A Washington government transparency organization has requested that the Justice Department and the FBI initiate a criminal investigation into former FBI Director Christopher Wray, claiming he provided false testimony to Congress and obstructed two significant investigations.
Mike Howell, President of the Oversight Project, informed Fox News Digital that the referral focuses on Wray’s comments regarding the FBI’s “Richmond memo,” a document from the bureau’s Virginia office that disclosed anti-Catholic bias, as well as his testimony related to an alleged scheme by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to distribute counterfeit driver’s licenses prior to the 2020 election, as reported by Fox News.
Wray discussed the Richmond memo during his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in July 2023, after the document controversially labeled Catholics as potential domestic threats.
“What I can tell you is that you are referring to the Richmond product, which is a single product from a single field office, and as soon as I became aware of it, I was appalled and ordered its withdrawal and removal from FBI systems,” Wray stated.
However, the Oversight Project deemed that statement either misleading or entirely false.
Representative Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) interrogated Wray regarding the Richmond memo and a so-called “Trump questionnaire” that circulated within the FBI, which examined agents’ loyalty to the former president and inquired whether they had participated in protests or rallies associated with the January 6 Capitol breach.
“We continue to hear about these ‘isolated examples,’ whether it pertains to Richmond Catholics or this [questionnaire] — isn’t it indicative of a pattern?” Tiffany inquired.
The Oversight Project also cited the opening remarks of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley from a June hearing on Biden-era “cover-ups,” in which the Iowa Republican stated that the Richmond memo “utilized the poor research of the radical Southern Poverty Law Center to label traditional Catholics as violent extremists.”
“According to records I disclosed last week, there was not merely one FBI document that utilized biased anti-Catholic sources, but rather more than a dozen,” Grassley stated. “Additionally, more FBI field offices were implicated than we had been led to believe.”
A second memo from Richmond, akin to the first and not released due to the ensuing backlash, was part of a series of documents that were partially redacted and sent by Grassley’s committee to FBI Director Kash Patel in June. It indicated that the bureau “evaluates RMVE (Racially Motivated Violent Extremism) interest in RTC (Radical Traditional Catholic) ideology is likely to rise … as we approach the [2024] general election cycle.”
“Director Wray’s testimony was misleading not only because it did not disclose the extent of the memo’s production and distribution, but also because it failed to acknowledge the existence of a second, draft document on the same subject intended for external dissemination to the entire FBI,” the Oversight Project remarked in a separate statement.
The Oversight Project specifically accused of obstructing congressional proceedings, committing perjury, and providing false statements, as noted further by Fox News.
In June, Grassley informed Fox News that his office had discovered 13 additional documents similar to the Richmond memo. He mentioned that these documents had been circulated and that “at least 1,000 individuals had access to information that … suggested the Catholic Church needed to be monitored as it could be perceived as a terrorist organization.”
Patel referenced the CCP influence case in a statement made in June, asserting that “former FBI leadership concealed the facts and misled the public regarding China’s interference in the 2020 election. They did this for political advantage. This FBI is revealing all of it and providing Americans with the truth they deserve.”
Patel claimed that the FBI “concealed” evidence in 2020 for political reasons and expressed gratitude to Grassley for assisting the current FBI leadership in highlighting the matter.
Fox further reported that during his testimony in September 2020, Wray informed Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., that the FBI had “historically not observed any form of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether conducted by mail or otherwise.”
Wray acknowledged that the FBI had identified cases of localized voter fraud and clarified that his testimony was never intended to downplay the larger threat.
Howell’s organization argued that newly disclosed documents provided to Congress by Patel in June contradicted Wray’s assertion, indicating that as early as August 2020, the bureau was alerting that China had mass-produced counterfeit IDs to support then-candidate Joe Biden.