During Sunday’s broadcast of CBS’s “60 Minutes,” outgoing FBI Director Christopher Wray defended his agency’s 2022 raid of then-former President Donald Trump’s home in a classified documents investigation.
Wray claimed he had no interaction with the Biden White House regarding that or any other Trump investigation.
Partial transcript as follows:
SCOTT PELLEY (voiceover): Trump is also livid about the FBI search in 2022 for classified files at his home. A Trump lawyer certified that all classified papers had been returned to the government. But the FBI said later it found 72 documents marked top secret or secret — at least one about U.S. military strength.
CHRISTOPHER WRAY: I want to be careful not to discuss too many of the specifics of an investigation. But what I can tell you is that part of the FBI’s job is to safeguard classified information. And when we learn that information, classified material is not being properly stored, we have a duty to act.
And I can tell you that in investigations like this one, a search warrant is not, and here was not, anybody’s first choice. We always try to pursue – – invariably try to pursue the least intrusive means: first trying to get the information back voluntarily, then with a subpoena. And only if, after all that, we learn that the agents haven’t been given all of the classified material, and in fact those efforts have been frustrated, even obstructed, then our agents are left with no choice but to go to a federal judge, make a probable cause showing, and get a search warrant. And that’s — that’s what happened here.
SCOTT PELLEY: What influence did the Biden White House have on any of these Trump investigations?
CHRISTOPHER WRAY: I haven’t had any interaction with the Biden White House about investigations into the former president.
SCOTT PELLEY: Anybody at the FBI?
CHRISTOPHER WRAY: Not to my knowledge.
SCOTT PELLEY (voiceover): Wray’s FBI also investigated President Biden for keeping classified documents, and separately, investigated Biden’s son, Hunter, who was convicted on gun and tax charges. Biden pardoned his son last month calling the investigation “raw politics.”
SCOTT PELLEY: But you’re being criticized by a Democratic president and a Republican president. What does that tell you?
CHRISTOPHER WRAY: This is a hard job. You’re inevitably going to make different people angry, often very powerful people. But part of the essence of the rule of law is to make sure that facts, and the law, and proper predication drive investigations, not who’s in power, not who wants it to be so or not so.
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