Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley told “Fox & Friends” Thursday that the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Christopher Wray, refused to disclose information about the raid on Mar-a-Lago.
Grassley, who said he spoke to Wray on Tuesday, said he asked the director when the FBI will publicly disclose its reason for raiding former President Donald Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago home Monday. Wray said that they do not comment on ongoing investigations, according to Grassley, who added that he thinks the public deserves an explanation for this unprecedented occurrence in a former president’s home.
“I didn’t get much of an answer at all and that’s what’s wrong,” Grassley said. “This is a department of justice, it’s supposed to be. But this is a department of ‘trust us’ and that isn’t the way the American government works. Transparency brings accountability and this extraordinary reaction on this administration, whether it’s [President Joe] Biden, whether it’s [Attorney General Merrick] Garland, whether it’s Wray or whether it’s somebody under them that Wray didn’t even know about it.”
“We need to have trust in the department of [the] FBI and this just destroys that confidence and particularly the political bias that I’ve already proven through my investigations,” he added. (RELATED: ‘It Seems Political’: Andrew Yang Condemns FBI Raid On Mar-A-Lago)
The senator accused the raid of being politically motivated. He alleged the agency is engaging in a double standard for negotiating with former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over her 30,000 deleted emails from her time as secretary of state, while raiding Mar-a-Lago over 15 boxes, which reportedly included classified White House documents being sent to the home.
“Fox & Friends” host Steve Doocy cited a Rolling Stone piece, which reported Trump’s speculation that phones in his home were tapped and Republicans visitors might have been wearing a wire. Grassley could not confirm those reports, but repeated that the agency needs to provide answers.
The senator added that he has not yet spoken to the FBI agents and whistleblowers who told him about the agency allegedly downplaying Hunter Biden’s reported “criminal financial and related activity” in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election. The senator, a ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter to Garland and Wray voicing his concern about the agency’s handling of Hunter Biden’s potential criminal activity through his foreign business dealings with Ukraine and China.
Some critics of the raid on both sides of the aisle have accused the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) of being politically weaponized. Former Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the DOJ must answer to the raid as the incident appeared to be a “political tactic.”
The Daily Caller reached out to FBI for a response. The agency declined to comment.