Federal Bureau of Investigation Chief director confessed about ditching a hearing last August for a vacation while using the bureau’s jet.
On Thursday, FBI Director Christopher Wray confessed in a conference that he ditched a Senate oversight hearing last August and used the FBI’s jetplane to take a break in the Adirondacks.
Initially, he indicated that it was a “business” obligation after Post’s initial scoop was made public.
During a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) grilled Wray for his “indefensible” conduct and confronted him about his previous statement, implying to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that he had to leave as part of his official duties.
Hawley also noted the report released by The Post’s Miranda Devine where it was revealed “that the reason that the hearing had to be cut short is because you were flying on a Gulfstream jet for a personal vacation in the Adirondacks.”
“Please tell me that’s not accurate,” Hawley told Wray during the hearing.
According to Wray, the hearing wasn’t cut short because “we had agreed beforehand on the time and length of it” before adding: “As to how I fly — I am required, not only permitted but required, to fly on an FBI plane wherever I go.”
“So you were going on vacation?” Hawley asked.
“I was, yes,” Wray confessed.
“So you’ve left a statutorily required oversight hearing in order to go on a personal vacation in the Adirondacks?” Hawley followed up.
“I took a flight to go visit my family, as had been previously arranged in conjunction with the leadership of the committee,” Wray answered.
“The ranking member, Chuck Grassley asked you during the hearing, he said, ‘I assume you must have other business.’ You said, ‘Yes.’ He then said, ‘If you have a business trip, you’ve got your own plane. Can’t it wait a while?” Hawley asked.
“[Grassley] then said…We only just heard half an hour ago that now you have to leave. We were going to have a seven-minute round [of questioning], followed by a three-minute round, I’ve got seven people on my side of the aisle [Republicans] … who are waiting for this additional round. Is there any reason we can’t accommodate them for 21 minutes?’ And you said you had a plane to catch, you had somewhere to go, and now we find out it was for vacation?” he continued.
“The reference to other business was not a reference to that day. It was a reference to the following week where Sen. Grassley and I were going to see each other in Iowa when I had other business in Iowa and I did in fact see him then.” Wray pleaded.
“You had to leave a hearing early because you’re gonna see him later in Iowa?” Hawley asked.
According to the reports, Wray told Grassley that he couldn’t sit for more questions because “I had had a flight that I’m supposed to be hightailing it to out of here [for].”
In a report released by New York Post, “Wray’s hurried Aug. 4 departure — over Grassley’s protests — denied Republicans the chance to grill him over whistleblower allegations of a cover-up in the FBI’s investigation into first son Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.”
