FBI Director Christopher Wray was under attack Friday from the White House for remarks he made on the security of mail-in voting. Chief of Staff Mark Meadows criticized Wray after he testified before Congress that he had not seen any evidence of widespread voter fraud in an election. Meadows argued that Wray is prematurely coming to the conclusion before he has “actually heard the case.”
While testifying on Thursday, Wray stated that the U.S. has only experienced occasional voter fraud. Specifically, he told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, in response to a question from Sen. Gary Peters (D – Michigan), that there has been voter fraud at the local level “from time to time,” but maintained, “we have not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it’s by mail or otherwise.”
For months, President Donald Trump has criticized mail-in voting, making unsubstantiated claims that it can lead to voter fraud. However, experts have not been able to support this assertion. And now with Wray’s remarks that run counter to Trump’s claims, the Trump Administration is firing back. In an interview with CBS, Meadows suggested that Wray was uninformed when making claims to the Senate that there have not been any instances of nationally coordinated voter fraud. The Chief of Staff also tied Wray’s remarks on voter fraud to an examination of the FBI’s handling of Russia’s connection to the Trump campaign.
Meadows’ criticism of Wray was unexpectedly pointed, given that Wray was appointed by Trump back in 2017. Wray, a former federal prosecutor, was formally sworn in as the director of the FBI on September 28, 2017, in a ceremony that President Trump did not attend — the first time an FBI director was sworn in without the president who nominated him in attendance.
