On Friday, the day after FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee about mail-in voting and voter fraud, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is pushing back.
During his testimony, Wray said on Thursday he had “not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it’s by mail or otherwise.”
Speaking to “CBS This Morning” on Friday, Meadows knocked Wray and the FBI for past failures.
“With all due respect to Director Wray, he has a hard time finding emails in his own FBI let alone figuring out whether there is any kind of voter fraud,” Meadows said, according to The Hill.
“This is a very different case,” Meadows continued. “The rules are being changed and so what I’m suggesting is, perhaps he can drill down on the investigation that just started, others that we’re seeing in North Carolina and other places where multiple ballots, duplicate ballots, are being sent out. Perhaps he needs to get involved on the ground and he would change his testimony on Capitol Hill.”
More from The Hill:
“We now know that we have a Department of Justice investigation in the ballots that were discarded from veterans in Pennsylvania. That’s very troubling.”
Meadows was referencing a Justice Department announcement on Thursday that officials had begun an inquiry into a handful of military ballots that had been found “discarded” in Pennsylvania.
The department first noted in the statement that the ballots had been cast for Trump, but later amended it to say seven were cast for Trump and two had been “resealed.” The development has been seized upon by Trump’s allies while raising questions among election experts.
Meadows’ criticism comes just days after declassified documents were released showing the FBI in 2016 knew the primary subsource for Christopher Steele’s anti-Trump dossier was a known “threat to national security,” yet went ahead with an investigation into the Trump campaign anyway.
The Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra reported that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) sent a letter detailing the key takeaways from the documents (emphasis original):
- The Crossfire Hurricane team knew in December 2016 that Christopher Steele’s Primary Sub-source was an individual who the FBI had indicated in 2009 “could be a threat to national security.”
- In May 2009, Steele’s source reportedly attempted to recruit two individuals connected to an influential foreign policy advisor connected to President Obama, offering that if the two individuals “‘did get a job in the government and had access to classified information’ and wanted ‘to make a little extra money,’ [Steele’s source] knew some people to whom they could speak.”
- FBI databases revealed Steele’s source “had contact in 2006 with the Russian Embassy and known Russian intelligence officers, [including contacting a known Russian intelligence officer] ‘so the documents can be placed in tomorrow’s diplomatic pouch.’”
- One individual interviewed by the FBI noted that “the Primary Sub-source persistently asked about the interviewee’s knowledge of a particular military vessel.”
- Significantly, the “record documenting the closing of the investigation [of the Primary Sub-source] stated that consideration would be given to re-opening the investigation in the event that the Primary Sub-source returned to the United States.”