House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) threatened to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress over the bureau’s “wholly inadequate” compliance with two subpoenas issued earlier this year.
Jordan wrote to Wray in a letter on Monday:
On February 3, 2023, the Committee issued a subpoena to you for documents and information regarding the FBI’s targeting of concerned parents who speak out at school board meetings. Similarly, on April 10, 2023, the Committee issued a subpoena to you for documents and information related to the FBI’s profiling of traditional Catholics as domestic extremists. To date, the FBI’s compliance with these subpoenas has been wholly inadequate and has materially impeded the Committee’s oversight efforts.
In February, Jordan issued a subpoena to Wray after Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo that noted a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.”
In April, Jordan also issued a subpoena to Wray after the FBI was accused of developing an anti-Catholic bias when a Richmond, Virginia, field office described pro-lifers as “Radical Traditionalist Catholics.”
Jordan said the committee has made “several accommodations” for the FBI, to no avail.
Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, during a House Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, July 12, 2023. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“After several accommodations, months of persistent outreach by the Committee, and attempts to negotiate and work with the FBI in good faith, we write to notify you that if the FBI does not improve its compliance substantially, the Committee will take action—such as the initiation of contempt of Congress proceedings—to obtain compliance with these subpoenas,” Jordan wrote.
Jordan’s threat to hold Wray in contempt of Congress comes months after House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) successfully used the threat of contempt to pressure Wray into producing documents about allegations that President Joe Biden accepted a bribe as vice president.
It also comes days after House Republicans grilled Wray during his testimony before the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
“Here’s what’s truly unbelievable. Here’s what’s amazing,” Jordan said during the hearing. “The Justice Department and the FBI want the taxpayers they censored, the parents they labeled, the Catholics they called radicals, they want them to pay for a new FBI headquarters and they want FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] reauthorization of the 702 form in its current form. … I mean you can’t make this stuff up.”
Jordan’s Monday letter gave the FBI a July 25 deadline to produce the documents before it initiates the contempt proceedings.
“The FBI’s productions to date have not included material the Committee knows is, or has reason to believe may be, in the FBI’s possession and that is responsive to the subpoena,” Jordan wrote.
Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at
