Republican Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn is demanding a Biden judicial nominee detail his participation in several investigations conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2020.
Brandon Long, who is nominated to be U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana, served as Deputy Chief of Staff for FBI Director Christopher Wray from 2020 to 2021.
During an appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday, Blackburn pressed Long on his involvement in various law enforcement activities, including the Hunter Biden probe and investigations into school board meeting participants. The nominee repeatedly dodged questions on those issues.
“Let me maybe explain my role a little bit as the Deputy Chief of Staff at the FBI,” Long attempted to elaborate in one instance.
“I am a Department of Justice employee. I’m a judicial nominee. That is a a pending matter,” he dodged. (RELATED: Wray Says FBI Was Meeting With Social Media Companies Until Federal Judge Stopped Them)
Blackburn is now doubling down on the line of questioning. She is asking him in written questions, obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller, to detail “meetings you participated in,” “email correspondence you sent or received” and “provide any other document or communication you drafted, sent, or received” about Hunter Biden, Black Lives Matter protests and the 2020 presidential elections.
Brandon Long was Deputy Chief of Staff at the FBI when the Hunter Biden story broke.
Why won’t he tell us his role? pic.twitter.com/B8PL1n6H31
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) July 12, 2023
FBI officials authenticated the data from Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2019 by matching the device number to Biden’s Apple iCloud ID, IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley testified to the House Ways and Means Committee in June. However, Bureau officials warned social media executives Biden could be the target of a hack-and-dump operation, according to former Twitter executive Yoel Roth, and did not publicly confirm the authenticity of the laptop.
FBI officials repeatedly met with tech employees about “misinformation” in the run-up to the 2020 election.
The Bureau also used a foreign surveillance authority to target American citizens during Long’s tenure, according to reports declassified and released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
FBI officials used Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to surveil electronic communications of 133 Black Lives Matter activists, the reports say. Congress must renew Section 702 by the end of 2023 or the authority will expire. Members of both parties are split on it.