White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows Sunday again criticized FBI Director Chris Wray. He said that his “problem” with Wray, who the White House has criticized recently, is that Wray has done so little to investigate voter fraud – and he declined to affirm President Trump’s confidence in the director.
“To suggest that there is a process that is full of integrity is trying to make a verdict before you’ve actually heard the case,” Meadows told CBS’ “Face the Nation,” referring to Wray’s testimony on Capitol Hill denying widespread voter fraud. Meadows first criticized the comments Friday.
“That’s my problem with Director Wray. They need to investigate it, and make sure that the voting populace — makes sure that their vote counts and no one else’s does,” Wray said Sunday.
Meadows declined to offer the President’s confidence in the FBI director, while noting Trump will consider replacing those in whom he does lose confidence. CNN has reported Trump is highly unlikely to dismiss Wray before the election.
“Well, I mean, as we look at this, we want to make sure he’s doing his job. There are different degrees of confidence in different Cabinet members. Certainly, he’s still there,” Meadows said. “The minute the President loses confidence in any of his Cabinet members — they serve at his pleasure — he will certainly look at replacing them.”
The FBI has not commented on Meadows’ comments.
What is this about: Wray during his testimony last week did say the FBI does investigate voter fraud when there are accusations.
“Well, senator, I think what I would say is this. We take all election related threats seriously, whether it’s voter fraud, voter suppression, whether it’s in person, whether it’s by mail, and our role is to investigate the threat actors.
Now, we have not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it’s by mail or–or otherwise. We have seen voter fraud at the local level from time to time and so my comment should, in no way, be construed as minimizing how seriously we take our responsibility to investigate such incidents or the potential impact those things could have at the local level. So, it’s in our radar.
Certainly to change a—a federal election outcome by mounting that kind of fraud at scale would be a major challenge for an adversary, but people should make no mistake, we’re vigilant as to the threat and watching it carefully.”