things we can do in terms of publicly available social media but it is a longer and involved topic. I am not an expert in this area but it seems to be that the use of Artificial Intelligence has made this more efficient. You are spot on. Artificial intelligence is an important tool. The fbi like other organizations has a big data problem and Artificial Intelligence is an important tool as we get through the mountains of information. Senator grassley . On our june 16 phone call, we discussed the need to protect was a horse that have approached my Office Protect whistleblowers that have approached my office. I appreciate your commitment. Two questions. Do you agree any retaliatory conduct against whistleblowers must be disciplined . I think retaliatory conduct against was a horse is acceptable. Whistleblowers is unacceptable. We have a number of mechanisms to make sure that they have the mechanisms to report but he was over one other things i have done is that every time you bring our special agents in charge across the edge and we have the Inspector General to talk to all of them to talk about the importance of whistleblowers and making sure they are protected. Let me take one step before that. And you commit to me and this committee and the senate that the fbi wont take any action to determine who the whistleblowers are . We will be scrupulous in our rules related to the whistleblowers. We want to make sure we get the information so we can use the tools we have to handle that conduct but certainly, i condemn in the strongest poss